The Full Effect of Mary Jane

This time I was truly innocent. I hadn't done a thing before to that effect. I definitely wasn't planning on what was going to happen next. I was twelve years of age at this point in time. I had heard about drugs through the D.A.R.E. program at schools and whispered rumors about people smoking roaches and things from my siblings and classmates and friends. I really wasn't expecting to run into them first hand.

So this one woman I knew who happened to claim to be a lesbian and was at the time one of the most attractive creatures I had ever known decides to give me a ride to a friend's house one evening. She picked me up in the beat up old cavalier she always drove and we rolled it down the dirt road from where I lived. She was in her usual candor and the talk was just a selection of personal questions typical of an old acquaintance at any time and nothing spectacular yet. This went on for the first leg of the journey and everything seemed normal for this course.

Then unexpectedly she reaches into the console of the car and pulls out what I would've only assumed to have been a cigarette at the time. My mind was still naive to any sort of considerations about people or their potential for hiding substances as I had never really been involved with them. She held it as she drove. Her brown eyes lit up a little and she shot me the question, "Hey you wanna smoke some weed?"

I promptly said I would love to and that I hadn't done it before. I was excited. I hadn't tried it before but I knew of it and knew of people who smoked it. This had me edging my way of the seat in anticipation as we were pulling in the driveway at the friend's house I was going to and the joint touched the first flame of a lighter that just flicked. It burned slowly and evenly in a way that no other joint since then has ever burned. Like it was meant to be extra special for the first time and the taste was strangely sweet. She took a draw off it first then passed it my way.

I drew into my lungs the tickling smoke and tasted the oddly odious flavors that reminded me then of some sort of cooking herb mixed with sweat and unknown things. I never really enjoyed completely the taste until many years later, but at the time it was just about as palatable as any smoke product I had tried so I continued. I tried to pass it back and coughed out a puff of smoke as it happened.

"No no no.... puff PUFF, pass, little buddy," the woman said behind a slight giggle to me as she pushed it back to me by my hand.

I didn't reply, I just took the second hit and tried to hold it in for a little while thinking she might notice how I wasted smoke by not fully inhaling it if I didn't. She was calmly receptive the second time I tried to hand it to her and we proceeded to consume an entire joint together. By the time it was done I could feel the effects of it.

My head was afloat on a sea of energy waves flooding around me in a still sort of fashion and my body was feeling elated and relaxed and somewhat nervous at the moment. My feet went directly where I needed them to be but my mind was wandering around places unknowable covering thoughts that were there but weren't discerned enough to describe. I high-stepped up onto the stairs of the house I was dropped off at and fumbled with knocking on the door before being invited in. It was then I heard the echoes of what I said to my friend coming back in waves against my brain and seen spectacular little light shows at the edges of my vision. All I told them when I got in the house was, "I just got high," and I kind of floated on the thought for a while before the sharp replies from those present rained in on my parade and tried to inform me that I didn't. Which makes me wonder why they would've thought I was lying about it for a flash before returning to the buzzing in my head and floating around the room scarcely entering a thought about anything for the remainder of the evening. I enjoyed the feeling some great amount at the time, but I still don't completely understand why.