by Seth Rogen
Ray: Why?
Me: Well…I…just think that—
Waiter: Here are your tortilla soups! Be careful—they’re hot!
The waiter plopped the soups down in front of us. “Fresh cotija cheese?”
Me: Uh…I’m good. Ray?
He was just staring at me. I noticed his fists were clenched tightly.
Me: I think we’re both good.
The waiter left, and Ray just kept staring.
Ray: Why?
Me: Uh…well…you haven’t actually gotten me any work at all….
Ray: I’ve tried! It’s not my fault! And I DID get you one job and YOU don’t want it! I’m telling you, Nikki Cox is a STAR!
He was getting loud. People were staring. The whole plan was going to fucking shit.
Me: Look, man…just relax….
Ray: Do you know how hard I’ve worked for you? And how hard it is to deal with your fucking parents?
Whoa. Now, as an eighteen-year-old, I wasn’t exactly used to being put in a position to defend my parents.
Me: Uh…I think my parents have actually been pretty chill….
Ray: They wouldn’t let you move in with me.
Me: I didn’t want to move in with you!
Ray: Why not?!
Me: I just turned eighteen and moved out from living with my parents! I don’t wanna be roommates with a forty-five-year-old man!
Ray: I’m forty-two!
(Which seemed like a crazy distinction to make at the time, but as I get older, I get it.)
I knew I just had to end it.
Me: Look, dude. I’m sorry. But this is it. It’s over. I appreciate the soup and your time. But we’re not working together anymore.
I got up to leave.
He threw some cash on the table and followed me out the front door, calling after me: “Wait! Seth…come to my car.”
Me: What?
Ray: Come to my car.
Me: Why?
Ray: …I have a surprise.
Jesus.
Me: I’m not gonna go to your fucking car, dude.
Ray: Why not?
Me: I just don’t want to. I’m afraid you’re gonna fucking kill me, man.
Ray: I’m not gonna kill you!
Me: Of course you’d say that!
Ray: Just come to my car. Don’t worry.
Me: When you say, “Don’t worry,” it makes it fucking worse, man!
Ray: I’m parked right there!
He pointed halfway up the block. “Just come to my fucking car!”
It felt like one of the stupider things I’d ever done, but I was like, “Fine.”
We walked in silence up the block together, and I remember thinking there was maybe a 45 percent chance he was going to murder me. When we got to his car, he angrily opened his trunk, reached in, and pulled out a gigantic printer/fax machine and SHOVED it into my arms. I could barely hold it.
He stared me dead in my eyes.
“Happy birthday.”
Then he hopped in his car and sped off up La Brea.
I lugged the printer/fax back to my new car and was thrilled that I hadn’t been murdered, and to find that the dealer’s promise of ample trunk room wasn’t a lie.
When I called my parents and told them I was meeting my friend Ben in Europe, they were nervous. Me and Ben had been best friends since we were ten years old and met at summer camp. I had never really traveled alone before, but I was nineteen and living in Los Angeles by myself, so it seemed like I could handle it.
Dad: Where are you going?
Me: Amsterdam and then Paris.
Mom: You’re just going to do drugs.
Me: No. We’re also going to Paris.
Dad: Where are you staying?
Me: Youth hostels.
Mom: You’re gonna get robbed.
Me: No I’m not.
Mom: Yes you are. Youth hostels are VERY dangerous. You have to wear a money belt and keep your passport and money in the money belt.
Me: Fine! I’ll wear a money belt.
Mom: Okay. As long as you wear a money belt.
I didn’t know what the fuck a money belt was, and I was not at all psyched when I found out. It’s kind of like a flat fanny pack that, I think in theory, is supposed to fit seamlessly between your pants and underpants, resting in the area that for me is under my tummy and above the base of my penis, which I believe is called the mons pubis, but I’m not sure.
Unfortunately for the paranoid traveler, the money belt is actually too big to fit under your waistband, so it sticks up, like, four inches above it, while the thin elastic belt wraps around your love handles, doing a bad job of keeping the whole deal in place. It’s a fucking nightmare, but I promised I’d wear one.
I got my plane ticket and was excited to fly KLM, which, of course, stands for Royal Dutch Airlines. The trip got off to a rocky start, as I found myself in a middle seat in coach for what was an eleven-hour flight. I’d brought nothing to read or watch, because I was nineteen and it didn’t even remotely occur to me. I had nothing but discomfort to keep me occupied. At one point, I wrapped my blanket around my head and tried to mentally disconnect my brain from my body. This resulted in me weeping openly and loudly for about fifteen minutes as the people on either side of me completely ignored me, which is again one of those things I look back on and think, That’s kind of fucked up. I probably would have asked what was wrong, but I guess everyone’s afraid of getting into conversations on airplanes. As I’ve gotten older, I’d rather be seated next to a feral wolf than some producer I kinda know who wants to chat. At least the wolf won’t say gross sexual things assuming that I’ll think they’re cool.
