September 12, 2006
The saying goes – When in Rome, do as the Romans do. I was in Holland, not Rome, but figured the expression worked just the same. Now perhaps this admission will lose me some future presidential election, but contrary to my belief when I was eight that I would be the first female president, it is probably not going to happen anyway. I’ll just have to risk the ire of those too uptight to realize drugs do not make bad people, bad people make drugs; and that’s only because we won’t legalize and control the stuff. Why is it okay to have a social drink but not a social toke? That has just never made sense to me. Either society bans social drugs or accepts social drugs. There shouldn’t be some random line drawing based on established industries with power. And anyone who thinks society’s stance against soft drugs isn’t funded and promoted by the alcohol industry, like every good marketing campaign that undermines its competitor, is a fool. But I digress; this was supposed to be funny story not a soap box rant.
So, yes I have occasionally smoked pot. I tried it in high-school because, well, why not? And once in awhile I would join my first husband (when I was still young enough to BE in high school) for a smoke. But I never really got it. I would look at my husband, after the five minutes it took to adjust my eyes from straight ahead to my right where he was sitting in the big brown leather recliner chair (married at 18 and we already had the retirement leather recliner – what was I thinking???!!), and ask him if he would carry me to the pantry so I could find something to eat. One bag of Doritos, a tub of French onion dip, 14 oreos, and a frozen pizza later, I would go to sleep. Munchies was not exactly a high I needed to pay for – sitting down to study would bring on a vicious case of what’s-in-the-fridge?. Why would I pay to get it? So Miss Mary Jane and I never got too well acquainted in my college years. A few years later, with a boyfriend this time (guys are such a bad influence), I tried some type of pot they called Krypto. It was a great high – I laughed for hours straight. But a half a dozen attempts to recreate that experience over the next few years did nothing but to convince me pot was not my drug. Miss Mary Jane just wasn’t good enough in the sack to risk legal prosecution.
So here I am, my second night in Rotterdam, when my host looks at me in the passenger seat of his Saab convertible and asks “Wanna smoke?” I figured he wasn’t talking cigarettes. “Sure, what the hell.” I responded. “When in Rome...!” I guess I thought maybe with it being legal and all the quality would be better or something. So he stops at a coffee shop (it totally confuses me how you ask someone in Holland where you can buy COFFEE), and returns to the car a few minutes later. As we’re driving down the highway he lights up. “Can you do that?” “What?” he asks. “Smoke dope and drive?” “Of course.” I’m confused. “It’s not illegal?” I ask. “No, of course not.” Coming from a country where you can be sentenced for driving under the influence of a prescription drug and where some places are pushing to make it a punishable crime to drive while sleep deprived, this is almost incomprehensible.
He hands me the joint. I inhale (there go my presidential hopes), I hold, I exhale. I have the same self-consciousness I’ve always had that I don’t “do it right” – the I’m-so-not-cool-and-everyone-knows-it feeling from high-school. A song from some recessed high-school memory arises unbidden in my mind - “Roll, roll, roll your joint; pass it down the line; take a toke and hold your smoke and blow your *#@#*! Mind”. Where did that come from? I wonder to myself. I take another hit – trying not to act as uncool as I feel. I wait a minute and hand it back with that slow, carefree, swan-neck arm movement they always pass joints with on TV.
Half the joint and about ten minutes later it starts. Paranoia. First it’s his driving. He’s driving too fast (this coming from someone who regularly tops 125 mph in her convertible)… He lied and its illegal and we’re going to get busted… He’s going to wreck…. I’m going to die…. Then it moves to the sudden realization that I might have to take a drug test for my next job in the US. Oh my God, what if I do? I won’t pass. I won’t be able to work. I’m out of money. I’ll never get a job. I’ll starve!
Now I’m not THAT stoned so the straight voice somewhere in my head was still around – “Sherry, you’re just stoned, a little paranoid, you’re fine. Close your eyes and enjoy the music.” I close my eyes, lay my head back against the seat, and watch the light from the streetlights pass my closed eyes in time to the music. We arrive home. Safe and sound. I head straight for the couch.
It seems forever while he’s parking the car. Paranoia returns. Where is he? What’s taking so long? Maybe he’s not coming back? Maybe something happened? The straight voice pops up again, “Sherry! Shut up! It’s a time warp. Get your phone you’ll see, minutes just seem like hours. Everything’s fine.”
I curl up around my phone and count sheep. He finally comes back. Lights come on. Music comes on. I’m on the couch. He’s on the floor. We’re talking and everything’s fine. The world is hazy but at least I don’t have the munchies. Urbian is trigger happy on the camera and is shooting close-ups of my face as I exclaim “Delete, delete, delete….” Time passes into nonexistence.
Suddenly, Urbian sits up. “Oh my God!” he exclaims. “What?” I murmur, shaken from my reverie. He looks up at me, with eyes wide opened, and says in slow-motion-Jack-the-Ripper-fashion “it looookks liiike sumwun is trying to straaanngle you….” I have a flashback of the Candyman – the last horror movie that actually scared me. He turns the camera around. Sure enough there is a blonde woman in an out of focus picture being strangled. The second picture is the same. But the woman has hair like Marnie from the Alfred Hitchcock movie, not like mine at all, and the lighting in the picture is completely different than the dozen or so pictures he’s been clicking off the last however many minutes.
Paranoia doesn’t return, it descends in full psychopath-ward glory. Oh my God! He’s going to kill me. My mind starts racing. Oh my god – he planted that picture. That’s what he does before he kills his victims. He plays with them first, teasing, taunting, then he’s going to strangle me. He’s going to kill me right here. Here I am couchsurfing, hoping to show people this is a beautiful world filled with good trustworthy people AND I’M GOING TO DIE! In the midst of this horror novel in my head, his phone rings. He answers it and begins speaking Dutch. Now this of course means he has an accomplice! They must be part of a satanic cult. They’re going to do it together!
Now the straight voice is still around in some back room of my head. I can hear me reassuring myself but I’m not buying it. Could I take him down? Could I if I had to?” Urbian’s not very tall, but he’s a big man, black and muscular with a little extra poundage. I’d have a hard time taking him. And what if she arrives? His accomplice? I surely couldn’t take them both. Not when they’ve probably killed dozens before me. They know what they’re doing. I get up and casually slip my phone into my pocket. What I think I’m going to do with it I don’t really know. “C’mon Sherry. Be cool. Be cool,” whispers the voice from the back room of my head. But the voice in the front room is screaming, RUN! Get out, go, RUN! Sanity speaks again, “You could be wrong Sherry. What are you going to do if you run off and realize you’re wrong? Come back and apologize to your host for thinking he is a murderer?” WHAT IF I AM RIGHT? I scream, silently, at myself. Do I just sit here and die to be polite?!
I take myself outside and sit myself down to smoke a cigarette. I focus on the lights. The voice in the back room gets stronger and starts talking me down. I debate calling my best friend but I know just how she is going to roll her eyes if I tell her that I think my host is going to kill me but I’m stoned and don’t know if I’m just being paranoid. The vision of her rolling her eyes at pathetic little uncool Sherry who she has tried unsuccessfully to teach coolness, sociability, and how to dress for thirty years now tells me the back room voice is right. Urbian walks out – he’s going to a ‘friend’s”. I go back in, crawl fully clothed into bed, put on my headphones, and slip into the musical cocoon that for 25 years has saved me from impossible nights. Day breaks and I am still alive. Again. The back room voice reprimands me, “Next time Sherry – Just say no.” Yeah right. But when in Rome….
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