“Bro, I just smoked some sweet herb.”
I could tell. I’ve been to enough rock concerts to recognize someone under the influence of the Great Green Mellow Maker. His eyes were swollen, bloodshot and distant. They looked past me focusing on nothing and everything at the same time. He wasn’t looking at the objects behind me, just past me. Or, he wasn’t looking at anything at all. He was pretty stoned.
He had approached me slowly from outside. The opening to the shop I work at is tall and wide so everyone feels welcome. I had seen him walking across the street. He held up his jeans with his right hand and walked bowlegged past the parked cars, his left hand swung loosely by his side. He waddled near the middle of the street so the cars that drove by had to swerve right to get around him, but he was more or less oblivious. He was too relaxed to be bothered with the possibility of being clipped by a BMW or a UPS truck. Once he got past the big green garbage bins and in front of the white lit entrance of City Fish he turned slowly, scratched his chin and crossed the brick-laid street, and sauntered straight—or as straight as he could propel himself—to the olive oil shop that I stood in.
He came in the opening and under the dull hanging light. There was a big yellow table in the middle of the shop. It had all the olive oil samples and bread on it. I stood on one side. He stood on the other.
“Bro, I just smoked some sweet herb. Do you know where I can my hands on some Indian food? I only got a couple of bucks and I got some mean munchies right now. Mean munchies. Do you know where I can get some cheap food?”
He finished his question then noticed the chunks of bread sitting in baskets on the sample table in the middle of the shop and I saw his bloody blue eyes open wide. Sotto Voce, the store that I work at, makes a good business on olive oil for a couple of reasons. The stuff is good. I know. I get two free bottles a month. I give one bottle to a friend, and I use the other bottle on the pasta that I cook for myself every other night. It also sells because people can come in and sample it. Wealthy tourists buy it either because they convince themselves they need it, or they feel bad for spending time in the shop and not leaving with a bottle or two. They like the hand-carved table and wine glasses and bread baskets. But, free bread is a universal attraction. So, the amount of people come into the shop who can afford a thirteen dollar bottle is the same as those who couldn’t buy a stick of gum.
My cannabis companion studied everything intensely. He tried to make sense of the bottles, and the glass and the weird, goopy liquid they contained.
“What is this stuff bro?” he asked and licked his lips.
“It’s, uh, olive oils and vinegars. The one at the end there is balsamic vinegar. It’s pretty spicy, but everything else is olive oils,” I replied as I had trained myself to do. I have a routine memorized, so most of the day I’m on auto-pilot. My buddy Drew Kreeger got me the job. It seemed like a fun thing to work in the Pike Place Market. I had to get a job anyway, so why not make it interesting, I thought. Because that’s what you do. You go to college, you do your homework, you get a job and a girlfriend. So, that’s what I did. Expect the girlfriend part.
“So, I can just try it?” he asked and waved his pointer finger around the table.
“Yeah, man. Go to town,” I said, thinking soon after that maybe an open invitation to food was not the best reply.
Trying to piece together the sampling process, he took note of the toothpicks and the small chunks of bread. Then, he grabbed a toothpick and began to fill it with as many pieces of bread it could possibly could. He wanted to make every sample worth the effort. He dipped the bread deep into the wine glass and swished it around clockwise trying to take some floating herbs and spices with the miniature sourdough sish kabob. On the way to his mouth, much of the oil ended up on his green jacket and most of the bread remained the glass.
“Oh bro, sorry about that. I lost my bread in your wine there,” he said and didn’t hesitate to fill up another toothpick.
“No worries, man. It’s olive oil actually. Don’t worry about it. I can fish it out later. It’s part of the job.”
“Cool, cool. Olive oil huh? Hmm.” He swallowed the bread quickly and tasted the oil as an afterthought. He looked up at the lights and licked his lips some more. “Good stuff, bro. I like it. Is it cool if I try some more.” He smiled.
“Absolutely. Have as much as you like.” I smiled too.
Any other time I would not have given such an open invitation to someone who had no intention of buying anything and who introduced himself by telling me about the sweet herb that he had scored. But, it was the dead of winter, no one had come in the shop my entire shift, and I had done nothing but stare at the floor for the last four hours. That day, I was so bored that I began to imagine what my toes would be like if had faces and could talk. I thought deep and I determined precisely what personality belonged to each toe. The big toe was demanding and kind of a control freak. The little one was a major flirt. I also discussed literature with Hobbs, the pigeon. His full name is Hobbles. He is the one unfortunate bird not blessed with speedy reflexes. His right foot (or whatever you call the things that pigeons walk on) is mangled. I’d bet that it got run over by a bike or a Vespa. Or maybe he just got drunk one night and feel asleep on some railroad tracks. He limps in front of the store waiting for falling bread and pecking other birds in the feet to dominate the territory. Hobbs agreed with me that Emerson was important to American literature but didn’t agree with the whole notion of the Oversoul. I could see his point.
Needless to say, I welcomed the human interaction. People that are drunk and people that are high are incredible conversationalists. They have no problem saying, or trying their best to say, exactly what is on their minds. With the average sober patron, I have to go through the song and dance of asking where they are from and what they do for a living before they open up and talk. Users, on the other hand, will gripe, sing, yell, and tell stories just because they can.
