Getting Stoned with John

Getting stoned with John Schlesinger was a bad, bad idea. I knew it would be a bad idea, but John and Mitch insisted, and it's not like I had any veto power. So we got stoned.

Now, John, who was an a**hole at the best of times, became nearly intolerable when his thin veil of self-control was removed by the weed he had smoked. His high pitched cackling laughter was increased in volume and frequency and his desire to piss people off grew beyond all reason.

We went driving to get some munchies and gas. Mitch was behind the wheel. This was not the first time I had ridden in a car driven by a stoned Mitch Clinton (in addition to Crazy Sheldon), and while I shudder at the insanity of it all with my 18 years of hindsight, at the time it didn't seem so strange. And while I'm sure his reaction time was impaired, to his credit, he certainly showed a reasonable level of attention and care to the road, to the pedestrians in his path, and to other drivers. John rode shotgun and I was in the back.

We were making a left turn at a 4-way stop sign with a pickup truck stopped opposite us going straight. As we were in the middle of the intersection directly in front of the pickup, without any warning John leaned over to the steering wheel, gave the horn an extended honk over Mitch's protestations, and to our horror put his other hand out the window and gave the pickup driver the finger. Yessir, flipped him the bird. Oh, and cackled like he had heard the funniest joke ever and was just gonna die. He held his belly and cackled and cackled.

The pickup driver apparently didn't think it was so funny, however. He decided that he didn't really want to go straight after all, and turned to follow us. Mitch was also unamused. "John, I am so pissed at you for doing that. It really shows disrespect for your friends  and makes me sorry I shared my weed with you. Plus, I am driving this f***ing car and you do NOT lean over into my space to f**k around and . . . oh s**t, that guy is following us now! You see what you did? F**k! Now I have to be the one to somehow defuse the situation. Thanks very f***ing much, John." The cackling died down a little, but didn't stop.

Mitch pulled into a deserted parking lot and got out of the car. The pickup pulled up behind us, and the driver got out too. The driver started with "What the f**k is this s**t? What are you f***ers trying to start with me?"

Mitch dialed up the charm and dialed down the ego in full salesman mode with "Look man, I am so sorry. It has nothing to do with me, and was totally nothing personal, you know? My boss is a real dick when he's drunk, and he leaned over and honked the horn and all that against my objections. I'm totally sorry, and I totally understand why you're pissed."

Mr. Pickup seemed somewhat mollified and let it go with "Well, you really need to watch out for that f***er. He's gonna get you all in some serious trouble some day."

And where was I this whole time? Sitting in the back, stoned, eyes wide, feeling like I had landed on a movie set or some parallel universe. Was this really my life?

Scraping the Bong

Note: This is more or less a sequel to Prince George was Smokin'. The same disclaimer applies.

So there we were in Prince George and we'd finished Ms. Crewcut's swaggy weed. No need to worry however; Andy Bailey came prepared too. Not only did he bring a little bit of weed also, but he also packed one of the most unique and ingenious pieces of smoking paraphernalia I've ever seen.

It began its existence as a large plastic travel mug with a tight fitting snap lid, the simple kind without any sliding closure or anything. The lid of course had two holes in it: one for drinking out of, and a smaller one to let air in. Into the drinking hole he had fitted the shell of a disposable plastic pen that he had heated and softened in order to make it fit snugly, as well as to bend it to a convenient angle for sucking without tipping the mug or straining the neck. He completed the seal with plasticine.

To the bottom of the smaller hole he attached a similar pen tube so that it went down almost to the bottom of the mug. The truly brilliant idea was how he created a bowl to attach to the top of that hole. He bought a springy metal door stopper. He removed the rubber tip, then held the narrow end of the spring over a flame until it was hot enough to melt plastic. He then screwed it into the lid directly above the small hole and held it there until it cooled and the plastic hardened. He was then able to screw and unscrew the door stopper from the lid at will. He inserted a piece of wire screen into the top. You put your weed there.

Voila: a perfectly functional unbreakable bong that collapses in about fifteen seconds into what looks like a normal and inconspicuous travel mug. "Andy, if only you could use your powers for good and not for evil," I said. Andy laughed.

Now kind reader, as I'm sure you know, after one has smoked any kind of pipe enough times, deposits of resin start to build up on its inner surfaces. We were all out of weed, so Ms. Crewcut decided it was time to scrape Andy's bong.  I and a couple other folks went along with this bold idea, even though Andy was out knocking on doors and trying to sell encyclopedias. I'm sure I must have had a fleeting thought that it wasn't very nice what we were doing, but I guess I made peace with myself. After all, it wasn't my idea.

