An Excerpt From Gut Feeling
Here's a few pages from my WIP Gut Feeling. It's about Winnie, a bored Las Vegas housewife, getting close to her friend Deborah. In this scene, Winnie is talking about how she came to discover her love for marijuana.
Another indulgence that I’ve made a part of my daily routine is smoking weed. I am fortunate enough to live in a state that allows for doctor-prescribed marijuana. In my case, a prescription was issued by my doctor to alleviate anxiety and dysthymia.
I have a friend who also smokes, and we get together once or twice a week to smoke a joint and watch a movie or listen to music. We used to, anyway. Now I don’t know what we’re doing. Deborah (not Debbie or Deb, ever) was my favorite among my friends, which is to say that Deborah was the one I could most easily tolerate. She’s older than I am by about ten years and has an incredible head of fiery red hair, and her freckled skin looks like it’s glowing when she’s out in the sun, which we regularly were. More often than not, when we’re together, we’re outside — usually by the pool or hiking on the trails, or swimming, or playing golf. We spend a fair amount of time together, yet it wasn’t until very recently that I felt like I was starting to get to know her. The pot helped. I didn’t know she smoked weed until a year or so ago, when we were hiking in Red Rock Canyon.
I stopped to take a drink from my water bottle. I wasn’t watching Debora, and I heard her pouring something out of her own water bottle. I turned around, and Deborah had taken a water pipe from her backpack, packed a bowl, and started smoking right there on the trail. While it’s not illegal, because presumably she had a prescription, it’s still not something you wave around willy-nilly. Vegas has never been keen on drugs, and even though it’s technically legal, you’re not allowed to smoke in public. Even outside. When I gave her a look to convey my surprise at her brazen display of drugging, she held the pipe out to me. I looked around to see if anyone was coming, took a gurgling hit, and gave it back to her. It wasn’t the first time I’d smoked pot, but it was the first time as an adult, almost thirty years old, and smoking weed in the desert with my cool friend like a teenage dirtbag.
“Okay, put it away,” I said, still looking up and down the trail for other hikers. So far, we were alone.
“Fine, you fucking nerd,” Deborah said, taking another big hit and then pouring the water out on the sand. She extinguished the bowl and put the pipe back in her backpack. I scoffed.
“I’m not a nerd. I just don’t want to get in trouble.”
She reached back into her backpack and pulled out a pack of Marlboro Reds, flipping the cardboard lid open.
“First of all, you are a nerd. Second, you’re not going to get in trouble. Nobody cares. Seriously. I smoke out here all the time. Besides, if you’d rather, I have joints. Will you smoke a joint with me at least? I want to enjoy this evening.”
“Okay, I’ll smoke with you, but if anyone comes, we put it out, okay?”
Debora grinned at me and held her hand out.
“It’s a diggity deal, daddy-o,” she said as I took her hand and shook.
“Uh, okay. It’s a diggity deal.”
She took an odd-looking pre-rolled joint from her Marlboro pack and popped it into her mouth. It was pink and blue.
“It’s infused with diamonds,” she said, lighting the colorful joint and taking a hit. It smelled like blueberries. Well, blueberries and weed. She handed it to me, and I took it, tentatively.
“What do you mean by diamonds?” I asked before taking a hit. While it had the sweet and tart flavor of berries, it was also incredibly harsh and burned my lungs. I immediately started coughing and gagging. Deborah laughed and took the joint from me.
“In this case, it’s infused with THC crystals. It’s got a THC content of 45%, so I wouldn’t smoke much more than you have already if it’s been a while.”
“Jesus… 45%? That seems like a lot! It’s been like, seven or eight years since I last smoked weed,” I said, already feeling the effects of the THC. It had been at least that long for me. The last time I smoked was at a St. Vincent concert at a music festival. She held the joint up, and I declined with a wave. I was already feeling soft-headed.
“Let’s walk,” Deborah said, getting up from where she was crouched on the trail, looking at her phone. I nodded and we started walking again, Deborah still smoking her joint. I figured she must be a much more frequent smoker than I would have guessed, because she smoked the whole thing almost by herself and didn’t seem to be particularly impaired. I, on the other hand, was flying. As we walked, I began to notice the scents of the desert, the sounds of bugs and birds, and the wind whistling through the sagebrush.
