It’s Halloween and I’m getting ready to party. I’m at my buddy David’s house near the U District, putting on makeup and smoothing out the wrinkles in my costume. I was planning on being a fairy, all pastel tights and frills and flowers, but now it’s cold outside and I’ve added enough dark gray chilly-weather gear to be better described as “Tinkerbell disappointing her parents.” We’re waiting for the other guy to get here. His name’s Theodore but everyone only ever calls him Teddy. I’ve never met him, but David talks about him all the time. I guess they’ve gotten into all kinds of s*** together, but I don’t know specific stories, just that he’s sketchy. But I need him around because I’m not much of a partier (not yet, anyway), and he knows the wild side better than I do.

So Teddy shows up, and I’m about ready to leave, but it’s cold outside and I whine a little. He pours two ounces or so of whiskey in one of David’s mom’s coffee mugs, and thrusts it at me.
“Drink this! It’ll warm you up!” he grins. I can’t swallow it. I mix a few ounces of apple juice in just so I can shotgun it, and then we’re on our way.
So we’re about a block down the street, and the boys hand me a cigarette. One of them lights it for me and I take a deep drag followed by a shallow cough. I like the taste but my lungs are made of butter. We walk and smoke, and I start to wonder how the two sixteen-year-olds get this stuff, and by the time we get on the bus I’m tipsy enough from the booze and the nicotine headrush that walking to the back of the moving bus is a terrifying ordeal.
The bus shuttles us to the more hoppin’ parts of town, then to a giant, dark, vacant park. The vacancy is crucial, because these wild party kids have drugs, and when they offer, I don’t want to decline.
For a long time, squaredom seemed like a perfectly fine life plan (and for the long term, I acknowledge that it still is), but at this point whatever academic excellence or social respectability I was trying to protect is already gone, so let’s experience classic American adolescence and experiment with some substances. These kids have experience. They know how to get the good stuff.
We have some of that good stuff as we walk up a hill. Puff-puff-pass. I’m double fisting, with a second cigarette in one hand and the joint passing in and out of my other. I don’t feel much. I wait. We start to climb up a massive spiral staircase into this tower in the park. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been locked up for the night, when I realize that even though it’s pitch black it’s only 7:30. I sit on the concrete floor.
Twelve minutes later, it hits. I erupt in laughter. Nothing is funny, except for everything. I can’t stop laughing. It turns into wheezing while I flop onto my back and wiggle my arms. I announce that I’m an octopus, and then double up in even harder laughter, my knees jerking into the air with the hilarity of this realization. The people around me haven’t seen me like this. They don’t know what to do with me, other than laugh in surprise.
Anyway, now we’re sheltered from the wind by sitting in what feels like a 50-foot-wide concrete helter skelter. We’re passing the flask around, with more Maker’s Mark. It’s cold, I’m impaired, and I’m trying to explain to their friend Robin why I’m so bothered by them flinging their cigarette butts just out onto the park. “Birds eat them, and they, and they don’t digest and they starve, man!” She explains to me that it doesn’t matter because this neighborhood is so dirty that all the birds in it have already either left or died.
Teddy is complaining that his arms are cold.
We all chide him with variations of “you should have worn sleeves, idiot.” The tone when I say it is a little sweeter than the rest.
We climb down to the base of the tower and they lead me to an entrance of the park, where we see two more friends. Their names are Ashton and Logan (they’re exactly as white as they sound), they’re both dressed as distorted produce, and they’re both pre-game-drunk, carrying a bag of chips and a pair of sloshy starbucks cups.
One of them pulls out a crumpled plastic baggie of more weed. I ask if it’s head stuff or body stuff, Ashton says that it’s a hybrid. “Grown out on the coast,” he says. “Fun s***. Comes in waves.” Coast s***, I think. Comes in waves. Teddy pulls out a contraption that you put a line of leaves and a rolling paper in and it rolls it into a perfectly cylindrical joint. After they’ve made one, and we’ve smoked it, I look at the machine thinking about it and how it works. As they were using it, I understood how it worked, but I don’t anymore. I keep staring at it. Teddy snaps his fingers in front of my eyes. “Huh?” He’s been trying to get it back from me for 2 minutes. He offers to trade me for a cigarette if I give it back. I hand it back and look down at my hands.
I look at my hands. I’m holding it between my middle and index fingers, but to hold it still is about all I can do. I worry that as I smoke it the end might start to burn me if I can’t reposition it, because my fingers are so stiff. I can’t grip anything other than what’s already between those two fingers. I look at my empty hand. I wiggle my fingers but they move like sticks. I pull out my phone but I can’t type. I wonder which of the substances have caused this, or if it’s because it’s cold. David reaches a hand inches from my eyes and swirls his fingers. I scream. They laugh.
