Gypsy Weed
I Smoked Gypsy Weed And Met My Grandpa In The Bardo
Have you ever tried Gypsy weed?
When I first heard about gypsy weed, I assumed it was a particular type of herb with medicinal properties or whatever. But I was wrong. According to the myth, the gypsy drug dealers would drag their buds through the dregs of their empty bags. Since they sold just about everything, it meant gypsy weed could contain just about a bit of every damn drug you can think of, depending on the day.
Some days you would smoke, and it would feel like you could easily take over the world if you felt like it.
Some days you would smoke it, fall in love with everything and everybody, and feel a deep, fulfilling sexual orgasmic sensation that you shared with them all.
Some days it’s hard to know what happened.
Smoking Gypsy Weed is a damn lottery.
My friend Gary came over with an ounce of the shit.
I had a fucking job interview the next day.
Gary just started skinning up on the dressing table in our bedroom as if we were still seventeen.
“What the fuck are you doing, Gary?” I said. “Use the lounge, at least.”
Before you know it, Gary has fucking blazed up in my bedroom.
“For fuck’s sake, Gary go to the lounge, you prick. We’re not seventeen, you bastard. We’re forty-five, for fuck’s sake. The smoke is pouring off the spliff.”
My wife had gone out for dinner with a friend, and the cats were in the bedroom, and the last time they passively smoked gypsy weed, things didn’t go well at all. If cats had that opposing thumb thing going on, we would be fucked. Cats on drugs are bad enough. Cats on drugs with opposable thumbs would be a worst-case scenario.
It was too late. Gary started moving, but thick smoke had already filled the room. I would have to lock the cats in the bedroom since they would be too high off the gypsy weed to deal with. But doing so would trap the cats in with the fumes, and they would get higher than they already were.
So I had a choice: Quite high cats running free around the house OR Extremely high cats locked in a room.
From where I was sitting, it was about 50/50 with advantages/disadvantages of each.
Regardless, I didn’t have the time to think, so I closed them in. I’d deal with them later.
For now, I would either have to get Gary out of the house or risk going to a job interview high tomorrow. I just figured being high might not be such a bad thing. I mean, it all depends on the gypsy weed. It could be anything.
That’s why the cats are a gamble.
That’s why smoking this is a gamble.
Fuck it.
I sat opposite Gary in the lounge, and he passed me the massive blunt.
What does it taste like? I ask Gary.
“The first thing I tasted was mushrooms,” he tells me.
“I don’t know why I’m smoking this,” I say, taking a deep toke.
I definitely tasted mushrooms, but then a strong taste of something terrible. Something very strong was hitting immediately. I wondered if it was acid. Good acid hits immediately.
But it wasn’t. Something else. This was not good.
I took a second, deep toke and held my breath.
He fucking carked it at a wedding, the prick. Back when he was an agile bastard still cutting his own wood at 81, he used to tell me he was terrified of dying publicly. Then at 86, he said he no longer cared and was considering dying publicly to transcend his fear of dying publicly. When he dropped dead from a heart attack during the fucking birdy song, I didn’t know whether to piss myself laughing or venerate the old fucker.
During Granpa’s funeral, his son, my Uncle Ash, got drunk like a bastard and tried to climb in the coffin next to him. No one stopped him. You get a pass when yer dad has just died. That was just the entree, anyway. Later, during his speech, Ash started revealing family secrets at a rate no one was comfortable with. Uncle Richard was quick to rugby tackle Ash into the horderves when he realised Ash was about to spill the beans on Richard getting caught spying on Ash and his wife having sex while he stayed at their house. Grandpa would have loved that scene. He loved it when the conventional gave way to madness.
Grandpa told me he killed a few people during the Korean War. When he left the army, he moved to Vietnam and got drunk for a few years before meeting a monk and travelling around Asia with him for a year.
It was Granpa sitting in a white room with a TV and me. It was like the Matrix. My Granpa is sitting and smiling at me, and I’m just thinking, ‘Fuck me, whatever that was has killed me. What if this is the afterlife, and it’s just Granpa and me for centuries in this white place?
Hi, Grnapa, I say, and I’m immediately back in the room with Gary. I take another deeper deep toke and hold breath again, and it feels like it’s raining, but I’m sitting in the rain opposite Granpa, and he has no arms.
“This isn’t right”, I’m saying. This isn’t fucking right at all.
Everything has slowed down now, and I’m seeing the rain with Granpa and the room with Gary at the same time. And I’m wondering which one is my realm. They both seem like my realm. I had a whole life with Granpa and his no arms. And yet a whole life with Gary. Yes, Gary, Gary he is erm he is —
just sit it out. You will be fine. Just wait, and soon things will become clear clear clear clear clear. Oh no, my head is echoing. Shit, this is too much. Oh no. This is very, very vary varyvaryvar. No, you can do this. You have a nose where is it? yes. There ist is . Its a nose nose nose nose nose. Just remember. Just remember your arms and your legs. yes, there they are, your legs. And breath. that’s it. lungs.
Gary are you okay? he’s just sitting there.
i feel good now. I feel good. What do I need to do next. What happens next?