I arrived at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol at around 11 a.m. I was supposed to meet my friend Ben at the Vondelpark at 3 p.m., so that we could then go and check in to our hostel together. Now, I guess it’s important to note that neither of us had a cellphone that worked in Europe, because I’m not even sure that shit existed back then. We just made a plan and were supposed to do it, which seems reckless and terrifying in retrospect. These days, I text my wife while I’m in line for popcorn at the theater to make sure the seat-finding process is going okay. The fact that I flew to a different continent and was just supposed to meet my friend at a certain place at a certain time feels like something out of the Middle Ages. It’s like when you hear that NASA sent people to the moon with a scientific calculator; that’s what meeting someone without a cellphone seems like to me now.
I found a train, made it to the city, and walked toward the park with my gigantic backpack strapped to my sweaty back, making it to the downtown area by, like, 1:30 p.m. I had some time to kill, so I headed to a small, dark Moroccan weed café.
This was my first time buying weed in a legal setting, and when you’re me, that’s something you never forget. It’s a fucking dream come true. The normalization of something you’ve been told your whole life is highly illicit was oddly validating. Also, I was a HUGE Pulp Fiction fan, which was probably most Americans’ first introduction to how those weed cafés worked. And it blew my fucking mind.
“I’ll take a gram of your strongest marijuana, please.”
It felt fantastic to say.
I wish I could say the smoking of it went as well.
Now, I grew up smoking very good weed in British Columbia, but this was next-level shit. I felt like the monkey touching that obelisk in 2001. It was the future. And my brain was NOT ready for it. I took a few hits too many, all the while not knowing what to do with my giant backpack. It was like having a legless, armless person to deal with. Awkward, big. Like the opposite of one of those inflatable clowns that pop back up no matter how much you punch them. No matter what I did, I
couldn’t get this fucking thing to stand up and not take up the same space an unconscious child would. I bet in actuality it was bothering nobody and I just looked like a super-stoned dude who couldn’t stop trying to balance an impossible-to-balance backpack, but it didn’t feel like that. There were real stakes.
By the time I finally finished my way-too-strong joint, it was time to go meet Ben. I found my way back to the park, and sure enough, there he was. Astronauts made it to the moon, and I found Ben in Amsterdam. We checked in to the hostel, which, if you haven’t stayed in one, is a fucking odd environment. There was a bizarre mix of young stoners and slightly older people who don’t have a lot of money and just want to have sex with tons of prostitutes.
The first night in the hostel was very awkward. The funny thing was that we never actually saw any of the ten people we were sharing the room with, because we were always in bed before they got back and somehow still managed to sleep later than all of them. Nonetheless, the first night, we were awoken by one of our nameless, faceless roommates shuffling around in the dark. He loudly flopped onto a bed, waking up everyone, then spoke in an American-sounding accent at full volume: “Hey.”
Nobody responded, because nobody knew who he was talking to.
“Hey,” he said again.
Silence.
“Hey, man. Above me. I’m talking to you.”
Thank fucking god it wasn’t me. I was safely on a bottom bunk, out of the path of this freight train of awkwardness. A very quiet, very nervous, French-sounding voice responded.
“ ’Ello. Oui. Are you talking to me?”
“Yeah, man.”
The whole thing was playing out like a radio show in the pitch-black room. I even cast it in my head. The American guy was kind of a strung-out Vincent Kartheiser–looking dude, and because I’m dumb, the French guy was wearing a striped shirt and a beret and had a pencil mustache and a stuffed animal that looked like a baguette with googly eyes.
French Guy: Umm…’ow can I ’elp you? (He clutched his baguette doll tightly.)
Vinnie K–Looking American: You took my bed.
French Guy: I deed what?
Vinnie K–Looking American: You took my bed, man. It’s fine, because I got another one, but I just want you to know that you took my bed and I know you took my bed.
French Guy: I took your bed? I am very sorry, I deedn’t realize.
Vinnie K–Looking American: What do you mean? My stuff was on it.
French Guy: Eet was? Maybe I didn’t see eet?
Vinnie K–Looking American: Well, I don’t see how that’s possible.
Silence. The Frenchman spoke up again, quietly. “Would you like your bed back?”
Vinnie K–Looking American: Nah, man. I’m cool. I just wanted you to know that I know that you took that shit, man. Good night.
I memorized the sound of Vincent Kartheiser’s voice and thought: Look out for this dude. He’s willing to create a super-uncomfortable situation for no reason, and that is a dangerous trait.
We woke up the next morning with a modest agenda. Go to the Van Gogh Museum, smoke tons of weed in a café, then go to a live sex show. It was all going swimmingly. Van Gogh was straight killing it, I smoked a little less weed than I did the previous day and didn’t have a nervous breakdown, and we found ourselves in the part of our program where we were being led by a Nigerian man down a dark alley into a small, very empty, red-velvet theater, where people would have sex and we would watch them. We were pretty psyched.
Unfortunately, the show started slow. Very slow. So slow that after about twenty minutes of watching strippers of all genders—none of whom seemed nearly as thrilled to be there as we were—do their little dance routines, I started pushing to go out to the street to smoke a joint and then head back in by the time the sexing was going down. Ben wasn’t that thrilled with the plan, not wanting to miss the sex part of the sex show.
I was like, “Don’t worry, man. It’ll be so fast.”
