“What does he know about it anyway?” Sully thought to himself as he pondered the discussion he had a half-hour ago with his old man about the dangers of “hard drugs”.
The scene replayed in his head as he drove down the winding, poplar-lined road.
His dad had found ‘the Blue bullet’, Sully’s stubby, sapphire-colored aluminum pipe in the pocket of his jacket when he’d borrowed it from the coatrack to walk their dog Rinky earlier that morning.
“Oh, please! It’s just pot, dad! It’s not like I’m a junkie. It’s as harmless as a garter snake.”
“I’m not saying it’s crack cocaine,” his dad reasoned, “but it’s not you at your best. I love you enough to know when you’re missing your potential.”
“I feel like it helps me reach my potential, have you thought about that?”
“How so?” his dad asked.
“It’s kind of like a key that opens up my creativity. It puts me in touch with my natural ability, takes away the push of society’s unfounded demands, brings me into focus on what should be, you know?”
His dad let out a sigh and responded, “That may be how it makes you feel, but the truth is, you are and always have been the most creative person I know. You don’t need to use any drugs to be you. You are amazing without them.”
“Sorry I turned out to be such a big disappointment to you!” Sully quipped. “You just don’t get it!”
Sully grabbed his jacket from his dad’s hand and stomped out the front door.
His blood boiled as he drove away. He was a little embarrassed, sure, but more so, incensed. The nerve of someone telling him who he should be! How he ought to live, to feel! Ugh!
“Okay, relax man, take a breath, don’t let that old fool get to ya,” he thought to himself. “Take a toke and relax.”
With that notion, Sully pulled over next to a quiet nature park. He got out and found a secluded picnic table under a massive oak tree. He refilled ‘the blue bullet’ and lit up the fresh sticky bud, slowly taking in a big hit, holding it in his lungs. He closed his eyes and counted to twenty before exhaling. Sully gradually tilted his head back and soaked in the bright green of the backlit leaves. He imagined the colors washing away the anger, the embarrassment, the bitterness.
“There, that’s more like it,” he thought. He tapped out the loose ash onto the picnic table, took in a big breath, and blew the tiny pile away, a symbol of life’s old restraints now a thing of the past. He smiled, relieved.
He sat a few minutes and made a plan for the day. He’d go into town to see if his buddy Tad would go with him to the beach for the day. He could use a non-judgmental friend today.
He got back in his car, turned on Pink Floyd’s ‘Pigs on the Wing’ and sang along as he drove into town.
Sully waited until he was parked to take another hit. He liked the way it made him feel. Not quite numb, just a slight tingle. Relaxed. Like the world slowed down by a millisecond. Slowed to the speed it should be. Sully’s speed. He liked the way his body felt a tad bit lighter, like he was on the verge of floating. It was a sprinkle of euphoria.
He took a satisfying deep breath and stepped out the door of his white, convertible Dodge Reliant K-car. Sully heard the horn of a truck… a millisecond too late.
by Royce Waxenfelter
7/30/24
