by Jason Good
Dad gave me fifty dollars, which I lost playing a card game I didn’t understand and couldn’t learn because the gentleman seated next to me was caressing a tall stack of thousand-dollar chips with his monstrous, hairy, bejeweled fingers—fingers that belonged wrapped around the handle of a metallic suitcase containing launch codes. Certain that I was moments from being taken hostage, I walked over to watch Dad’s action. Fifty-dollar-minimum blackjack tables have a tendency to break the common man quickly, and he was no exception. “Fuck this place,” Dad muttered.
As the elevator doors closed, I reached inside my sport coat and found a five-dollar chip. “We have to play roulette with that,” Dad said, looking at his watch. It was now after midnight and technically my parents’ twenty-second wedding anniversary.
We wiggled past the other players, placed our chip, and turned back to the elevator in preparation for losing. But a thick Middle Eastern accent sliced through the white noise and announced, “Twenty-two red.”
“I’ll be damned! Look at that. And our anniversary, no less!” Dad yelled. Then he high-fived me but missed, causing him to make contact with my goatee. He wiped his hand on his coat as the other players grumbled.
After the croupier raked up the other chips, worth thousands and thousands of dollars, he slid a foot-tall stack of red ones toward us. We looked around with excitement but were met with icy stares. We shouldn’t have expected any congratulations for winning $175 from people who had just parted with ten times that amount. In our heads, we were both muttering, “But, but, isn’t it cool that it’s an anniversary and stuff? No? You guys don’t care?” More annoying to them was the fact that we immediately cashed out. I think they wanted to see us lose our meager fortune, but $175 would pay for a nice anniversary dinner and, as we would learn twenty years later, plenty of “medicine.”
The closest weed place is a mile away and named something predictable like Green Oakland or Medi-Buds. The kind of name that feebly tries to convey legitimacy without obfuscating the fact that it “totes sells weed, bro.”
“This is a cool town,” I say, before swerving to avoid an unattended shopping cart.
Dad grabs the door handle in a panic but quickly relaxes and smiles. “That’s Oakland for ya,” he says.
After parking, the three of us—Dad in his slacks and sport coat, me in a T-shirt and goose bumps, and Mom in her yellow slicker—make our way to 94 Weber Street. The weather is clear now, but Mom brings her umbrella anyway, despite blue skies. On foot, we pass an opaque store-front bellowing enough incense to mask the stench of a slaughterhouse.
“Well, shit. There is no number 94. The goddamn place is gone.” Dad is frustrated, but recovers upon seeing an elderly woman carrying some leafy greens. “Jesus Christ, look at the pile of bok choy that Asian woman is carrying.”
“Neat!” Mom replies, in the same voice she uses with her grandchildren.
“I think it might be that place we just passed,” I say.
“You mean the Rasta store? That’s not the right address, Jason. I’m not going anyplace with the wrong address.”
As we pass the “Rasta store” on the way back to the car, a dread-locked man with a hole in his earlobe large enough to harbor an infant slides in front of us.
“Medical marijuana?” he asks, shifty-eyed.
“Yes,” Dad responds.
The man points to a darkened door and motions for us to join him. I hesitate, finding it unsettling that a dispensary can move around randomly like the island on Lost.
In a small, beige waiting room, we sit on folding chairs with a few other gentlemen, each of whom is struggling to locate an object in his cargo shorts or parka. In their defense, the weather is unpredictable in Oakland, and one can never have too many pockets. Mom is trying to appear seasoned by commenting on the graffiti, but those efforts are undermined by the way she’s clutching her purse. Dad signs a contract and asks if I will be permitted to join him inside. The manager seems uncomfortable and tells us that without an additional caregiver document (which he can provide for fifty dollars), I will have to stay in the waiting room. Mom and I brace ourselves: this type of capitalist opportunism triggers Dad’s “Red Passenger.” That’s what I call the tiny consumer rights activist who perches on his shoulder when something unfair happens in the marketplace. “Well, then, we’ll take our business elsewhere,” Dad says, reaching out for the contract.