So the bong got scraped and the resulting powder got smoked (along with whatever healthy supplements got picked up from the plastic mug or the chrome-plated door stopper), and a good time was had by all. Until Andy returned, that is. Andy Bailey was not pleased with Ms. Crewcut's initiative. In fact, one might say he totally lost it. After a few minutes of yelling and screaming and berating a very carefree, cool, and collected (ie. stoned) Ms. Crewcut, he made the point that  think was the one that loomed largest in his mind. "Do you have any idea how many bowls I had to smoke through that bong to get so much resin to build up?!"

I decided it was my opportunity to pipe in (so to speak) and defuse the situation. Thankfully it worked. Andy laughed, and peace did once again dwell among fellow travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen.

"That was quite a sacrifice, Andy."

Update: Holy smokes! (So to speak.) When I wrote this post I was unaware of a movie called The Cabin in the Woods. But I see that a lot of you are, and I have come to understand that a travel mug bong is featured quite prominently in that movie. Apparently, it's quite different from mine (that is, Andy's), but I'm still a little touched and flattered that so many of you have visited my humble little blog based on it. Thank you, and feel free to stay and read a few stories!

Prince George was Smokin'

Disclaimer: as before.

One time, back in the days when I was a travelling door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, we went to Prince George, British Columbia.  Good thing somebody brought weed.

Prince George is an old logging town that grew into a small city, and occupied that perfect middle ground where it lacked both the excitement of Vancouver (and other cities) and the charm of all the little towns and villages where we did most of our work.  We were there for a week or so.

It was only my second or third road trip, so I was still just getting the hang of it, and I was still basically a pretty innocent kid.  In my two years of University before taking this job, I had smoked weed a total of two times, and had never really gotten stoned ("got stoned" for the British readers of this blog).

As luck would have it, a one-tripper that I remember almost nothing about except that she looked like a sitcom lesbian and brought a baggie of twiggy swag.  Betcha didn't know how many different kinds of people end up as travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen for at least a road trip or two.

Our first night at the Prince George motel, Ms. Crewcut pulled out her baggie and rolled a big fat doobie.  We passed it around and I enjoyed it, but once again wondered if there was something I was missing.  After a little while, I was felling a little hungry, so I decided to go to the gas station down the road to get a little snack.  It's when I got down to the street that I realised just how profoundly stoned I was.  I couldn't wait to get back to the motel room to share the good news, but of course I really had to get that snack.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, snack!  Where was I going again?  Ooh, look at the pretty sky!  Needless to say, it took some time before I made it back to the motel room with a full belly and ready to boast to all who would hear about just how stoned I was.  My crewmates shook their heads at my puppy dog naivete.

By the end of our week in Prince George, I was an old hand at that whole weed-smoking thing.  Just wait till I tell you about how we moved on to Andy Bailey's bong.

Andy Scores a Bag of Weed

Disclaimer:  as before.

So, there we were in frozen Grande Prairie, Alberta.  It's minus 45 and not a whole lot to do after a day freezing out butts off knocking on doors.  The stoner in our crew, Andy Bailey, had inexplicably neglected to bring any weed on the road this time, and he was really regretting it (and we could certainly have used the entertainment too).  "Let's go score some weed," he said.

"I thought you've never been here before," I replied.  Let me point out to you again what a relative innocent I was.  I had been a pretty straight-laced teenager until very recently, and the idea of trying to find a source of illegal recreational drugs in a strange city seemed about as realistic to me as panning for gold, only more dangerous.  Not to mention crazy.  OK, let's mention it.  "Andy, are you crazy?  Where are you gonna find weed in Grande Prairie?"

"I noticed a strip bar when we were driving into town.  Let's go there."

"To look at strippers?"

"No!  To score some weed, dumbass!  For sure someone there'll have some."

"Andy."  I tried my best to be the voice of reason.  The voice of maturity.  The voice of sanity.  "We can't just go to some strip bar in a town where we don't know anyone and walk up to some total stranger and ask to buy weed!"

"Sure we can.  Let's go."  Andy started pulling on his parka.  Seeing me hesitate, he said in exasperation, "Oh, come on!  Just come with me.  I'll do everything; you just be there.  You can sit and watch the show," he added with a smile.

I followed him out the door in a haze of horror and confusion about the spiralling chaos my until recently well ordered life was rapidly becoming.  We left behind at the motel room Mitch and the rest of the crew watching TV and laughing at my discomfort at having been drafted as Andy's wingman for the expedition.

We drove to the strip bar, parked, and went in.  Now, as a hormone-filled 21-year-old, this was not necessarily an undesirable (or, for that matter, unheard of) place for me to be, but given my shy and innocent nature, being there with a friend and coworker was a bit awkward.  Nevertheless, I played it cool.  Andy told me to sit down while he went to look for a likely mark to make his purchase.

