Junglist

by Two Fingas

  I nod my head in time to the off-cadence rhyming scheme as I lick half of a gummed edge and stick my two papers together. The woman sitting next to me stands up, knocking me slightly, and doesn’t even say excuse me as she saunters off. I’m giving her butt the evil eye as Q slides in beside me and Biggie decides now’s the right time to make a play for a honey who’s standing all on her lonesome, looking out the window at the night below.

  — Why do you smoke so much?

  I look up from sprinkling my grass into the joined king-size Rizlas to look at Q’s earnest face. He’s being serious now, no bullshitting. So I tell him the truth.

  — I like feeling stoned, when everything slows down and you can just float away. It’s a damn good feeling. But the best thing about it is I’m still myself, I’m not tripping or speeding or loving everyone to death, I’m just me doing me things but in a mellow way.

  I lick down the side of a cigarette. Silk Cut ultra-low tar, tear the wet strip away and sprinkle half the contents of the cigarette into the Rizla, twisting the ragged paper back around the cigarette so the tobacco doesn’t fall out when it’s back in the packet.

  — Why?

  Q looks down at his hands, sits up and leans forward, rubs his nose for a second, then stares at me.

  — I don’t know, I want to know what it feels like.

  I’m loading the roach into the end now and carefully tapping with a finger to pick any missed fragments so I can slide them into the open end. Having got as much in as possible — not that there was much floating around — I twist the end and insert the spliff into my mouth.

  — Have you ever smoked a cigarette?

  — No. You know I haven’t.

  — Smoking a cigarette is like smoking a joint. Your head goes light, it goes cold, experiences seem that much sharper and it’s sort of like being drunk yet not at the same time. Spliffs give you that but they also mellow you out — make everything easier, not so much of a rush or a hassle. You just feel calmer all the way around.

  I take out my lighter and hold it reflectively in my hands. A Zippo. Going on a zippo raid, Sarge. Well make sure and burn down some gook village for me, son. Do it for me, son. Burn one for the Gipper. I’ve always wanted one, I just love the sound they make — and the act of opening it is so cool. I suppose it’s why I’ve got a jack knife as well; I just love flicking things open.

  — Do you want to try it?

  Q looks at me uncertainly and I’m sure he’s going to say no, just by the look on his face, as if I’ve just told him to eat shit.

  — Emily says I don’t take enough risks, that I’m safe — which is what attracted me to her. That I need to lighten up, stop being so serious. How is smoking a spliff going to make me act less serious?

  — I ain’t the world’s greatest expert on love and sex and women and all that stuff but leave her well enough alone. Any woman that wants to change you don’t really want you, she wants some fake-ass magazine construction.

  Q looks unsure of this. His face was tortured as he told me what he’d been holding in for so long. Anal sex — getting it or not — was the least of his problems. I light my joint and puff on it, getting it to burn smooth, taking a few quick drags, blow out smoke and hold it out to Q. He looks at me, then slowly takes it from my hand.

  — Don’t laugh if I start coughing.

  — Just inhale and pull it deep into your lungs, hold it there, then let it out nice and slow.

  He puts it to his mouth and makes a huge O with his lips before taking a tentative drag and blowing it out very quickly. He tries again and holds it down for longer, his eyes watering as the smoke wafts into them. Takes another drag and takes it down, holds it for a long second then breathes it out. I see his body start to relax almost immediately. His eyes take on a hooded look as his lids lower. His hand rises slowly to his mouth and drags deep, expelling the smoke in a long stream as if he’s been doing this for years.

  — You’ve done this before haven’t you?

  He gives a little-boy grin and passes it back to me, I wave it away and start building another one, letting him get really stoned. We weren’t going to drive back tonight anyway.

  — I was like Bill Clinton, I smoked one but I never inhaled.

  This sends him into a fit of the giggles, trying to hide his mouth behind his hand without burning his nose with the spliff.

