The Marijuana Chronicles

“What! Seriously?”

“Well, I decided to grow it just as a kind of experiment, just like I’m trying to grow tulsi, or holy basil—it’s from India and used for tea—and wild bergamot and lemon verbena and apple mint. They’re all used to make teas.”

B. had fished out a little plastic bag of marijuana and some rolling papers from the depths of her kaftan and was busy rolling a joint as Claire described her plantings. As she spoke, she nibbled a brownie, stood up, and walked over to a tiny wooden table within the enclosed garden. She pulled open a drawer and removed a pair of gardening gloves, some tools, and a neatly folded white handkerchief, which she brought back and handed to B.

“Barbara,” Claire asked, “what’s in these brownies? Why do they taste like freshly mown grass?”

“That’s because there’s pot in them, dear,” B. said. I choked on my own brownie as she divulged the secret of her recipe, which prompted B. to look at me and remark: “So, Eric, if smoking it doesn’t work for you, maybe eating it will.”

“Here, Barbara, you can have this,” Claire said, handing B. the folded cloth. “I removed the stems and dried the leaves myself. But I warn you, I know nothing about cultivating pot. That’s my lone plant right there.” We all glanced over at what appeared to be a healthy marijuana plant growing tall among the other vegetables and herbs. Then Claire looked at me and asked, “What does she mean, smoking pot doesn’t affect you? Have you tried many times?”

“No. I mean, I’m not a pothead or anything …”

“I am,” B. weighed in from the side as she unfolded Claire’s handkerchief, found a fluffy pile of dried leaves inside, and began to roll a second joint.

“It’s not as though I’m always trying to get high,” I added.

“I am,” B. chimed in as she labored.

“Well, I hardly ever smoke pot either,” Claire explained. “I really don’t know why I planted it this year. Like I said, it’s just an experiment.”

B. knocked back the last of her drink and poured herself a second glass. As I had expected, she had brought the spiked lemonade with us to Claire’s place. My head began to spin.

Holding up the two joints, B. declared: “Okay, kids. We’re going to do a taste test and we’re going to get Eric high.”

5.

There are times in life when the best thing to do, perhaps the only thing to do, is to throw dumb hesitation to the wind—to strike back hard at the underlying fear that fuels it—and peel off all your clothes and jump in the pool while everybody is watching, or hold your nose and take a bite of the escargots in garlic sauce that look like twice-boiled pencil erasers, or dare to place a kiss on a pair of lips that, until or unless you do, will never know the urgency of your desire. There are times when resistance to whatever may be calling is futile.

So it was that I allowed B. to place the first of her freshly prepared joints between my lips. Claire watched and reached for her drink. “Barbara, what’s in this lemonade?” she asked.

“Mama’s special recipe,” B. replied as she massaged my shoulders. I was sitting up, with my legs stretched out in front of me. “Now, Eric, I already lit that joint and got it started. I’m go

Mama slid forward to face me and lit the joint. I tried to follow her instructions. Claire observed me with a serious look. At that moment I assumed that, until recently, when she had worked as a schoolteacher in a nearby town, she must have been a science teacher—and probably a very good one.

I exhaled.

“Again!” B. commanded. I thought the taste of the just-smoked pot had been somewhat muted by the strong, lingering taste of the pot brownie I had just finished eating. “This time take a puff of Claire’s blend.”

“Claire’s blend?” Claire asked.

“Actually, it’s not a blend. It’s one hundred percent your pot,” B. said. “Here we go.”

I took the second joint and repeated the inhale-exhale routine. “May I have a sip of lemonade,” I asked my examiners.

“It’s like a taste test of the finest wines!” B. noted. “Now he wants to cleanse his palate.”

Claire handed me a glass. I took a gulp and managed to eliminate some of the strong, overlapping tastes in my mouth. I felt dizzy.

“Give him some time,” B. instructed. “Relax, Eric. Let me know when you’re ready for more.” Then she puffed on each joint, one after the other, performing a taste test of her own. Taking a break from her indulgence, she said, “Oh, Claire! I’m sorry, I completely forgot about you. Would you like … ?”

“No, that’s okay. You enjoy it. I’m fine.”

By now I had spread out and was lying on my back. The sun had begun its lazy descent. Claire lay on her back next to me, to my right. B. sat in a shapeless lump to Claire’s right, still savoring the first joint, then the second. Time passed. A gentle breeze rustled the deep green leaves of the Japanese Stewartia.

B. interrupted the silence. Softly, she said, “You know, Claire, if you ever need any gravel, just give us a shout. Bob would be glad to give you all you want—I mean free of charge.”

“Well, thank you. That’s very nice of you to offer—”

“With pleasure! It’s the least a good neighbor can do. And that goes for you too, Eric. Free gravel. As much as you want—although I guess you don’t have a big need for gravel where you live.”

I grunted. I was not sure if I was high from the pot or tipsy from B.’s spiked lemonade or simply enervated and even nauseous from the heat. The brownie had not helped. Would I ever know what it felt like to get high from smoking pot? Was this it, in some perverted, upside-down, Eric in Wonderland kind of way?

The kaftan at Claire’s side was spread out, with B. in it, flat on the ground, gazing up at the sky. One of Claire’s cats, a big tabby, entered the garden, knocked over a lemonade glass with its swinging tail, and brushed up against B.’s thigh before settling down there, in a thicket of polka dots. The moon had arrived in the early-evening sky.

I wondered how holy basil had earned its name. For the Indians, was it a sacred plant? I thought about how interesting it would be to make drawings of all of the plants in Claire’s garden. First I would have to do some serious research. I remembered that the best botanical illustrations always included each plant’s distinctive details. I wondered if watercolors, colored pencils, or my new set of colored felt-tip markers would be the best materials to use to capture the spirit of Claire’s garden and all that was in it. I thought that, with a few pounds of very small gravel neatly spread out in a shallow tray, I could create a miniature version of one of those Japanese Buddhist-temple gardens, the kind in which some dutiful monk, probably pulled away from his most profound meditations, must attentively rake the finely crushed stones that are symbols, in their smallness, silence, and durability, of the ocean’s countless waves or the timelessness of time or the notion that an entire universe can be found in even the tiniest grain of sand. I wondered if Bob was a good man and if, over the years, he had personally chosen all those chairs. Who had picked out the cuckoo clock? A second cat approached and snuggled in, between my feet.

“Am I high? Did I get high?” I asked, addressing my question to no one in particular.

“Do you feel high?” B. replied.

“I don’t know. I mean, maybe. Or, well, I really can’t say.”

“You’re high,” B. asserted. “I’d say that one of the two pot specimens had some effect. But then again …”

“Only you would know, Eric,” Claire said, turning her head slowly to face me. “You would know.”

“By the way, dear,” B. offered, “your pot is much better than my pot. The results of the taste test are in. You win. It’s that green thumb.”