So I sat down.  My heart was beating in my throat, both at the sight of the . . . um . . . naked . . . heh, heh . . . ladies on stage, as well as the knowledge of the illicit business that brought me there that night.  If only my parents could see me now, I thought.  From university to trolling for pot at a strip bar a thousand kilometres from home in no time at all!  This is quite a life I've scratched out for myself.

I had hardly had a chance to think these thoughts when Andy came back to the table and said, "Come on.  Let's go."

"Huh?"  I could be pretty articulate at times.

"We're good.  Let's go."

"What?  You got weed?"  The last word was barely whispered.  "Already?"

"Yes," Andy slipped into his slow 'I'm-talking-to-a-retard' cadence.  "Let's go back to the motel room and smoke it!"

"Oh.  Uh.  Okay."

Nossir, never a dull moment with Andy Bailey around.

Reefer Madness

Disclaimer:  As I've mentioned before, not everything on this blog is exactly child-friendly.  Be warned.  Furthermore, I am in no way condoning and certainly not encouraging anybody to smoke pot.  That being said, I was a 21 year old university dropout at the time and . . . oh, what the heck, there are gonna be some pot stories on this blog, and here's the first one:

I'd venture a guess that if I were to ask a hundred people how much pot they think gets smoked on the road by travelling door to door encyclopedia salesmen, as many would be shocked that it happens at all as would be shocked that it's not ubiquitous.  I'd say that of the dozen or so road trips I went on in my six months, there was weed on about half of them.  It mostly depended on the crew members of a given trip.  Some would be opposed, in which case nobody did any, some were cool with it, and then there were the potheads.

Like Andy Bailey.

Bet let's talk about Andy and his weed another time.  Today I'd like to tell you about Courtenay.  Courtenay isn't a person; it's a city on Vancouver Island where I went one time back in the days when I was a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman.

I'd been on the job for a couple of months, and had smoked up with some of my crew mates two or three times by that point, as well as a total of two times in my two years of University before that.  That is to say, I was by no means a stoner, so when Andy Bailey said we were entering one of the "weed capitals" of Canada, I wasn't sure what that could mean.  To me, back in those innocent days, the idea of people nonchalantly and fearlessly smoking up with strangers was something out of a Cheech and Chong movie, not reality.

So there I was, knocking on doors in Courtenay, and as happens (not nearly often enough to make my time in the sales cult lucrative)  I got into the home of a young couple whose baby was sleeping upstairs.  I found them to be the perfect

(suckers)

customers: they were receptive to my pitch, not too poor, not too rich.  And it's a fairly long and involved pitch at that -- at least an hour, as much as two, to get a $2100 commitment at the end.  By about the half hour mark, I was feeling quite good about it, just rolling along, so to speak, when all of a sudden the husband pulled out a bag of weed and started rolling a joint right in front of me without saying a word, continuing to pay attention to my pitch, as though he were just taking a sip of coffee.

I was well and truly flabbergasted.  Nothing in my life had prepared me for this moment.  I made the conscious decision to pretend I didn't notice what he was doing (which was about as realistic as not noticing him throwing pebbles at my face) and continued my pitch, while trying to project onto him some sort of mental force field: "Don't spark it up!  Don't spark it up!"

Of course, it's not that I didn't like weed myself, or that my moral sensibilities were being compromised in some way.  (I can hear you laughing.  "Moral sensibilities?  From a travelling door to door encyclopedia salesman?"  Hardee har har.)  It's just that I was trying to make a living, that is to say trying to make a sale, and I couldn't imagine a couple of stoned customers deciding to make the commitment at the end.  So was I ever relieved when, after he had finished rolling the doobie, he set it down on the table beside him.

And there it stayed for about 5 minutes until, with the same nonchalance as when he rolled it, he picked it up and lit it.  He took a couple of puffs and passed it to his wife, who did the same.  All this time, my mind was racing (continuing to calmly pitch my "home educational library" all along) thinking to myself, "What are you gonna do if they pass it to you?  What are you gonna do if they pass it to you?"

Of course she passed it to me.  What kind of host would she be otherwise?

It was decision time.  They didn't cover this situation in training.

I took a big puff, and passed it back to the husband.  The

(elephant in the room)

joint made its rounds 2 or 3 times, never mentioned, almost invisible, as I continued pitching the product, and the couple kept nodding in all the right places.  But hoo-ee, was I ever stoned!  I felt I was floating somewhere near the ceiling as I pulled out poster after poster ("Now how much would you pay?  Wait!  Don't answer yet!  Just look what else you get!") working my way to the close.

Finally, I got to the end, which was almost anti-climactic.  When I asked for the sale, they agreed as though they had just been waiting for me to ask.  They signed on the dotted line, and I walked back to the motel room with a buzz, the happy expectation of a payday, and one hell of a story.