Subject: ASP-PRE2-I Should Have Known (2) Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 08:06:27 GMT I Should Have Known (part 2) Some other pre-drug use memories and "preparations" occurred about six to eight months before I had my first actual drug experience. In the books I was browsing through in the local libraries, (I even when all the way down to the big public library on 42nd street) I started reading more and more and fantasizing more about marijuana. Pot seemed to be really cool. These books described how most marijuana was grown and smuggled up from Mexico. On book even mentioned a "type" of pot, that was called Acapulco Gold! Those words, "Acapulco Gold" rang in my brain over and over again. "Most marijuana was from light to dark green in color, but some of it, because of the climate and soil conditions under which it was grown would develop a bright tan, brown, yellow or golden color to it. Since this type of pot was grown in Acapulco, it got the name Acapulco Gold." Now my imagination was really fired up. What would it be like? Where would I even be able to get some of it? Should I dare to try and get some? These thoughts would surge and than subside as the days and weeks passed. But it was time to go to start a new high school in September, having been thrown out of the first one after only one year mainly due to being a trouble maker. And to think, I hadn't even done any drugs yet! Starting a new high school, sophomore year was probably hard enough, but having to start one after being ejected from my first one was a bit harder. "Who was I?" "Who is this new kid in our school?" "What's his story?" That's the kind of stuff that was on my mind as I began the long bus ride from the tip of the Northeast Bronx into New Rochelle. Nothing was going to change that much just because I was starting a new school. And it didn't take me long to begin to find the types of kids who were also mischievous trouble makers. I felt comfortable with kids like that. The band that I had started playing with one year ago, was getting very popular in and around The Bronx, and lower Westchester were I was now going to school, so that helped a bit as other kids started to notice that I was the guitar player of this pretty cool popular band. But my mind was drawn alternatively to either woman or drugs. Woman and drugs. Drugs and Woman. Woman, Music, Drugs. A familiar pattern to growing numbers of kids across America was about to occur, but not for another couple of years yet. In the meantime, I feel in and out of love with any one of a number of hot sexy blondes, brunettes and black haired woman near school and in my neighborhood. I could probably write another book, to do justice to that part of my life at that time. But that's not the main story of what this book is about. Nope, the main thing, my main motivation was drugs. I new that I wanted to try them, sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. So with that kind of desire, another weird thing I would do would be to get a hold of a pack of cigarettes. I did not smoke cigarettes, having only tried them once or twice. But I had another fantasy. This one I acted out and it kind of got me in trouble too. I would take a pack of smokes and empty all the tobacco out of the cigarettes. After I emptied about ten of them, I would take all the loose tobacco out and neatly put it into a small brown paper bag and fold it into a small rectangle about 1/4th it's original size. I would open and close this bag and look at it from time to time. I would fantasize that this was POT! I would imagine what it would be like if this really were POT. And since I did not know where to get any yet, this make believe would have to do for now. I somehow managed to get some cigarette rolling paper from a corner store and when my mother left me alone I would take out my "pot" and try to roll a joint. Of course it was only tobacco but that didn't matter. It was cool. I would roll a joint as best I could and than light it up and try to make believe that I was smoking Marijuana. I think perhaps I was a little weird. Just a little. My parents seriously thought I was weird when they found my "stash" one day in my bedroom closet. My mother found it while putting away my clothes one day. That night I was confronted by my both my parents who asked me, "what's this and what are you doing with it." Well they knew it was just tobacco, and I can't for the life of me remember what kind of hokey story I gave them about it, but somehow I convinced them that it was nothing and that all I was doing was "playing around with it." About the only thing they really wanted to know was if I were smoking cigarettes or not. I had not picked up a cigarette habit and they somehow satisfied themselves that nothing too weird was going on with me and the matter was forgotten. But I hadn't forgotten it. Indeed, all I did in my spare time was try to figure out how I was going to get my mittens on the real thing. Well it wasn't too long before a few of the people I knew started talking about it occasionally. I remember talking with our rhythm guitar player for some reason, who happened to have a part time after school job at The Rexal pharmacy. And then there was a new "buddy" of our, a drummer. Denny did not play in our band, but he went to high school with the rhythm guitar player and liked the music we did, so he sort of started hanging out with us. Somehow we talked with him about it. And shortly afterward there was Ray. Ray was someone I was now in my 2nd year of high school with. Ray was also someone I originally met in grammar school and he was something of a bad ass, but although we talked about pot a few times, it was clear that he had not done any yet. So I would have to be content with reading, researching and dreaming about the day I would finally get my hands on some real pot. I didn't have too long to wait. Christmas, Christmas break and New Years came and went and all of sudden I was turning sixteen in January. My school work was nothing to write home about, I had a few sexual experiences, been in love at least twice and the band was doing really well by now, but still not drugs. Still no pot. The beginning of the new year brought with it the typical cold and snow storms that were normal for the NYC area. "Where could I get my damn hands on some fucking pot." That's what I wanted to know. Finally something more definite started to show up. My high school friend Ray, had not been in school for almost three weeks starting right after Christmas/NewYears break and I started wondering what happened to him. I thought perhaps he just quit, or dropped out, or had gotten thrown out, but I could not verify any of this at all. None of my classmates new what happened to him and the teachers, if they did know, were not saying anything. All we heard was that he was out sick. Then one day….he appeared in school again. "Fuck Ray….where the hell have you been" I asked him when I had the chance? He just smiled at me and told me he would talk with me during lunch time. When lunch time came and we had the chance to talk, I was treated to one of the most exciting stories I had ever heard. Ray had smoked POT! "You did," I shot back? "Shhhhh," he told me. "Be cool man." I contained my enthusiasm. I asked him to please tell me all about it. And he did. What he told me was that staring during the Christmas break, he and a few buddies had gotten some pot and tried it for the first time. All the usual declarations of high intoxication were revealed to me, but I will not forget him describing how you "turn down the lights, burn a little incense, put some Dylan music one and light up." The sound in his voice (Ray's, not Dylan's) had that allure of intrigue. It was this lusty, soft seductive, "follow me" quality to it. I should mention that I didn't even know, most people didn't yet know who Bob Dylan was yet. He had just started getting a little popular with the folk culture and the intellectual underground at the time and songs like "Like A Rolling Stone and The Times They Are A Changin" had not yet even been written yet. Being a musician I asked him, "who the fuck is Bob Dylan?" Again, the seductive voice, "Oh, you don't know who Bob Dylan is, wow?" But like some of the other descriptions and fantasies that I had about drugs and pot, that one would stick with me. That and his descriptions of what a joint really was like. How small he said it was, how thin. How you smoked it, how you inhaled it, the way you held it deep in your lungs. It all sounded so damn good to me. And I was even more hooked than ever now. Finally I knew someone who had actually done it. Not just some clinical description of what I read in a library book. No, this was the real thing. Well, almost the real thing. The real thing would have to wait just a little bit longer. Copyright Gizmo 2001