We walk around the park a while longer. At one point we’re in a playground, with a jungle gym and rusty swings. I get on the merry-go-round and they start to spin me. I’m experiencing the very unique sensation of being stoned on a merry-go-round. The trees warp and stretch as they pass in and out of my view. I lay down and just watch the starless, blotchy gray sky spin. I sit up for a moment to retrieve another cigarette (I wonder how many I’ve had now. Is this #4? #5?) so that I can watch the thin trails of white smoke twirl above me. It feels like a spaceship spinning itself up off the ground. It feels like a massive drill pulling me down into oblivion. It feels like I’m dying and being carried away and it feels like exactly where I’m supposed to be. I tell the people around me all of this. I’m not sure who’s even listening but I say it all anyway. They laugh. “Buddy, about a third of that was real words.”
“Sure it was!” I assure them. More laughter.
Once the thing has slowed down enough for me to climb off without dying, we lean against some irregular concrete structures, too wet to sit on comfortably, and look over the pond. When the others get up, I decide to stay a few minutes longer. “Yeah, you guys can go ahead, I’m just a little wobbly, I’ll catch up in a bit.” Teddy decides to stick around so I don’t get lost--he’s a lot more sober, and a lot more familiar with the area, than I. So he’s still sitting next to me, silent. It’s weird because he’s been loud all night. A hundred yards away, David shouts at us,
“A LITTLE NERVOUS THERE, TEDDY?” he yells, mocking.
“F*** OFF,” Teddy yells back.
A few minutes later, we stand up and start to walk toward the others. We can barely make them out under the dim streetlamps, but we eventually catch up to them just as we’re leaving the park.
Before I can get reoriented we’re on another bus further into the hippie-hipster-party neighborhood. When we get there, I stare at a pop machine for 4 minutes trying to remember what kind of coins are worth 25 cents but I keep getting distracted by the conversations behind me.
“That isn’t how black holes work!” I exclaim. Their thread on black holes ended 2 minutes ago. I return my mission to remember how change works, but still they keep distracting me. “Everyone shut up for a minute!” I scream to the friends behind me. As I turn around to see their reactions, I realize that they have already started walking and are half a block away. I wail in confusion for my abandonment. They hear me, stop, and send Teddy back to help me catch up. He offers me his arm and I take it, not because I’m interested in him (although I’m not disinterested in him) but because if I don’t I know I’ll eat dirt.
I’m suddenly humiliated by my current state. “OH Teddy you shouldn’t have to SEE me like this,” I whine. “It isn’t LADYLIKE to be crossfaded” comes out slurred. He says he doesn’t mind with a smirk and we keep walking.
Eventually we walk up to a drive-in--a local institution--that’s only open because they know people’ll be out. I don’t know what time it is, only that it’s late enough that the landmark should be closed. I didn’t know that I was hungry until I smelled burgers frying. Teddy buys me one and gives me a few of his fries.
I wonder why I’m so angry. I don’t remember why I’m out. I ask where I am. They tell me where I am, and tell me that it’s the same neighborhood we’ve been for the last 3 hours.
We’re in a courtyard of a school, I think. We’re waving hello and wishing good evenings to people showing up. New friends, or rather old friends we haven’t spent tonight with. New friends who aren’t the drug-using type. I say something that makes the friends who have been here the whole time laugh, but the new friends frown. One of the new friends tell me she doesn’t like seeing me like this. That it makes her sad. That it makes her feel like I’m wasting myself. This is the most hurtful thing I’ve heard in ages. Ages. She doesn’t want to see me and the other guys stoned, so the groups part ways again. Like ships in the night, we are, but in a courtyard downtown rather than in the sea.
We’re walking again. Suddenly it’s just two of them, pulling me away from the group. “Where are we going?” I ask. To the bus, they explain. I try to shout goodbye to the rest but it doesn’t come out right. They don’t hear me. I make it a point to say “Goodbye, Teddy!” until he hears me, and he says goodnight back.
We try to walk to the bus but we walk the wrong way. We turn around and walk the other way up the block. We turn back around and walk the first way again. I whine. My sinuses burn. The poor navigators apologize. Eventually we get on the bus, on our way back to David’s house to call it a night.
On the bus, I wonder if at any point I’ve gotten Teddy’s phone number. I open my phone with my stiff fingers. I have.