Chapter 25
Green Fog Zone
His face was shadowed in the picture on his singles profile. He just hadn’t had good lighting, I decided. Besides, I had made up my mind that looks were not important as Rex had so many of the qualities I was looking for in a man.
He had intrigued me from the first phone call. He was mellow and kind. He cared for his aging father and lived with him full time in order to do so.
It was a beautiful, sunny day full of hope for a potential new relationship with this kind man with whom I had begun a relationship on the phone several weeks previous. We’d stayed up late into the night many times so fascinated with delving into one another’s lives, past, present, and future. I felt I knew him better than some friends I’d had for years.
He had never been married and had no children, although this had not been a conscious decision, he assured me. By the age of 47 he had not yet met the woman of his dreams. He knew she was out there, though, and he’d never give up hope of finding her. Could I be the one to capture this man’s heart?
When we met at the Dairy Queen, however, I had doubts immediately. I recognized the look in his eyes from my high school days as the kid in my neighbor’s basement who had been sitting the longest in the fog created by the bong. The one who had listened to the Cheech & Chong album so many times he could ad lib the entire thing word for word. He knew when the record would skip and could even imitate the words that would be repeated until someone would pick up the arm and move it over a bit allowing the needle to settle into an unmarred groove once again.
I ordered a small caramel sundae and he ordered two double cheeseburgers, fries, a large grape Slurpee, and a banana split with extra whipped cream.
I was quite taken aback when I saw the left side of his face. On it there were two huge boils which seemed almost to be pulsating. As he talked the fluid-filled sacs became the center of my focus. Try as I might Shallow Lucy could not pull her gaze from them. He was talking and eating and the boils took on a life of their own. I could no longer even hear what he was saying. I watched, fascinated, as they moved each time he took a bite of food. The wider he opened his mouth the bigger they seemed to grow.
He began to talk about his garden and the flowers he had planted this summer. I forced my attention back to the conversation and successfully feigned interest again...until he took a huge drink of the grape Slurpee. When he sucked in his cheeks to sip on the straw the lesions seemed to morph into two separate, tiny personalities. And when he complained of a brain freeze they practically danced in retaliation.
Again I had missed most of the conversation which I realized when he pried me out of my own thoughts.
“Do you do any gardening?” he was asking.
“Gardening?” I asked.
“Yeah, gardening,” he said...right after he had taken an enormous bite of his burger which he chased with four French fries in the same mouthful.
“No,” I said, “I really don’t have much of a green thumb.”
How could I be so incredibly bored only ten minutes into the conversation, I wondered? Was he really this bad? What happened to the spiritual depth I had recognized in our late-night talks on the phone?
He continued talking but I was completely lost again, fixated on those two hideous boils. As he chewed they seemed to be arguing amongst themselves. They were having tiny fist fights and I decided they needed names. Ninja One and Ninja Two would be perfect, and so the names would stand until the conversation picked up and moved to a deeper level. Perhaps when he finished with his significant lunch he would be more like the guy I thought I knew so well.
Ninja One and Ninja Two were most definitely trouble makers, I decided as Rex droned on endlessly about his Bonsai garden which clearly fascinated him to no end.
I’ll bet while he sleeps the boils get up and move things around his father’s house. My imagination was obviously getting out of control and I knew I needed to focus on the conversation...even if it wasn’t exactly a subject near to my heart. That would be the polite thing to do, right? Since when, however, has my imagination cooperated?
“Your gardens must be lovely,” I said doing my best to stifle a yawn.
He stuffed the last of his second burger in his mouth and Ninja One and Ninja Two went completely nuts. There was no stopping those two little freaks. They whipped out little swords and began to fence.
“Touche!” Ninja One cried triumphantly as Ninja Two actually began to weep. And, no, I don’t mean he was crying. I mean the boil had actually opened and began to ooze! EWWWWW! This was just plain nasty.
I wanted to offer him my napkin to stop the leak but did not want to appear rude or let on that I noticed he had a slow leak in his face.
I guess the show’s over, I thought. I mean, how entertaining can one boil be?
“But THE most interesting thing in my garden in my dad’s back yard,” he was saying, “are the plants hidden in the far corner.”