  LONELY HEARTS

  I slide off the chair and over to her. She’s gorgeous, large eyes, rosebud mouth, with a luscious bottom lip. Breasts pert but full, stretching her top, long bare legs beneath a short skirt and, what’s best, bare feet encased in Reebok classics.

  — Hi!

  She turns away from looking down on the city. Immediately, I make eye contact with her. Being honest and truthful. She looks at me. As if asking why I’m doing this, she doesn’t know me. Why should she talk to me? This is always the hardest part — getting a woman to talk to you for more than a minute without her just shaking her head, or answering with a simple yes-or-no answer. You have to structure your questions so that you get more than one-word answers. This is especially difficult if you’re coming in cold, when she hasn’t made eye contact before letting you know that she’s interested, because you’re trying to get to her before someone else does.

  — My name’s Biggie, what’s yours?

  A simple question to a simple answer is all I require at this point, just to let me know whether she’s interested or not.

  — I don’t really want to talk right now.

  She’s being blatant, hoping that her being frosty is enough to make me disappear back to whichever part of the room I appeared from. She’s turned her head away, already gone back to looking out of the wide expanse of glass window. I lean forward and put my head next to hers and look out at what she’s looking at. Turn my head and whisper into her ear.

  — Do you like chocolate?

  This makes her think. Women like chocolate like men like football, if allowed to run unchecked it can become an obsession. I know this. I live in a house full of women and it’s shown me what is needed to gain access to a woman’s heart and, through that, her pussy. Chocolate is a powerful tool to be used only sparingly. After she’s thought for maybe a second, she gives me the what-do-you-take-me-for look, and turns away again. I retreat back into honesty.

  — OK so you don’t want to speak to me, that’s fine.

  I smile then just to put her at ease.

  — But I would like to speak to you when you’re more willing. Look here’s my number, if you get the desire to eat chocolate, you know who to call.

  I slip the ready-written number onto the sill in front of her and turn away back to Meth and Q. Right now she’s thinking furiously about what just happened, trying to figure out which angle I’m playing, wondering if it’s worth it. I’ve left the ball in her court because I didn’t ask for her number, I gave her mine. Makes her think, makes her decide. Gives her the power in a situation like this to say yes or no. Rather than just saying no all the time because you just don’t want to be harassed anymore. I can see her thinking about it, trying not to look at the number.

  See the night reflecting off her olive skin. She’s half-caste and even as the word’s travelling into my head I slip it to mixed race. Fuck being politically correct, but half-caste is almost as bad as being called a nigga. And it pisses me off this incessant debate about skin tone. Why does it make so much fucking difference? We’re all the same under the skin, we can all have sex with whoever, cutting out all cultural and religious differences. Physically. we can create babies with anyone, regardless of their skin tone. There is no such thing as race, for there is only the human race, and we are all part of it.

  It just burns me when all people can think about is whether you’re going out with a white girl or not, or a white guy or not. Having white blood in you, having Black blood in you, as if you can tell how Black a person is just by looking at their complexion. It is just so dishonest, so fucking dishonest. Live a
nd let live. Why the eternal question: Am I dark enough? I’m too light. Get the fuck outta here. You are what you are. Just saying I’m only going out with dark-skinned Black women is wrong, and divisive, it makes people nothing more than a skin tone.

  When guys like Meth, who are as dark as fuck, want the light-skinned honeys, because it’s closer to white without being white, then give me all that bullshit about jungle fever when I go out with a white girl. It’s just so much knob. They’re all militant against white people, yet they are willing to overlook the white blood in their girlfriends just because they’ve been brought up in a Black environment, and act Black, and talk Black. But don’t they think that mixed race people are as confused as anyone else about what is happening. Do they feel comfortable in Black surroundings with Black people, or do they feel more at ease with white people, because their blackness is not questioned, they know where they stand, whereas with Black people there is always going to be the stigma of having a white parent and, in so doing, just not being Black enough.

