As early as fifth grade, I spent every possible moment there. Every day after school, I mowed neighbors’ lawns in preparation for the weekend. Saturday morning, I eagerly endured the hour-long bicycle ride to the Silver Nugget and spent the remainder of the weekend blowing every dime I made during the week.
Now, I was selling grass instead of cutting grass to finance my obsession. Some evenings, my parents drove my friends and me up to the Silver Nugget. I played games while they got stoned outside.
One night before closing time, Richie and I were playing Space Fury. When the game ended, a one-eyed, green alien appeared and insulted the player. Richie quickly ran out of lives, while I continued. As he stepped back, he bumped into my parents, who were waiting for me to finish so they could take us home. Richie knew my propensity for profane verbal outbursts after an intense video battle. Silver Nugget management had warned me multiple times about my coarse language, but I was their best customer, so what could they really do about it. Naturally, he didn’t warn me of my parent’s proximity. When the green alien started talking smack, I slammed my extended middle finger against the glass and screamed, “Fuck you, cocksucker! I fucked your mother up her fat ass!”
I turned to see my parents staring at me, rather surprised, while Richie stood behind them laughing. That moment was the first time they heard me use profanity, as well as refer to oral and anal sex.
The fateful day finally arrived when I learned to inhale. Carol came to my house to get more weed and asked if I wanted to smoke some. I explained to her I was immune from marijuana’s effect. But she knew better. We went on my back porch, and she taught me the proper way to smoke pot. Moments later, while The People’s Court was on television, I rolled on the floor of my living room, laughing at Doug Llewelyn’s face. I LOVED marijuana. I never sold any of my parents’ pot again.
For the sake of dramatic license, I wish I could say the experience with Doug Llewelyn’s face was the first time I got high, but that wouldn’t be accurate. My first “high” occurred when I was twelve years old. I found four small Ziploc bags of white powder in a family member’s boot. I had never witnessed anyone do cocaine before, but somehow, I knew exactly what to do. I got a straw from the kitchen and snorted the first bag. My plan was to replenish it with a pinch from the other three. I certainly looked like an amateur, because I used the entire straw instead of a short section of it. The second I lifted my head, euphoria enveloped my body. The sensation was even better than the one I got from rubbing our silk comforter on my penis. Within minutes, all four bags were empty. I filled them with flour and put them back where I found them.
Suddenly, an urge overcame me, a desire I would wrestle with the rest of my life. Robert had an 8mm projector in his closet along with a stack of films, which I had watched without his knowledge. The reels were pornographic movies starring John Holmes. I had no idea I was watching a legend at work. Although I had never witnessed drug use, I had seen the sex act multiple times. As I stood in my kitchen, grinding my teeth, I felt an intense need to have sex. I hadn’t gone through puberty yet, but cocaine has always affected me that way. I invited a girl named Cheryl to my house and asked her to disrobe. She was two years younger than I, so her answer was “No.” Oh, well. I still had the silk comforter.
Some people who try drugs gateway into harder drugs. The progression is usually cigarettes, then marijuana, then narcotics. Of course, I never did anything correctly. I started with narcotics, then marijuana, then cigarettes. At least this screw-up is one Robert wasn’t aware of.
After the incident with Carol, my daily routine changed. I informed my classmates the pot store was closed. Every morning, I left for school thirty minutes early, walked to the woods behind the park in our neighborhood and got stoned. I performed this ritual every day until I graduated from high school. Occasionally, I brought a joint into the school, asked the teacher to be excused from class, smoked half of it in the bathroom and threw the other half in the toilet without flushing. When the bell rang to go to the next class, I saw Dean Carl, whose niece I was dating, and the other deans running up and down the halls with their walkie-talkies, trying to find the culprit. Who would ever suspect the guy wearing the Barry Manilow shirt? After the first time I did this, the Washington High School administration had the doors to the bathroom stalls removed. But that didn’t stop me. Every time I heard a fellow student complain about the lack of stall doors, I laughed to myself.