“You hanging in there alright?” Deborah asked. We were walking at about half speed, as I was constantly stopping to look at things.
“Oh yeah, I’m great,” I said, standing in the middle of the trail and staring at the sky. I suddenly wished we were camping and not just hiking for the afternoon. The idea of getting back in the car and driving home seemed insurmountable. When Deborah pulled her backpack off again and started digging through it, I wondered if she was getting the pipe again. She came up with a big Ziplock bag of trail mix. My eyes widened, and I held my hand out eagerly like a child.
“Fuck yeah… gimme. Please!” I said, smiling. Deborah handed me the bag, and I fished out a handful of nuts, seeds, freeze-dried fruit, granola, and even some M&Ms. This was an excellent choice. The dried strawberries were especially exquisite. I realized I was chewing with my eyes closed, standing in the middle of the trail. I opened them when I heard something spray and smelled a cloud of fake coconut drifting my way. Deborah was applying spray sunscreen for the third time that day. The red hair comes with some downsides, I suppose. I held the bag out for her when she put the sunscreen away. She smiled and thanked me, scooping out a small handful for herself.
“Did you fuckin’ dehydrate these yourself?”
“I fuckin’ did,” she said, chewing trail mix.
“This is so good,” I said, crunching granola and nuts. The sound was deafening in my head. We stood there, munching trail mix and watching as the clouds crawled across the sky in a languid stupor, much like me in that moment.
When Deborah put her arm around my shoulder, I reflexively tensed. This group of women has always been very touchy with each other. Not in an especially sexual way, but certainly familiar. It’s something I’ve just come to live with. We hug when we meet up, kiss cheeks, hold hands, and hang off each other like drunk high schoolers. We’re just very comfortable with each other, physically. I’m used to it, but it doesn’t change that my back crawls with gooseflesh when Deborah puts her arm around my shoulder and leans her head against mine. I can smell her hair. It smells like pomegranate.
“I’m glad we’re hanging out. It’s nice,” she says. I nod, pull back a bit, and look at her.
“It is nice. I appreciate you smoking me out. It’s not something I thought I wanted, but I’m really enjoying it.”
Deborah winked at me and smiled.
“Any time,” she said, adjusting her hat back into place and pulling her backpack on. “And I mean that. Any time. I’ve always got some, and I’m happy to come over when you want to smoke.”
I didn’t need her to do that, as I’m perfectly capable of buying my own drugs, but the idea of her coming over to hang out and smoke seemed nice. We usually did active things when we socialized, and it was rarely just the two of us. That day was nice, though, and it occurred to me that Deborah was asking if we wanted to be actual friends instead of just members of the same social group.
I had a friend.
It felt like the sun was rising inside me. A friend. My life had been so monotonous for the last few years. I knew I was second, or even third tier, in my friend group. I was definitely not the first person anyone texted when putting together an outing. I know there are other group texts besides the one I’m in, but that never bothered me. And even though it didn’t bother me, it still made me feel incredibly special when Deborah invited me to hang out. She’s just cool like that. She really is. It’s going to sound like I had a crush on her (and given how things went, maybe I did), but she’s just so cool and put together and smart and funny. She’s the kind of woman that people listen to. While it wouldn’t be entirely correct to say she’s the leader of our friend group (that would be Annie… gross), she's definitely a vocal and respected member of that group. People gravitate to her, and if she were more accessible, she probably would have taken a more dominant role in the pack.
Deborah, however, is also quite private. We never go to her house, and I’ve never met her husband. I’m not even entirely sure how she fits into the whole network of friends. I know that George doesn’t know Jason, Deborah’s husband, and we’re not Facebook friends. I don’t even think he has any social media presence. I do occasionally see pictures of them together on Deborah’s Instagram account. Deborah, although private, remains active online. It’s very curated, like the rest of her life. Deborah updates occasionally, but with pithy jokes and photos of nothing important. Meals, selfies, and lunches with friends. Very superficial. She’s not weighing in on political or social issues, or really her opinions about anything. It’s hard to get a sense of Deborah’s whole vibe beyond that she likes to eat good food and go on vacation.
So, when she asked if I wanted to hang out more often and smoke together, I was both excited and intrigued. The idea of getting to know Deborah better was fascinating, and I was genuinely enjoying the effects of the THC. I saw no downside.