  People have to understand that sexual desire and physical attraction have no conventions, obey no restrictions. Why else would slave owners, who had their own white wives, go out into the fields to have sex with Black women? Now if I was a slave never having seen a white person before, I would have thought they were piss ugly, and vice versa. So what drove these slave-owners to spread their seed far and wide with our ancestors, making light-skinned children, then shoving the blame for their own desires onto Black women, creating this myth about them as being wanton and always ready, just as they reconstructed the Black male into this sex-hungry, bigdicked animal, who lusts after white flesh?

  All skin tone proves is that if you have dark skin you live near the equator, light skins to the poles and yellows and browns in between. The differences are climatic but they have been transformed into genetics.

  All this thinking is doing my head in. I can’t get my head around it. I know my point of view and where I stand, I’ll go out with any girl if I’m attracted to her and everyone else can spin on a sharp stake slowly. I take a sip of my drink, rum and coke, and move over to where Q is sitting, head back, dying spliff in his hand, with Meth quietly and efficiently making another one on his lap.

  — I hope you know what you’re doing?

  THE ANAMORPHIC Q

  I slide deeper into the seat and feel the drug swirl around my head. Images come unbidden as my conscious mind slips away. Aware of the sounds around me but my unconscious pushing through, making things stand out as if my lens was out of focus and it’s been pulled sharply into clarity.

  Beauty lay within the court-room and instructed me to follow my own road. I asked her where true beauty can be found and she led me through forests and deserts. We flew under water and over air. Travelled through rich and poor, spoke to charming animals, attractive people. We wandered and ran — to nowhere — and returned to the court. Then she left me alone, years away from my true home. So I left and returned to the elements, looking for true beauty. I roamed again until, at the furthest point to which I had ever travelled, I stopped. All around was blackness. A deep, shiny, domineering dark. And in an instant I transcended my own mind and started a journey within, that lasted time. I was waking up. The darkness darkened and awareness fell like dawn. I returned again to the physical to discover beauty at its highest. It was all the same except I felt everything in technicolour. I heard birds singing from miles and smelled the buzzing plants. It was all beautiful but nothing paralleled the beauty I had found in my own court-room.

  I slip back into intelligible thought. I haven’t dreamt in a long time. Well I know I still dream it’s just that I don’t remember them. When I was younger I used to dream about being a racing driver, recurring images of myself at the wheel of a very fast Formula One car, racing down a long straight. I used to dream it every night on and off for about seven months. Then I stopped and never dreamed it again. I still don’t know why I dreamt it in the first place. I was thirteen at the time and susceptible to all kinds of influences. Try not to worry too much about what might have been, right now I’m reading English and History at university and trying to keep my head above water in this relationship. Emily just seems to be swamping me and I feel that I’m losing too much of myself.

  I don’t have to look down to know the spliff’s dead, it’s lighted end no longer glowing, now black and smoky.

  This is what I mean. Before I met Emily, this would never have happened, but I can’t be sure that it wasn’t going to happen anyway. Can’t be sure that this rebel in me wasn’t there all along. That I was going to smoke dope and slip into intoxicating sexual relationships. Just thinking about Emily makes me stiff in my pants. It appears so quickly, I’m immediately uncomfortable and trying to shift my position. So doing, I open my eyes and find Biggie blowing smoke into my nostrils, grinning as he does it. I smile to show that I’m not offended and not likely to rip his head off.

  When Alex returns.

  — Budge up Meth. Skinning up without me. That’s deplorable.

  — You know me: roll that shit, light that shit, smoke it.

  Alex slides in beside Meth and happily wraps his arm around his shoulder. Smiling beatifically into our faces, his gaze slipping away into the distance, watching people’s faces. Since I’ve been away in dreamland, the DJ’s slipped into another set, cool swing, Jodeci, voices sighing in harmony as the chorus comes in. The dancefloor is becoming slightly packed, with couples swaying together, arms locked tight around each other’s bodies. Reminds me of Valentine’s Day. Reminds me of Emily. Alex bends down his nimble fingers, quickly rolling another spliff, even as Meth is bringing his to his lips, Zippo at the ready. Biggie’s looking up at the ceiling as he tries to blow smoke rings with his half-finished joint. I hold out my hand and he looks surprised for an instant, then passes it over.