The manager pulls it back. “Sorry. It’s our property now, but I’ll shred it.”
Dad gangsters-up and rips off the part of the contract containing his signature, stuffs it in his blazer pocket, and storms out. Mom and I follow, meekly.
Marijuana cards are easy to come by in the Bay Area. Dad could have obtained one at any time by telling a “green doctor” that he was “all out of pot.” He was never a big weed smoker, as far as I know, but I’m sure he would have liked to have had some around the apartment if only to exercise his civil rights. Up to now, he had resisted getting a card because, as he put it, “I don’t want to be on any kind of list.” Dad has always had an irrational fear that the government is watching him. Or maybe he pretends they are because it makes him feel dangerous and subversive like Cesar Chavez.
Two years before, for similar reasons, Dad had refused to drive my car. Later, I overheard him whisper to Mom, “Jody, I will not drive a vehicle with an expired registration. If we get pulled over, they’ll impound the car and put us in jail.” Apparently, Dad grew up in East Germany.
The next morning he made an announcement. “Okay, you two are taking a whole day to get that car registered. We’ll take Silas and Arlo to the zoo.”
I protested that we would rather do something a little more glamorous with a day off.
“Well, that’s the offer. Take it or leave it,” he said.
I laughed. “This is ridiculous. Why does it matter?”
“Because I don’t want to end up on any lists.”
“What lists?”
“Any goddamn list. I don’t want to be on it.”
“Who keeps lists?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“What do they do with these lists?”
“Well, that’s the thing. You don’t know what they’re gonna do with them.” He was getting agitated. “You wanna know what the lists are for, Jason? I’ll tell you. They give them to a syndicate that uses them to decide who gets the drug and who gets the placebo. And I want the drug, don’t you? Don’t you want the drug?” He was joking now, but if anyone else heard that kind of rant, we would have had no other option than to send him off to a nice place where he could paint and play euchre with other conspiracy theorists.
Now, after getting “bumped to the front of the big list,” as he put it, being a registered marijuana user is hardly a concern, and so the family quest for weed continues.
Sour Monkey
Back in the car, Dad starts barking orders. “Go down to Embarcadero and take a left. I think there’s a place there.”
“Do we want to get lun—?” Mom starts to ask.
“No! Just go,” we snap.
Mom maintains a glamorously thin figure by eating what Dad calls “bird food” every couple of hours. “Just enough to make me half full,” she says. Dad and I eat twice a day, just enough to fill up on shame and regret.
Greeting us at the entrance of the clinic is a nice young man with the kind of vacant smile that suggests he’s on the cusp of going Hare Krishna. When we ask about the caregiver situation, he says that one of us can accompany Dad inside. Mom, suddenly remembering where she’d stowed some almonds and a small baggie of celery, announces that she’ll wait for us in the car.
Dad and I walk up the ramp, open the door, and enter a science fiction movie. Natural drugs and spiritual therapies are the only options here. Unlike the lunch-tray-green warehouses of traditional medicine, everything is made of organic materials: the desks, birch; the floors, bamboo. Giant ferns and a trickling Zen fountain adorn the reception area. As sunlight
beams in through skylights, I think it wouldn’t be at all odd for a Roomba to glide by, pausing briefly to nuzzle at our feet. Though we are the only customers without chain wallets, I know this is a place of wellness and hope. Had the employees been clad in white robes instead of tattoos and concert T-shirts for bands I’ve never heard of, I might have thought we’d died and gone to Hollywood’s version of heaven.
Life moves more slowly here. People are happy, and nothing feels urgent. Customers can not only purchase marijuana in all its glorious forms (edibles, tinctures, sodas, candies), but also take yoga classes, receive Reiki treatments, or simply choose to kick back and rap about mindfulness. Dad’s Red Passenger can’t breathe in here, and after filling out a form and providing the golden ticket we wander into the main room.