“Yeah man. Try all that you like,” I said again.
“You’re a nice guy, bro. I mean it. This whole town is nice and I’ve seen them all. I’ve been around. I’ve been all over the country, and this town is the nicest. People walk around in Seattle. They go out. They do things. They meet people. They go outside, even when it’s cold as hell like it is right now. In LA man, people never go outside. They never get outta their cars. Atlanta too. The people aren’t as nice there. People don’t walk around in Atlanta either. You got a good town, bro.”
He spoke fast even for being toked up like he was. It made me wonder how fast he talked when he wasn’t high.
“Yeah, man. I like it too.” I did. I loved Seattle. It was an adventure moving up not knowing a single soul; having to figure out bus routes and etiquette; learning how to know if a homeless person is lying or if they really need five bucks for their friend’s emergency dental operation. To a suburban kid, anything that isn’t basketball or video games is an adventure.
I stood in the middle of the room and watched him try to stab the bread with his toothpick, dropping the bread-chunks on the floor and spilling oil on his jacket. He moved from glass to glass told me all about the towns that he had visited and the random jobs that he kept over the years. He was a young guy. He couldn’t have been more than 25 or 26 years old, yet he been so many different places and done so much.
He didn’t have any plans. He had no real ambition, but to see the world. I wished that I could have no plans, but that doesn’t satisfy a politely curious aunt or uncle. A lot of people make plans not because they want to accomplish something but because they need an answer for Uncle Conrad and Aunt Jenny.
I envied the guy. He had been to Atlanta, and Boston, and New York and Houston and every other Podunk town in between. I wondered if I could do that. Could I take off and go somewhere new without the security of knowing job to work or an apartment to move into? Could I prosper or even survive without an established network of friends and family to watch my back and take care of me?
I envied his dreadlocks that he wadded under his oversized stocking cap. I guess if you were a traveling pot smoker, it would only be natural to get dreads. It seems like when you’re on the road it only makes sense to either dread your hair or shave it off, because you wouldn’t want to have to take care of it. I planned to dread my hair last summer. I grew it out all year, I researched how to start and care for dreads, and I even called some inner city barbers to see how much the whole thing would cost. In the end I backed out because I realized that white people don’t look good with dreadlocks. Really, only black folks can pull them off. White guys look like they’re trying too hard, or they look dirty. Black guys with dreads look straight fucking cool. But, I can still grow a beard and I use it as I expression of rugged individualism. I wanted to rebel like this guy; just take off and never look back.
“I got a temp job holding traffic signs. You know, like the slow/stop thing. But, they haven’t called me all week. I don’t know why. I need the money, bro, so I can move on to Vancouver. I like this town, but I haven’t been to Vancouver yet.”
And he chewed his bread and looked around the store, digging on everything he saw. He stood on one of the side on the table. I stood on the other.
I wanted to take off to Vancouver too. I wanted to hitchhike. I wanted to fall asleep under bridges and in fields. I wanted to trespass. I wanted to live like Jack Kerouac and Woody Guthrie and see America sitting on a sack of grain in the middle of a boxcar. I wanted to meet Vietnam vets and people who talked like Neal Cassady and Randle McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; guys who could swear poetically and tell stories like a modern day Homer; guys would told dirty jokes and wheezed and coughed when they laughed, guys who didn’t pretend to know everything but could tell you a thing or two about women and how to roll a good cigarette, guys that could survive almost anything, guys with no teeth, guys who knew the difference between want and need, guys who looked like Moses or a young Walt Whitman.
Suddenly, my inebriated amigo stopped his sampling spree and outside, very deep in thought. He turned to me and swallowed another toothpickful of bread.
“You got the time, bro?”
“Yeah. It’s half past five.”
“Damn, bro. I’ve been here like an hour eating all your bread, and your wine, and your oil and stuff. Sorry man. I’ve been up in here like cookie monster, just munching away. I got to take off though, man. I got to meet somebody. Take it easy, bro.”
“You too, man. Take it easy,” I said and little up my hand in sort of a half wave.
Then he reached across the table and shook my hand, then started to head out the entrance toward the street. I wanted to grab his hand and say, “Hold on! Wait a minute. Let me grab my bag. Screw the temp job man. I’ve got enough money to get to Vancouver. Let’s go. I haven’t been to Vancouver since I was a kid, and I’ve never seen Boston. I’ve never gotten in a fight or been arrested. I’ve gone hungry or been broke and cold and tired. I’ve never lost track of what’s on TV or what movies are coming out. I’ve never called someone from a payphone. I’ve never sent a postcard from Chicago or Chattanooga, Tennessee. I’ve never learned how to read the sky or how to jimmy rig the transmission of VW Bus. ” I wanted to close down the shop early and lock in there all my goals and ambitions and every idea I ever had of what I thought my life turn out to be.
But I didn’t. I made my mother proud. I shook his dry, cracked hand and leaned against the table that holds the cash register. He was on one side. I sat on the other. I saw him waddle out, holding his pants up his right hand. He took off his cap and I watched his dreadlocks bounce away out into winter’s mid-day darkness.
