LJ Idol, Week 15: Cracking Up
Jan. 9th, 2009 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmWhen I was in university I had a boyfriend, Joe, who went to school at UMD and lived in a house in Maryland with a couple of other guys: Dave, who had a bedroom only large enough to fit a king-sized waterbed, and Steve, who was the prototypical engineering nerd with bad eyeglasses and an inexplicably smoking-hot red-headed girlfriend.
Dave and Steve and Joe had between them four somewhat shared hobbies: smoking pot, brewing beer, computers and role-playing games. Every Friday I would trudge out to their place -- it was a hike in those days, before the metro extension, and involved taking the metro to the bus and then walking a mile and a half -- for the weekend in indulge in some combination of the four.
The ritual of these things was pretty basic. We'd all go to Mongolian BBQ together, sometimes with Steve's gf or Dave's squeeze of the week, then visit the bulk food aisle at the Giant supermarket and then go sprawl about on Dave's heated king-size water bed and get high out of our tiny little minds. Sometimes we'd stop at a pizza place so I could play their Doctor Who pinball machine; sometimes we'd throw in a little Axis and Allies before the pot.
One night Dave announced he had a special treat for us.
'Shrooms.
I immediately wanted nothing to do with it, because I hate hallucinating. In fact, the truth is I hate being out of control at all. More than tipsy or a bit high and I'm miserable. The second I feel like I don't have my strategic faculties in place, I am an unhappy camper, so I told Dave they could all do the 'shrooms, and I'd just smoke the pot.
So they take the 'shrooms.
And then about an hour later there I am arguing with Dave because he says there are dead cartoons all over the living room floor. This gets everyone else freaked out and they all decide they have to go outside immediately. So Dave and Joe and Steve run outside, and I follow them, at this point only mildly irritated.
My mild irritation, however, turns to real alarm as Dave decides everyone should climb up on the roof to escape the dead cartoons.
"This," I declare, sounding surely both very high and very goddamn pompous, "is why Nancy Regan says 'Just Say No'. This is how accidents happen when people do drugs! Don't climb on the roof!"
Of course, they all climbed up on the roof, using trashcans as steps, while I stood in the driveway hollering at them about Nancy Regan.
Eventually, I coaxed them down, and we wandered back into the house and regrouped on Dave's heated king-size water bed, wherein the usual stupidity ensued: Dave and Joe wound up wrestling about and smashing oreos on each other (oh Dave, I am so sorry about all the things we did to your bed!) while Steve looked at me and dryly noted, "this is awfully homosexual, isn't it?"
And finally, we passed out.
That morning, I was the first one up, and I wandered down from the carnage of Dave's bed into the kitchen, whereupon turning on the light I discovered slugs.
Slugs!
Slugs on every conceivable surface. Slugs on the countertops and on the refrigerator and on the floor and on the mesh of the screen door we had left wide open after the shenanigans of the dead cartoons. Slugs, in particular, all over the beer brewing equipment. Shit!
Slugs, you see, like beer. If you have them in your garden, you put a bowl of beer out and they crawl into it and die. Well, now they had crawled into our kitchen and were having a party.
Fuck.
So I go back up to Dave's bedroom.
"Hey, guys, there are slugs in the kitchen."
I get a bunch of incoherent moans.
"A lot of slugs. Like 'look kids, the slugs are back' slugs."
"Huh?" Joe asked, sitting up.
"Slugs!" I shout.
Dave sits bolt upright. "Beer!"
"Uhhuh," I say.
Steve starts rolling around and laughing.
Eventually we all trudge downstairs in the same awful flannels we'd been wearing since the night before to stand in the doorway of the kitchen, arms around each other (yes, Steve, it was awfully homosexual) staring at the, admittedly very slow moving, slug frenzy.
Looking around at the butcher paper we'd covered the kitchen walls in to write our most awesome random quotes on ("when you paint living things, they die!") it was one of the few times at 19 when I absolutely, positively knew how young I was and was glad of it.
I was happy. Not with any of those boys, and not with that awful hike out to their place, but with the idea that this was pointless and shining youth, and it was finally mine. It was something I never had much of and didn't need more of, but also know that I almost missed, and that would have been a tragedy, far greater than Dave, his king-sized heated water bed, some 'shrooms and the sea of slugs.
Dave and Steve and Joe had between them four somewhat shared hobbies: smoking pot, brewing beer, computers and role-playing games. Every Friday I would trudge out to their place -- it was a hike in those days, before the metro extension, and involved taking the metro to the bus and then walking a mile and a half -- for the weekend in indulge in some combination of the four.
