High

I’m remembering why I was such a stoner in college.

I was an uptight, naïve kid that needed to loosen up. Marijuana absolutely did the trick.

There are the fondest of memories inside a tiny bedroom in an attic apartment in a particular Midwestern college town. Sitting in front of a cheap department store stereo, baked out of my mind on the sorriest excuse for weed my stoner roommates could help me score.

I’d sit there and listen to the Smashing Pumpkins and My Bloody Valentine and just bug the fuck out. Drink some cheap beer (usually some Busch Light Draft in cans, God help us all), maybe nom out on some Little Debbie snack cakes from the store on the corner. Life was good.

Riding my girlfriend’s purple bike across campus late at night, imagining all of the brilliant and amazing things we were going to do together. Our babies would be so beautiful she would laugh in that tinkly laugh that would never fail to make my insides flutter. I was young, brash, so very ready to rule my corner of the world with this gorgeous woman next to me, making me better just by her presence.

Of course none of it came to pass. I just saw pictures of her first baby on Facebook. Another man’s child, so innocent and sweet, unknowing of the twist inside my gut at the sight of him.

When it was all said and done, the only thing left was me, a duffel bag and an eighth of marijuana in an SRO hotel in Chicago.

I haven’t thought of the Chicago years in forever. Not really. That was such a severe time. There was a period where I was living in the Ambassador East hotel on somebody else’s dime, for fuck’s sake. What? How did any of that ever happen is so beyond me now.

To have made it through all of that to get here now is why I’m doing what I’m about to do. I didn’t survive all of THAT only to just kind of drift away. The plan was set a long time ago. I’ve just been taking my time about putting it into effect now that we’re here.

When I burn through yet another bowl of this designer marijuana that I now have delivered to my door, it somehow connects me to that dork in college trying so desperately to fit in, and get laid, and build something that would last forever. Two out of three ain’t bad.