Burgess
I met Burgess in eighth grade. He was a tall, lanky kid who had an awkwardness that surpassed my own. The first time I saw him was during PE class while a group of black kids was harassing him.
“Get over here, cracker!” one of them yelled.
Burgess walked over to him.
“Get on your fucking knees!”
“Uh…Okay.”
The black kid crammed Burgess’s face into his crotch.
“Uh…Sorry. You’re not my type,” he said as he stood and walked away.
I told Burgess I thought his response was funny and never mentioned the incident again. We became friends.
Eventually, Burgess got a driver’s license. That weekend, we went out, which was my first taste of autonomy. With the help of Burgess’s older sister, we bought a six pack of beer, loaded up in his mom’s Cadillac, and hit the road. Being the first time I drank alcohol, I was drunk after two beers. As we aimlessly drove around enjoying our new-found freedom, we approached the intersection at Ninth Avenue and Airport Boulevard. The traffic light turned yellow, so Burgess floored the accelerator. We hit the incline at the intersection and went airborne on the other side. The Cadillac bottomed out hard. We pulled into a parking lot to examine the damage and discovered we had ripped a hole in the gas tank, causing a steady stream of gasoline to pour out. But the night was young, and we were both drunk. So, we drove the Cadillac until it stalled, then pushed it the rest of the way to his house. Burgess quietly went inside and came back out with the keys to his Dad’s Audi. We were off again.
Although we did nothing but drive around Pensacola, I had the time of my life. When Burgess took me home, I looked at him and said, “Tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow night it is,” he smiled.
“Awesome!” I was hooked.
The following evening, I brought something better than beer. Burgess’s first experience with marijuana was like mine. He loved it. Thus began our weekend ritual of going out Friday and Saturday night, getting stoned and looking for trouble.
My parents must have become aware of me stealing their weed because they started hiding it much more carefully. Therefore, we had to find other sources. One we frequently used was a bar in a shady section of town which was located behind a Racetrack gas station. We cleverly called that spot the Racetrack. All we had to do was pull up to the bar, roll the window down, and ten black arms would extend into the opening, each holding a bag of weed. We simply made our choice and gave that person the money. Sometimes the pot was high quality, and other times it had the consistency of powder, which Burgess called “particle pot.” Either way, we got high.
One of our favorite stoned activities was admiring mailboxes. The goal was to find the prettiest one and destroy it with a baseball bat. One evening, with Geoff and Cheryl in tow, I suggested an upscale neighborhood off Scenic Highway. After perusing the available targets, I found a dandy. The mailbox was shaped like a house, with real shingles on the roof and ceramic numbers on each side. I crawled out of the car window and swung. The first strike shattered the numbers on one side. The second destroyed the numbers on the other. The subsequent strikes hit the top, flattening the little house until it was demolished.
Without warning, a truck bolted from the driveway. Burgess floored the accelerator, pulled up to Scenic Highway and made a wide right turn without slowing down. The truck screeched around the corner and pulled up right behind us. He pushed the Cadillac to 80 mph, but the truck stayed on our bumper. As we rounded a slight corner, we saw a traffic light a
head, and it was red. Burgess ran it, swerving left to avoid a car in the intersection. The truck did the same.
The four of us were frantically yelling out different suggestions, when someone bellowed, “Throw the beers at him.” For some reason, that idea seemed like a good one. I hung out the window and threw a full beer at the truck, which exploded on the grill. In response, it lunged forward and tapped our rear bumper, causing the Cadillac to fishtail.
Everyone was screaming as Burgess struggled to maintain control. As the Cadillac straightened, a car pulled in front of us, turning left onto Scenic Highway. Burgess locked the brakes. We heard the truck squealing to a stop behind us. We quickly swerved, rushed past the car in front of us, turned right into a neighborhood, and ran four stop signs before turning on Bayou Boulevard. We looked behind us. No truck. But before we could exhale, it swerved around the corner and quickly raced up on us. Burgess got up to 80 mph again. The truck, matching our speed, hit our bumper, sending us skidding sideways onto the shoulder. Burgess maintained his composure and righted the car. He was so preoccupied, he didn’t notice another red light ahead. We ran through the intersection, going airborne on the other side. Thankfully, no one was traveling in the other direction. When we looked back, the truck had stopped at the traffic light.