“Really?” I said, “What kind of plants are those?” I was just about to look at my watch to see how long I’d been suffering here when his answer completely captured my attention.
He looked to his right and then to his left.
“Ganja,” he said.
“Ganja?” I repeated. Why would he tell me this? Did this man have no common sense whatsoever?
“Yup,” he said, “some of the best around. I’ve been growing it back there since I was a teenager. I actually got kicked out of my Catholic high school because EVERYONE knew I was selling it but they couldn’t actually catch me, and so they just kicked me out.”
A badge of honor is what he was describing. He’d pulled one over on the institution and remained victorious in selling pot nearly three decades later from his father’s home. He’d never married, never had children, never committed to anything but the sacred weeds in his dad’s backyard.
But at least he had captured my attention which was a good thing with the sudden death of Ninja Two and the real entertainment gone.
“Do you still sell it, then?” I asked.
“Only to a couple of dozen really close friends,” he said earnestly. “You just can’t be too careful these days.”
“Indeed,” I agreed.
“I also keep a small patch of very special mushrooms in a shed in the backyard. That’s my own personal stash, though, I don’t sell those. I do share them with VERY close friends occasionally, though...wink, wink.” When he gave the exaggerated wink Ninja One broke open and started to leak. Another sad ending of the life of a fine soldier boil.
Now, let me make it perfectly clear that it says right on my singles profile that you should NOT contact me if you do drugs! I’d have to guess that this guy was just too busy rolling joints to keep scrolling the page down to that important snippet of information. Or maybe he read my profile after smoking a particularly potent batch of what he’d harvested from the far corner of his dad’s backyard.
“I’m flattered that you’d consider including me in your special stash,” I said, “but I don’t really partake in that kind of thing.”
“You know what they say,” he offered, “don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. ‘Cause it’s awesome but you’ll never know until you step out of your tiny box and really experience all life has to offer on an entirely different plane,” he said enthusiastically spreading his arms.
“I like my tiny box,” I said quietly, “and frankly I’m rather fond of the plane of reality on which I exist. I know that might seem boring to you, but I’m really quite comfortable living as I do in my ‘mundane’ little corner of the world.”
“But what if I could promise you THE most incredible experience of your life? How could you pass that up? Wouldn’t you wonder for the rest of your life what it really would have been like?”
I realized I had become a challenge to this man. He wanted to pull me out of my law-abiding, child-rearing, black and white world
and into the green fog in which he had existed for the last 30 years.
Was I back in junior high again? I’d forgotten what peer pressure felt like. I forgot what it was like to be the only nerd at a party choosing not to smoke weed or drink until I puked. I thought I’d left those unpleasant memories behind for the next group of teenagers. Well, I guess I was wrong...it apparently does not always stop after graduation. And I really didn’t like the way it felt any more now than I did then. And, quite frankly, this guy was really starting to piss me off!
I stood up then. I would NOT pretend I had come down with the stomach flu this time and leave the party with my tail between my legs like I had done in high school.
“In case you did not understand what I said through that green fog in your head,” I said, my voice rising proudly to the occasion, “let me clarify. I am not interested in indulging in the mind-altering substances you grow in your dad’s shed or anywhere else! Don’t you dare try to make me feel less than adequate because you can’t imagine your life without frying your own damned brain just to make it through another day! I rather like the brain cells I have and do not choose to snort them away for a temporary break from reality!”
“Dude,” he said in a hushed voice, looking again to the left and right, “Chill before the popo joins the party. And besides everyone knows you don’t snort ‘shrooms.”
“I wish they would join the party,” I hissed. “It would be a hell of a lot more interesting than listening to you drone on relentlessly about your stagnating life!”
I turned and walked away feeling quite liberated.
“Dude,” he repeated to my back, “you’d better not rat me out! I could track you down like that!”
I looked back and saw him trying to snap his fingers and becoming hopelessly engrossed in the process.
“Why won’t they make that snappy noise?” he was saying to himself. “I know I’ve done it before!”
I honestly don’t know how I misjudged this guy so drastically from our phone calls. But I must admit that it was really quite liberating getting that off my chest.
These spicy, sausage-stuffed mushrooms will go over even better than the ‘shrooms Rex grows in his dad’s garden.