The ritual of these things was pretty basic. We'd all go to Mongolian BBQ together, sometimes with Steve's gf or Dave's squeeze of the week, then visit the bulk food aisle at the Giant supermarket and then go sprawl about on Dave's heated king-size water bed and get high out of our tiny little minds. Sometimes we'd stop at a pizza place so I could play their Doctor Who pinball machine; sometimes we'd throw in a little Axis and Allies before the pot.
One night Dave announced he had a special treat for us.
'Shrooms.
I immediately wanted nothing to do with it, because I hate hallucinating. In fact, the truth is I hate being out of control at all. More than tipsy or a bit high and I'm miserable. The second I feel like I don't have my strategic faculties in place, I am an unhappy camper, so I told Dave they could all do the 'shrooms, and I'd just smoke the pot.
So they take the 'shrooms.
And then about an hour later there I am arguing with Dave because he says there are dead cartoons all over the living room floor. This gets everyone else freaked out and they all decide they have to go outside immediately. So Dave and Joe and Steve run outside, and I follow them, at this point only mildly irritated.
My mild irritation, however, turns to real alarm as Dave decides everyone should climb up on the roof to escape the dead cartoons.
"This," I declare, sounding surely both very high and very goddamn pompous, "is why Nancy Regan says 'Just Say No'. This is how accidents happen when people do drugs! Don't climb on the roof!"
Of course, they all climbed up on the roof, using trashcans as steps, while I stood in the driveway hollering at them about Nancy Regan.
Eventually, I coaxed them down, and we wandered back into the house and regrouped on Dave's heated king-size water bed, wherein the usual stupidity ensued: Dave and Joe wound up wrestling about and smashing oreos on each other (oh Dave, I am so sorry about all the things we did to your bed!) while Steve looked at me and dryly noted, "this is awfully homosexual, isn't it?"
And finally, we passed out.
That morning, I was the first one up, and I wandered down from the carnage of Dave's bed into the kitchen, whereupon turning on the light I discovered slugs.
Slugs!
Slugs on every conceivable surface. Slugs on the countertops and on the refrigerator and on the floor and on the mesh of the screen door we had left wide open after the shenanigans of the dead cartoons. Slugs, in particular, all over the beer brewing equipment. Shit!
Slugs, you see, like beer. If you have them in your garden, you put a bowl of beer out and they crawl into it and die. Well, now they had crawled into our kitchen and were having a party.
Fuck.
So I go back up to Dave's bedroom.
"Hey, guys, there are slugs in the kitchen."
I get a bunch of incoherent moans.
"A lot of slugs. Like 'look kids, the slugs are back' slugs."
"Huh?" Joe asked, sitting up.
"Slugs!" I shout.
Dave sits bolt upright. "Beer!"
"Uhhuh," I say.
Steve starts rolling around and laughing.
Eventually we all trudge downstairs in the same awful flannels we'd been wearing since the night before to stand in the doorway of the kitchen, arms around each other (yes, Steve, it was awfully homosexual) staring at the, admittedly very slow moving, slug frenzy.
Looking around at the butcher paper we'd covered the kitchen walls in to write our most awesome random quotes on ("when you paint living things, they die!") it was one of the few times at 19 when I absolutely, positively knew how young I was and was glad of it.
I was happy. Not with any of those boys, and not with that awful hike out to their place, but with the idea that this was pointless and shining youth, and it was finally mine. It was something I never had much of and didn't need more of, but also know that I almost missed, and that would have been a tragedy, far greater than Dave, his king-sized heated water bed, some 'shrooms and the sea of slugs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 05:50 pm (UTC)Great job.
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Date: 2009-01-09 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 06:13 pm (UTC)The image of you yelling about Nancy Reagan is the best.
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Date: 2009-01-09 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 06:52 pm (UTC)...mostly spent on extremely dangerous drugs.
Date: 2009-01-09 06:44 pm (UTC)Re: ...mostly spent on extremely dangerous drugs.
Date: 2009-01-09 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-01-09 08:04 pm (UTC)The mind wonders... how did you guys rid the place of them? Salt shower?
(great story!)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-10 12:03 am (UTC)Putting out beer to kill slugs is extremely counterproductive, as you will be attracting every slug around for miles, as happened to
The best way to keep slugs out of the garden is to not kill the big banana slugs that eat the small vegetarian ones.
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Date: 2009-01-09 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-01-11 08:29 pm (UTC)Sounds like a good time, after the fact. I'd have been more freaked out by the slugs than the dead cartoons. I hate them with a passion!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-11 09:10 pm (UTC)