Burgess wasted no time. He quickly turned right into the Cordova Mall parking lot, raced across Pensacola Junior College, then turned right on College Parkway. We were amazed to see the truck racing through the mall parking lot in our direction. Again, Burgess floored the accelerator, but I suddenly saw a way to end this nightmare. “Pull behind this funeral home on the right,” I yelled.
“But he’ll see us.”
“Just do it.”
Burgess quickly turned into the funeral home, pulled behind the building, and killed the lights. We ducked down and waited. Thirty minutes passed before we were brave enough to look out. The truck was gone. Thus ended our recreational mailbox hunting.
The Business Venture
Burgess and I needed a source of income to finance our weekend plundering. Since selling our weed was not an option, I had to go a different route. Nicky was an acquaintance from our neighborhood, whose mom, Vicky, disliked me immensely. She volunteered at the school and was privy to all my indiscretions. She was convinced I would turn out to be someone who was always in trouble and did drugs. I guess I can’t fault her insightfulness.
Nicky was making money at school selling cinnamon toothpicks for a quarter each. The manufacturing process was simple; take several thin toothpicks and soak them in cinnamon oil, which was an incredibly potent extract. The oil was so powerful it would blister your skin after prolonged contact. Nicky had the hottest toothpicks available, claiming to have soaked them for an entire year. I didn’t believe that claim, so I tried to think of a way to undercut him. I soaked some thick toothpicks, but they were too dense and wouldn’t absorb the oil. After several unsuccessful attempts, I microwaved twenty thick toothpicks for thirty seconds in the oil. My entire house smelled like cinnamon, causing my eyes to burn and water profusely. The end result, however, was magnificent. The thick toothpicks were infused with the cinnamon oil and translucent when held up to the light. They were also insanely hot. I could sell these for fifty cents each, making forty to sixty dollars a week and, as an added bonus, put Nicky out of business. The next morning, I wrapped the twenty powerful toothpicks in aluminum foil, shoved them in my pocket, and headed off to school. When Nicky learned of my superior product, he asked to see a sample. He scratched his head in bewilderment, unsure as to how I pulled it off. I told him I soaked the toothpicks for two years, but he knew I was full of shit.
An unforeseen problem arose after my first day of sales. When I got home, I had a blister on my leg from the oil seeping through the aluminum foil. Transportation turned out to be the biggest challenge to my new business venture. I placed the toothpicks in a plastic bag, but the oil melted it, leaving a larger blister on my other leg. Next, I placed the picks in a plastic aspirin bottle, but they melted and fused themselves to the sides. I found a metal pill bottle with a rubber seal, but the oil melted the gasket, sealing the bottle shut. I acquired another pill bottle and removed the gasket, but the oil seeped out, causing another blister.
While I wrestled with this problem, another one presented itself. A fat, retarded-looking bully named Chuck, a good example of why inbreeding is a bad idea, asked for a toothpick. As I fished one out, he slammed me against the wall and stole my remaining toothpicks as well as the money I had. At least this was an easier problem to solve.
When I got home, I urinated in a bowl and microwaved four toothpicks until they were translucent with my glorious piss. I wrapped them in foil and went to school. On cue, Chuck approached me for another toothpick, except this time a crowd had gathered, waiting to see how I would respond. I demanded the money up front, but Chuck once again slammed me against the wall.
“Here. This is everything I got,” I said as I handed him the four toothpicks. I watched Chuck chew one as he walked away. When he was gone, I announced to everyone that I had, in essence, pissed in Chuck’s mouth. He never assaulted me again. Burgess and I had a well-deserved laugh, but unfortunately, business suffered after the addition of the new flavor.
And I never did solve the transportation problem.