Since Dad is leery of inhaling smoke, our first stop is the vaporizer counter. Vaporizers don’t burn the marijuana. They heat it just enough to release THC, which is then inhaled along with a mysterious vapor. As the unmistakable aroma of fresh bud punched me in the face the moment we walked in, I am chomping to visit one of the marijuana stations for a closer look. But Dad is in charge here, and spends ten agonizing minutes talking to the vaporizer guy as I test out hemp lotions and reminisce about my sophomore year of college.
After finishing up his paraphernalia consult, Dad catches up with me in the plant nursery. “The vaporizers are too expensive here,” he says. “The guy told me we can get the same thing for cheaper from Big Al’s in Berkeley.”
“Is that a dude or a store?” I ask.
“A store, I think. I mean, I hope it’s a store, right?” He pauses. “Okay, then. Should we buy some grass?”
“Yes! But don’t call it that.”
“Ganja?”
“No, that’s worse.”
“Kush?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Thai Stick?”
“Too eighties.”
“Funkadelic?”
“Stop.”
For a few minutes we forget why we are here. Dad is having a good day. The blood transfusion he received earlier, or “doping,” as we are calling it, makes him energetic for days at a time. He sits on a lounge chair in the oncology ward, a soft, worn-out old man. But as the fresh new blood starts flowing through him, he’ll begin bouncing his leg, his eyes will open wider, and, occasionally, he’ll start complaining about how long it’s taking for the nurse to remove his IV.
I find these sudden changes in Dad’s temperament to be bittersweet. The tired, needy version of him fosters a deeper intimacy between us. I wonder if they can give him just enough new blood to keep him going, but not enough that he no longer needs me. I like him being a burden.
The previous night, the three of us had been trying to decide what movie to go see. It was between Django Unchained and, well, that was it—Dad and I had our hearts set on it.
“The only Tarantino film I like is Pulp Fiction,” Mom said.
“Have you seen any other ones?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
My dad was winded from tying his shoes, “Jace . . . your mom just doesn’t like violence.”
“But Pulp Fiction is insanely violent.”
“Yes, but it has John Travolta in it,” she answered with an innocent smirk.
“Oh, I get it.”
“Hell, I’d watch Jessica Lange . . . ,” Dad said, pausing to catch his breath, “slaughter a lamb.” A great line tainted by an awkward cadence.
Mom sat down and picked up her book, a clear indication that she wouldn’t be joining us. “Do you have your handicap placard?”
The dad I once knew might have felt this question was infantilizing and snapped, “Well, Jody, since I don’t need it for anything but driving, I’m gonna guess it’s still in the car, where it’s always been since the moment we got it.” Instead all he mustered was a polite “Yes, it’s in the car.” In retrospect, we should have seen this as a sign that he wasn’t well enough to venture out.
At the theater, after buying a “butter tub” (a term Dad adopted from his hero, David Letterman), Dad cleaned his seat with sanitizing wipes. He had a low white-blood-cell count and knew theater seats were home to more nastiness than airport lavatories. Of course, eating a butter tub wasn’t helping him either, but it was nice to see he still had his priorities in order. It’s important to continue enjoying life’s unhealthy pleasures.
With the popcorn placed perfectly between us, the previews began. After each, I obnoxiously yelled, “Nope!” Dad was embarrassed, but also laughing. My comedic goal has always been to conjure both reactions simultaneously. Toward the beginning of the movie, there’s a tense moment when, as viewers, we’re unsure if Django will agree to join his co-protagonist on a murderous journey to rid the South of its skinny-tied racists. Though we know he will (for the sake of the movie and all), it was riveting. I glanced at Dad and found him equally engaged, his mouth open, baseball hat shifted a quarter turn to the side.
