crooked-toothed girl

Yeah, hold on a second while I grab one out of my purse.  Are Lights okay?

So what was I saying?  Oh yeah.  I used to smoke weed all the time in high school.  Not so much now, though.  I remember this one party we had at Pat’s house  ‘cause his parents were on vacation in the Caribbean.  We made a gravity bong. 

Hmm?  It’s where, well, first you take a cooler and fill it with ice water.  Then you get a big jug, maybe a milk jug, and cut the bottom out.  Make a new cap out of foil and poke holes in it so you can use it as your bowl.  You push the empty jug to the bottom of the cooler then you light your bowl, bringing the jug up so that it’s almost out of the water.  After that it’s all filled with smoke and you take the bowl off, and you put your mouth over the jug and push it back down to the bottom and it makes all the smoke go right into your lungs.  You only need to do like two or three of these and then you like won’t even move for the rest of the night.

That wasn’t all we did that night, either.  After we did hits we played ‘Kings’.  It’s this card game where you take a deck of cards and spread them face down around a big cup.  Everybody takes turns drawing cards and each one has some kind of rule, some thing that you have to do, like if you get a 5 you point at someone and they have to drink for five seconds, or do a waterfall, or whatever.  The whole point is the kings.  Whenever you draw a king you get to pour as much of your drink as your want into the ‘king cup’ and the person who draws the last king has to chug the whole thing.  I got so trashed that I threw up in my mom’s rose bush when I got home.  She was pissed.

Yeah, I’m on my smoke break.  I only have like ten more minutes before I have to go back in.  How’d you know my name was Julie?  Oh, duh, my name tag.  I keep forgetting that.  This is my first week here. 

So what did you say your name was?  Adam? 

That’s a cool name.  I used to know this other kid named Adam who I would always trip on acid with.  I mean not always, we only did it a few times and I didn’t really like it.  There was this one time where we were tripping and we watched ‘The Wall’.  Wow.  There was this scene with this carpet and I thought it was alive and stuff and the camera focused on it for like ten minutes.  It wasn’t all fun though, it was pretty scary after the movie when we were sitting in the dark and my friend Adam’s eyes made him look like the devil.  We were trying to go to sleep and every sound was like ten thousand times louder, like shuffling blankets sounded like a train or something. 

Thanks.  Yeah, it’s real silver.  My mom got it for me for my birthday.  No, I’m not very religious or anything but I mean, I think it looks nice.  My mom’s all into that born-again Christian stuff, always trying to make me go to church with her and saying how I should read the bible more.  Oh?  Really?  You don’t look like an apostolic. 

Um.  Maybe my friend Jeff has some.  Heh, you must not be that religious if you smoke weed.  Yeah, I guess if they make you go there’s not much you can do. 

Yeah, so I quit taking acid after that.  Oh wow.  I know that kid.  His name’s Mitch and he used to sell me zanies ‘cause his mom had a ‘scrip for them. 

Never?  Okay, I’ll tell you about them, then.

The first time I ever took ‘em I was in tenth grade.  Mitch got some peachies and offered to sell them to me for two bucks a pill.  I got five of them and took ‘em at breakfast.  I’m tellin’ you, it was amazing.

There’s three main kinds of xanax.  Five peachies is about the same as two blue ones, and two blue ones is about the same as a bar.  A bar’s this skinny white pill with notches in it so you can break it up.

What DO they do?  I don’t really know for sure.  They give them to people to treat anxiety, like social anxiety.  Sometimes your doctor might give you a prescription for them if you’re afraid to fly.  I tried to fake symptoms for my psychiatrist to get a prescription but all he gave me were some worthless zolofts.  Christ, he might as well give me asprin.

So anyways, your memories of a xanax binge are like snapshots instead of short movies.  I remember seeing some lockers.  I remember seeing the teacher with the goatee and the short black hair looking at me funny.  I remember having my head on my desk, and I look kind of tired, but I’m smiling.

When I did that, it was a Tuesday.  When I came back the next day I thought it was Tuesday all over again.  It’s not really a good drug if you like to have short-term memories.  After that first time, I was hooked.  I was havin’ Mitch get them for me like twice a week. 

Sure, I’ll give you another one.  It’s nice to have someone to talk to out here.  I’d go in the employee lounge but I don’t know anybody yet, plus I think the other cashiers are kind of jealous of me ‘cause I’m young and I don’t have to go home and take care of seventeen children or anything.  I like your hat.  Oh, it’s a basketball team.  I don’t really know much about that.  I used to watch basketball with my boyfriend every once in awhile but that was before, well, I mean, I don’t really like to talk about it.

Really?  Heh, I bet you say that to all the girls you meet at your frat parties.  Oh.  Well thanks, then.  Hey, how about I give you my number and you can call me later and I’ll see if Jeff has some.  Yeah, let me write it on this receipt.

So what’s the kool-aid for?  I bet you’re going to mix it with a bunch of vodka and make Jungle Juice.  Yeah, they did that this one time when I went to Ball State.  They just poured the whole container in the bathtub with like five fifths of vodka.  It was pretty crazy.

Well, okay, I guess I can tell you about it.  So here’s what happened.  I was driving with my boyfriend Chad after we both took some xanax.  If it makes you walk funny, you should see what it does to your driving.  We were going down the interstate at like eighty-seven miles an hour and there was this big semi-trailer on the right.  There was a little Geo Metro behind it and it picked that exact moment to try and swoop left and pass the truck and we couldn’t stop in time.  We flipped the car.  I almost died, and Chad almost lived.  That’s how it goes, I guess.

This scar on my arm?  Yeah, that’s how I got it.  There’s another one on my thigh, but it’s not really that bad I don’t think. 

So I was in the hospital for like three weeks with some bad cuts and a broken ankle.  They had to put a few stitches in my head and shave a little bit of my hair, but I didn’t get to go home after that.  By that time I was up to like three bars a day so I had to do xanax detox.

Here’s something you might not know.  Xanax detox is even more dangerous than heroin detox.  With heroin, if you quit cold turkey, you’ll get sick for like three or four days.  If you’re taking lots of xanax every day and you just stop completely, you might die.  It’s one of the most dangerous things to try and quit.

Me?  Heroin?  Nah.  I don’t think I ever would, either. 

What do you mean I’m shaking?  Well, I guess I am.  A little while ago some punks picked up one of the black phones and hit the ‘page’ button and called a ‘code blue’.  Everybody went nuts.  It means hostage situation.  So all the blue-vests and managers ran to the back of the store to deal with it.  Yeah, they’ll catch the kids because they have them on the security cameras.  I figured that would be a good time to take my break.  Yep.  That’s why the cops are here.

So it’s almost time for me to go in now.  It was nice to meet you, Adam.  You really think I’m cute?  You’d better call me later, I usually get home around ten.  Oh, that’s your car?  It’s pretty nice.  You have to let me drive it sometime.

What? Very funny.  That’s not really a nice thing to say, you know.  Hmph, I’m a good driver.

Damn.  There’s my manager.  I really do have to go now.  Don’t forget to call me.

(c) 2003 J Baugher