  — Don’t smoke all of it.

  — So. What happened to you and the girl then?

  — Nothing, I gave her my number and we’ll see what we shall see.

  — How do you do it? How do you get all those girls?

  — You just talk to them, as human beings, rather than holes for your dick.

  — That simple?

  — Yep.

  I can feel myself slipping away. The spliff’s just too much for me, I can feel my senses sliding into other realms. Close my eyes and it feels as if I’m moving into hyperspace, constantly jumping towards and through objects in the distance, my whole field of vision taken in by that slanting square of movement. I wonder if this is what it feels like to be tripping. But, from what I’ve heard, that’s like total sensory overload.

  Open my eyes and bend down for the drink, but I can’t find it. It’s down there, I know, and my hand’s searching around. I don’t want to lean forward in case I fall off the sofa, so I hunt around for another few minutes, with Biggie looking at me very strangely indeed. Feel my hand hit a cold glass, clutch it to me and hold it up. My eyes are going hyperspace on me, as I jump toward the glass, then through the glass, then into the orange juice, then through the other side of the glass and towards the window. Quickly take a sip and wipe my hand over my face and sit very quietly hoping that the feeling will go away if I don’t move. I drink the juice feeling the intoxication lessen, but the clammy dirty feeling that had been in my mouth for a while disappears as the juice slides down my throat. I find that now I actually want to smoke some more, so I bring the spliff to my lips and take another toke.

  BE A CHILD OF YOUR TIME

  Alex doesn’t bother to put any tobacco into his spliff, just fills it up with grass, pulling out a wooden box about the size of a cigarette packet and sprinkling his grass onto his papers. Rolls it swiftly and lights it. Taking long pulls on it. Letting his body become looser, more sinuous. Offers it to me and I look at the spliff in my hand and the temptation is too much, I pass mine along to Biggie, who’s watching Q get more and more stoned. Take a drag and sit there feeling it rush across my chest and up to m
y brain. Wash out, riding the waves of experience and sensation. Alex has got his head on his hand and is looking at me, a smile in his eyes as he watches me smoke.

  — What? What?

  — Nothing. I just like watching you smoke, so delicate. You know when you smoke you show your true self. No masks, no covering, just the bare essentials.

  I look at him. This is one of Alex’s well-known tangents, slipping away into some topic of conversation that makes no sense whatsoever except to himself. I suppose it’s one of the reasons I like him so much. I see alot of me in him.

  — Next I suppose you’ll be telling me that looking through a person’s record collection is like looking through their underwear draw.

  — How did you guess? Are you telepathic?

  I blow smoke in his face, just to let him know I know that he’s not being serious, and pull myself to my feet. The DJ’s playing I Wanna Be Down, the intro rolling through.

  — I’m gonna dance.

  I move very gingerly into the crowded ruck of bodies now swaying in front of the sofa, knowing I won’t have a seat to go back to once the song’s done. The vocals are soft and gentle as I close my eyes and listen to the song, doing my soul dance, back and forth, one foot out, one foot back, click my fingers, take another drag on my joint. The undiluted grass wafting in a stream out of my mouth into the already smoke-filled air.

  Beneath my lids I see the music drifting on the breeze of motion created by our dancing. I feel lonely. I want some female company, but I can’t be bothered to step to a girl. So much hard work and graft. What would be really nice is if a girl stepped to me. But that ain’t never gonna happen. The only girls that step to me are either drunk, ugly or both. The pretty ones just stand and wait, passive princess waiting for that knight in shiny white armour to come and speak to them. So when the ugly bastard from around the way steps forth because he’s secure in his ugliness and doesn’t mind chatting pure rubbishness in her ear for a long while, she takes him and then stays with him for the next five years of her life, just because he stepped to her. Life is ultimately unfair, whichever way you spin it. If you play spin the bottle, you’ll kiss the ugly ho at the other end. It’s inevitable.