So High That I Could Touch The Sky part 1
Inspiration - "How High" Redman and Method Man "so high that I could touch the sky, so sick that you can suck my d*ck"
What I'm Listening To: "Purple Rain" - Prince and the Revolution
Question(s) that I asked myself today: "Why did I answer the phone? I should have known better" said after the stalker called me from a PRIVATE number.
April 24, 1999. This was the date of my last encounter with marijuana. Now, I know most people don't remember dates like this. But this day is burned into my memory banks because of the circumstances surrounding it. So like with any anniversary, this day deserves to be celebrated as it was the day that marked my rite of passage into adulthood.
A little background before I tell you about that day. I used to smoke weed recreationally. I was never going to be confused with a Rastafarian. I think I told you in a previous post that I never learned how to roll a blunt. Weed to me was just something I did before I went to the club or at a social gathering. I had friends that would chief (that's what we used to call it) hay first thing in the morning, at lunchtime and before they went to bed. Their lives were defined by how high they got, where they got their stash from and who they smoked with. My homeboy Lorenzo would even go to his van at work (we called it the Mystery Machine, like Scooby Doo), get blazed, and come back to work like he had a scheduled THC break. That was never me. I just couldn't handle it like that, nor did I want to. It was just fun to do during my nighttime maneuvers. I also could freestyle better when I was high. As the numbness reached my brain, the words just started to flow like the Mississippi river.
That being said, in early 1999, I started smoking more than I ever had. What used to be just a Friday and Saturday thing grew into in Wednesday - Saturday thing. I spent just about every day in the club or at a house party. The more I partied, the more I smoked. That's just how it was and I figured I wasn't hurting anybody, because "weed was from the earth." I also still went to work, so I figured I had everything under control. Then three events shook me so much that I put the blunts away forever and never looked back.
I had two partners that I thought would be lifelong friends. All throughout high school and college it was always me, Kareem and Torijuano. Where ever you saw one of us, the other two were never far behind. Even when Kareem went away to Norfolk State for a year, me and Tori held it down at Savannah State. During the winter and summer breaks, the 3 musketeers (or stooges depending on who you ask) were back in effect. When Kareem dropped out of Norfolk State and came home, the three of us hit up all the parties together and started blazing together on a semi regular basis. A funny thing started to happen though after i graduated in '97. I grew up a little and Kareem and Tori were still doing their thing. We were still friends, but we had different priorities. For the next couple of years, I expanded my social circle to include some of my new co workers while they expanded their social circle to include the all of the druggies in Savannah.
We still hung out on the weekends and one particular Saturday marked the genesis of my desire to make a change. The three musketeers piled in my Toyota Tercel and hit up downtown Savannah. We club hopped from Frozen Paradise to the Zoo, and finally to a white club called Malones. We went upstairs where they were showing a PPV fight, although for the life of me, I can't remember who was fighting. After the fight, we huddled in the corner and lit up a fatty that Kareem had rolled. He was the master when it came to blunt rolling. I'll never forget the Thanksgiving Horn o plenty he whipped up using zig zags and a pen cap. But I digress. Foolish as it sounds, there we were: 3 Black men peppered amongst a sea of white faces smoking weed in public. Needless to say, the bouncer came and threw us out so we wandered the streets of downtown Savannah, higher than Mt Fuji. We walked with crimson eyes and the swagger of a homeless man in search of his next drink. Finally, we made it back to my car and started off in search of our next destination. That's when it happened. Kareem pulled out a bag filled with a white powder and a straw. Maybe it was the weed, but everything seemed to go in slow motion from that point. I heard a loud inhalation and saw him rub his face. He then passed the bag and straw to the backseat where Tori was sitting where the ritual repeated itself. Tori then extended the contraband in my direction to offer me my bump.
"What the fuck?!?!" I yelled. "I know you niggas ain't sniffing no powder in my car!" My righteous indignation took over and suddenly I was no longer high. Any euphoria I felt was replaced by a rage and disappointment in my close friends. I couldn't reconcile my feelings of friendship with the auditory and visual evidence of cocaine inhalation in my presence. After all, they knew the my father's story and how that affected me. For them to offer me cocaine was a slap in the face. They seemed to think it was no big deal, but for me powder was more than just a step up from weed, it was a symbolic of a shift in our group dynamic. Getting high just was not cool anymore. But that alone didn't make me stop smoking weed. More to come later.