Cheryl
Cheryl, the object of my failed, cocaine-induced, pre-pubescent seduction, eventually became my first love. She was short with wavy, brunette hair, a slight country drawl, an incredible smile, and a slightly turned-up nose, a feature I find irresistible. (I love you, Sandra Bullock.) She also possessed my favorite physical attribute in a woman, big breasts.
And now some background information on…
My Inexplicable Affinity for Breasts
Like all heterosexual males, I love breasts, and I’m not sure why. I had a Princess Leia action figure when I was young and constantly ran my thumb over her plastic breasts. I watched Gilligan’s Island just to gawk at Ginger’s tits. I even got aroused while watching Bugs Bunny’s boobs when he was in drag.
Once, Mom took me to a clothing store. As I sat in the front of the shopping cart, I saw a topless mannequin and blurted out, “Hey Mom! Look at her big titties!” The woman standing next to the mannequin gave us a dirty look.
The best example of how breasts distort my judgment occurred many years later. I was employed at K-Mart as a floater, which meant I worked on the floor when needed and at a cash register the remainder of the time. The cashier manager was a young lady named Christy. She had curly, blonde hair and basketball-sized breasts. To make matters worse, or better, she always wore tight sweaters. I’m getting an erection as I write this. Naturally, I fell in love but was too shy to tell her how I felt. Once though, I came close. I was working on a register when Christy approached me. “What are you doing later?”
“Nothing. You want to go get some ice cream?”
“I meant do they need you on the floor later. I need someone to cover lunch breaks.”
Ice cream! Are you fucking kidding? If I had said, “You want to go have some drinks?” or “Can I take you to dinner?” then I would get an opportunity to touch her breast. But ice cream? I’m such a moron.
A couple of weeks later, my friend, Monique, picked me up from work. As I sat in her car, Christy walked by.
“There’s that girl I told you about,” I said to Moe as I rolled the window down. “Hey Christy, come here.”
“Hi,” she said, leaning in the window.
“Uh…do you work tomorrow?” I asked, struggling to maintain the conversation.
“No, thank God. I’m going to a party tonight. You wanna come?”
“I’d love to. Oh, this is my friend Monique.”
“Hi,” Moe said, with an unusually large grin on her face.
Christy wrote her phone number on a piece of paper. “Call me later,” she said as she winked and walked away. Finally, her breasts were within reach.
“What do
you think of her?” I asked Moe.
Monique had the most unique and animated laugh I have ever heard. She started laughing. “Brett, she’s fucking ugly. Have you ever looked at her face?”
Moe was right. I was so mesmerized by her tits, I never bothered to look at her face. I never called Christy. Two weeks later, I quit K-Mart.
Okay, enough about breasts.
Cheryl was a true joy to be around. We decided to be each other’s “first.” For some reason, we had our first sexual encounter in the back seat of Burgess’s Cadillac in the Pensacola Beach parking lot. Even though it was full of people, we didn’t care. It was over in fifteen seconds. The worst sexual performance of my life was also the most memorable. I looked into Cheryl’s eyes, and my heart melted. I felt real love for her and thought she would be the woman I would spend the rest of my life with. I guess first loves are like that. I was definitely head over heels. Every love after Cheryl was heels over head.
After that evening, we were inseparable. Cheryl was my new silk comforter, and I couldn’t keep my hands off her. We also discovered something else we enjoyed as much as sex: marijuana. After getting stoned, Cheryl, with her beautiful, country drawl, would say, “Brett. I’m horny. I wanna fuck.” For us, weed and sex went hand in hand.
Robert gave me a red AMC Gremlin when I was old enough to drive. Although it was rather odd-looking, some of the best times of my life occurred in that car. My refusal to perform any type of maintenance on the car caused a tremendous amount of strife between Robert and me. I also stopped doing my chores around the house. Responsibility caused the party to stop, so I resisted the idea. Robert took my laziness as purposeful defiance. Out of frustration, he once beat me with a belt as I lay in bed. But my failure to follow instructions was not intentional. I suffered from tunnel vision. Only two things occupied my mind:
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