He reluctantly caved. “We better not miss this shit.”
As we were heading back through the narrow hallway after finishing our joint, I saw two VERY sweaty, VERY out-of-breath people walking away from the stage toward a small dressing room. Ben looked outraged.
Ben: Shit! Those were the fuckers! The sex people! We missed them!
Me: Maybe not!
Ben: We totally fucking did! That was a post-sex look those people had! They were all sweaty and gross-looking. We for sure missed it.
We got back to the theater, and sure enough, someone was wiping up the floor with a towel, the deed having been done. Ben was pissed, and I felt terrible. I ruined the live-sex-show experience, and it was a fucking bummer. We turned to go, but before we reached the door, the lights dimmed, and an announcer came on the speaker and said in a Dutch accent: “Alright, now all we have left is…the GRAND FINALE!”
We stopped. There was more. Thank god. A shot at redemption. Maybe this would be good enough that Ben wouldn’t hate me forever. Maybe it would be even BETTER than the sex part of the show. I didn’t know what that could possibly be, but, hey, “Grand Finale” were their words, not mine. We took our seats and a lovely woman took the stage. She then said something…startling.
“May I have a volunteer?”
Hmm. What could that mean? We’d seen a wide array of skill displayed here, so it was a question with a lot of implications. Not that there were a ton of people in the place, but nobody was taking the bait. The woman repeated the request.
“I said, may I have a volunteer?”
Before I even looked at Ben, I could feel his eyes boring through the side of my skull. I turned to him slowly. He was indeed staring back.
Ben: Volunteer.
Me: Oh, man, I don’t want to.
Ben: You have to.
Me: I really don’t want to.
Ben: I don’t care, you have to! What are you afraid of?
Me: I don’t wanna have sex in front of all these people. Or have her buttfuck me with a dildo or something. Nothing against that, like, as an act, it’s just not something I wanna try for the first time in front of an audience.
Ben: I don’t wanna see you have sex in front of all these people, but still, you gotta do it, man. We missed the sex part of the sex show because of you! We need to come out of this with something. Also, you’re a performer! Imagine how that woman must feel right now! She’s up there, naked, just wanting to do her grand fucking finale, and nobody will volunteer to do it! Get the fuck up there! Close the fucking show, man!!!
I couldn’t deny his logic. I had to do it. It was the only way to make things right. I slowly raised my hand, hoping she wouldn’t see it. She instantly did and was thrilled to have a taker and invited me onstage. I went up to what I could only describe as a nervous smattering of applause.
“Please take off your shirt.”
Okay. Not a great start, but who knows, maybe we were going to wrestle or something. I took off my shirt and, to my dismay, was met with waves of laughter from the crowd. Uproarious laughter. Clapping. Knee-slapping. I mean, I’m no Timothée Chalamet, but I didn’t think my body was worth laughing at hysterically. I looked down at myself, and there it was.
The fucking money belt.
It was protruding above my waistband for all to see and, more specifically, laugh super-duper hard at. Not only was it humiliating, it was a MASSIVE security breach. Now everyone in this place knew exactly where to look if they were gonna try to rob me.
So, there I am, onstage, money belt situated maybe three-quarters of the way to my belly button. What next?
“Please, lay on the floor, faceup.”
Oy vey. Now, I’m no germaphobe, and I did not see specifically what happened on this stage, but I could imagine the culmination wasn’t the type of thing that o
ne would want to lie down in. Sure, I saw the tail end of a cleanup, but they weren’t really putting much elbow grease into it. It was uninspired, like a waiter in a diner quickly wiping down a table.
Also, not for nothing, but me lying down on my back was a position sex might happen in, playing into my first fear—the fear of fucking on a stage in front of strangers and one friend. I looked at Ben sitting in the audience. He gestured: Get down there. I did, and as my bare back pressed against the floor, it felt clammy and wooden, like a giant Popsicle stick that someone had been sucking.
The lovely woman then produced a Sharpie, took off the cap, and inserted the back end of it in her vagina. She then squatted over me and proceeded to write on my torso, the pen firmly gripped by her cervix (I think? I don’t know all the vagina parts by name!). None of us could tell what she was writing, but we were all rapt with anticipation. She finished, stood me up, and we all got to see the prestige: In PERFECT cursive, it said triumphantly, “THE END!”
This shit blew that My Left Foot shit out of the water. Daniel Day-Lewis can suck this lady’s fucking dick. That dude might be the best actor on earth, but he ain’t writing shit out on people’s bodies with his vagina. I know what you’re thinking—Daniel Day-Lewis doesn’t have a vagina. Fine. Even if we gave him a pass and let him put the Sharpie in his bumhole, it would never have this level of penmanship. It was true art, and I was honored to be a part of it. It was one of the best rounds of applause I’ve ever heard, and, most important, Ben seemed happy.
We returned to the hostel, once again before any of our roommates, and went to sleep. We needed to get to bed earlier than usual. We had a big day ahead of us. We were gonna do shrooms.
* * *
The day’s plan was deceptively simple:
Go buy shrooms.
Eat the shrooms.
Go to the grocery store and buy stuff for a picnic.