Then, on the screen, in a dramatic burst of glory, a set of barn doors swung open. Before us were Django and his partner, united, and mounted on matching white steeds. I nearly cheered, but then Jim Croce’s “I Got a Name” started playing, and Dad and I burst out laughing instead. If we had been alone, we might have been able to stop, but each time I thought I had myself under control, he’d look at me, and we’d both start up again like two fourteen-year-olds unable to contain ourselves after the chubby kid ripped a three-octave fart in geometry class.
I found it strange that no one else in the theater was laughing. Was the humor in breaking such heavy tension with the sappiest of songs lost on everyone else? Maybe we just had too much of our own tension to release. Of course, we might have been responding to the metaphorical significance of the scene—two men joining forces to fight an evil, seemingly insurmountable foe—but we were too deep in the moment to recognize it.
When the movie ended, Dad stood up too quickly. Light-headed, he grabbed the back of my seat to steady himself. “I shouldn’t have put so much butter on that popcorn,” he said, trying to remain calm and avoid causing any alarm.
“Do you want to sit for a minute?” I asked.
“No. If I sit down, I won’t be able to get up again.”
“Do you think you can make it to the car?” I saw fear and vulnerability on his face for the first time. We were in this together.
“Yes, I think so,” he said, draping his arm around me. It felt good to support him, but he was steadily releasing more of his weight onto me. At six-foot-four, two hundred pounds, he was not a frail man, and my muscles were accustomed to shouldering only small children. We walked slowly down the stairs as the cleaning crew entered. After slithering through a set of swinging doors and out into the harsh light of the concession area, Dad stopped. “I need to sit down. Now,” he said. I looked around but didn’t see any chairs close by.
“Should we just sit here on the floor?” I asked.
He considered it, but after gazing down at the red-and-gold-checkered carpeting, he said, “No, let’s keep going.”
We passed the glass box filled with yellow popcorn, and then the small room with video games where a tween was stomping out rhythms on Dance Dance Revolution. A young African American employee flashed a concerned look, but the movie had caused me to experience a flare-up of white guilt, so I just smiled, gave him a thumbs-up, and trudged on.
I want to say that my mind raced through all possible scenarios. Should I call Mom? His doctor? An ambulance? But I was focused only on getting him to the car. His mouth was open, gasping for air. His breath was fetid. A thick string of spit stretched between his top and bottom lip. His hair was disheveled, his jeans too short, and his floppy, old-man ears were full of wax and wily hairs. As his arm trembled on my narrow, quaking shoulders, I saw our reflection in the doors. Hunched over and helpless, Dad was barely a man.
I opened the passenger-side door, and he collapsed into the seat. A sense of calm came over
his face. He was exhausted but no longer worried about dying inside a multiplex, which is second only to White Castle on the list of the worst places to die.
Lesson: “Remember, he’s watching how you treat your dad.”
Dad’s revision: “You’re goddamn right he is!”
We were quiet on the way home. I felt relieved and proud of both of us. I was physically and emotionally necessary, and he was okay with that. Though unlikely, I hoped that if Dad should ever be cured, this dynamic might endure, however odd it might be for him.
I can only imagine what it’s like to have an adult child. The idea of my young boys taking care of me is comical. “Should I put a cheesestick on your cataracts, Daddy?” Sweet, but ineffective. There will come a day, though, when I see them differently. One day they will make me laugh by telling an amazing story or making a witty comment. One day they’ll assist me up icy stairs, remind me to take my pills, or convince me that it’s not acceptable to wear slippers to the grocery.
It’s finally our turn at the weed place, and Kyle, a bearded fella who appears dressed for his night gig in a Foghat cover band, motions for Dad and me to join him at his counter. “So what can I do for you guys?” he asks, waving his arm across the glass case containing at least a dozen different strains of marijuana. It’s like we’re shopping for engagement rings.
Dad wastes no time getting to the point. “Well, I have a blood cancer, and I want to be happier.” I gasp and choke on my own spit, but Kyle doesn’t so much as blink. This is routine stuff for him. “Okay, so you want something that’s going to make you creative and give you energy?”