It was written...
What I'm Listening To: "Purple Rain" - Prince and the Revolution
Question(s) that I asked myself today: "Why did I answer the phone? I should have known better" said after the stalker called me from a PRIVATE number.
April 24, 1999. This was the date of my last encounter with marijuana. Now, I know most people don't remember dates like this. But this day is burned into my memory banks because of the circumstances surrounding it. So like with any anniversary, this day deserves to be celebrated as it was the day that marked my rite of passage into adulthood.
A little background before I tell you about that day. I used to smoke weed recreationally. I was never going to be confused with a Rastafarian. I think I told you in a previous post that I never learned how to roll a blunt. Weed to me was just something I did before I went to the club or at a social gathering. I had friends that would chief (that's what we used to call it) hay first thing in the morning, at lunchtime and before they went to bed. Their lives were defined by how high they got, where they got their stash from and who they smoked with. My homeboy Lorenzo would even go to his van at work (we called it the Mystery Machine, like Scooby Doo), get blazed, and come back to work like he had a scheduled THC break. That was never me. I just couldn't handle it like that, nor did I want to. It was just fun to do during my nighttime maneuvers. I also could freestyle better when I was high. As the numbness reached my brain, the words just started to flow like the Mississippi river.
That being said, in early 1999, I started smoking more than I ever had. What used to be just a Friday and Saturday thing grew into in Wednesday - Saturday thing. I spent just about every day in the club or at a house party. The more I partied, the more I smoked. That's just how it was and I figured I wasn't hurting anybody, because "weed was from the earth." I also still went to work, so I figured I had everything under control. Then three events shook me so much that I put the blunts away forever and never looked back.
I had two partners that I thought would be lifelong friends. All throughout high school and college it was always me, Kareem and Torijuano. Where ever you saw one of us, the other two were never far behind. Even when Kareem went away to Norfolk State for a year, me and Tori held it down at Savannah State. During the winter and summer breaks, the 3 musketeers (or stooges depending on who you ask) were back in effect. When Kareem dropped out of Norfolk State and came home, the three of us hit up all the parties together and started blazing together on a semi regular basis. A funny thing started to happen though after i graduated in '97. I grew up a little and Kareem and Tori were still doing their thing. We were still friends, but we had different priorities. For the next couple of years, I expanded my social circle to include some of my new co workers while they expanded their social circle to include the all of the druggies in Savannah.
We still hung out on the weekends and one particular Saturday marked the genesis of my desire to make a change. The three musketeers piled in my Toyota Tercel and hit up downtown Savannah. We club hopped from Frozen Paradise to the Zoo, and finally to a white club called Malones. We went upstairs where they were showing a PPV fight, although for the life of me, I can't remember who was fighting. After the fight, we huddled in the corner and lit up a fatty that Kareem had rolled. He was the master when it came to blunt rolling. I'll never forget the Thanksgiving Horn o plenty he whipped up using zig zags and a pen cap. But I digress. Foolish as it sounds, there we were: 3 Black men peppered amongst a sea of white faces smoking weed in public. Needless to say, the bouncer came and threw us out so we wandered the streets of downtown Savannah, higher than Mt Fuji. We walked with crimson eyes and the swagger of a homeless man in search of his next drink. Finally, we made it back to my car and started off in search of our next destination. That's when it happened. Kareem pulled out a bag filled with a white powder and a straw. Maybe it was the weed, but everything seemed to go in slow motion from that point. I heard a loud inhalation and saw him rub his face. He then passed the bag and straw to the backseat where Tori was sitting where the ritual repeated itself. Tori then extended the contraband in my direction to offer me my bump.
"What the fuck?!?!" I yelled. "I know you niggas ain't sniffing no powder in my car!" My righteous indignation took over and suddenly I was no longer high. Any euphoria I felt was replaced by a rage and disappointment in my close friends. I couldn't reconcile my feelings of friendship with the auditory and visual evidence of cocaine inhalation in my presence. After all, they knew the my father's story and how that affected me. For them to offer me cocaine was a slap in the face. They seemed to think it was no big deal, but for me powder was more than just a step up from weed, it was a symbolic of a shift in our group dynamic. Getting high just was not cool anymore. But that alone didn't make me stop smoking weed. More to come later.
It was written...
posted by Rashan Jamal at 5:58 PM
1 Comments:
Excellent, love it! » »
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