6 Chapter 5: The Ganja
Also, during grade 8 I had an enduring friendship with a guy named Bobby. Both of us were highly egotistical and easily offended. So, as a result of that we argued almost constantly. Days were spent at his place in a rural community outside of Fredericton called "Durham". When both our minds were put together, we usually found something mischievous to feed our need for stimulation.
Bobby got me into a lot of activities that I otherwise would not have been interested in doing. Which, for the most part was pretty grand. He had a four-person tent and a variety of camping gear. His parents were really easy going and we could generally do as we pleased as long as it wasn't hurting anyone. We'd walk to all areas of Durham, set up camp and spend the night. Often, we found ourselves anxious and afraid once the blackness of the night fully embraced our surroundings. His Mother and Father were a quick call away and soon enough we'd be back in the comfort of their home. There was a large silver pipe that ran through Bobby's room. It made a consistent droning noise that gave me an odd feeling of comfort. Maybe because it had something to do with heating the home or maybe it distracted me from my own thoughts. This was a welcomed sedative after returning from the uncertainty of our outdoor surroundings.
During the fall of that year a group of us set up camp out in Bobby's neck of the woods. We set up our tents in the middle of an open field laden with long grass that stretched up to your waste line. We weren't as nervous this time when nightfall came because there were four or five of us. Bored and searching for something to do, we decided to visit the local elementary school. While we made our way there, we bantered back and forth about some sort of garble; I wondered why we were going to the school, it seemed the boys were void of any actual intentions. We trekked through the long grass that left us damp from the dew of the autumn dusk. When we arrived at the School, I noticed that Bobby had a large can of gasoline and some matches. He poured some out onto the hardened mud of the Schools playground, flicked the match and set the gasoline ablaze. The light of the fire ripped through the deep blackness of the rural midnight. The flame suddenly streaked towards the can that was filled with fuel. Bobby had laid the container on the ground when he lit the matches. I was certain it would explode, but instead of panic Bobby stepped onto the red gasoline container and started jumping; up and down he leapt as the fire grew more furious each time Bobby's body weight came down full force on the container. His eyes were lit up; they seemed possessed and vibing with the adrenaline and euphoria of the moment. We both loved anything that would allow us to escape the grueling day to day grind of normal life, and these careless escapades were just another example of the need to transcend reality. No one was hurt that night... my god we were lucky.
Bobby's house was next to the Nashwaak River directly across from a beautiful golf course. We would often get ourselves into trouble walking across the river that ran between his house and the course. Once we arrived alongside one of the fairways, we would peek through the trees to make sure there weren't any golfers playing. Once we realized the coast was clear we would take off our shoes and socks and wade into one of the water traps. The mud was soft and I can still feel my feet sinking into the squishiness. We'd reach down into the murky water and fish out as many golf balls as possible. Once we gathered a bucket full, we would tote them down to the river, wash them, and then sell the balls to golfers for a discounted price. A discounted price in comparison to the golf balls they would buy at the lodge. Now this endeavor was not free from risk; there was a "Course Marshall" who would ride around on a golf cart making sure that everything was running smoothly. There were a few times when Bobby and I had to sprint off the course to get away from his watchful eye and firm condemnation. I guess he really couldn't do much other than get mad, which he did. We spent quite a lot of time in water traps fishing out balls and cleaning them off in the river. Over time we became familiar with the way the course ran.
During a mid-August heat wave Bobby and I waded through the water and found ourselves barreling through the tree's and vegetation surrounding the course, Bobby told me he noticed that the golf carts by the lodge had their keys left in the ignition. He said that even at night the keys were available and the carts were never locked up. This intrigued both of us and ignited our devious nature.
There was another aspect of life out in rural New Brunswick that was convenient for Bobby's family. There wasn't a high police presence and therefore it was easy to grow marijuana undetected. It was also a lot easier to get away with things you wouldn't usually get away with within the City limits. During one of our trips to the local convenience store we attempted to buy a couple 0.5 percent beers. We pleaded and joked with the clerk behind the counter to let us purchase the brew. She gave in eventually. Bobby and I took the beers outside and attempted to chug them by the big empty dumpster that sat directly beside the old gas station. Both of us spat the beer out of our mouths after the third drink and threw the cans into the dumpster. Disgusting... how could anyone enjoy this shit? We both knew full well that we weren't going to get a buzz off a single beer, we just reveled in the excitement of doing something we weren't supposed to. So, since we failed to conjure a high out of the 0.5 % beer can we had purchased, Bobby decided to tell me about the tobacco containers filled with marijuana in his parent's closet. He said that this would definitely get us high. At the time my idea of getting high was just about acquiring a high amount of energy. Guess maybe I attributed it to a deadly dose of caffeine.
The next time I arrived out at Bobby's place he had managed to get ahold of some weed. He then attempted to roll it into a joint. He did pretty well for himself in my opinion. After he managed to get the paper to hold the weed in place, we made our way up to the field out behind the old convenience store. Both of us did our best to take a drag off the joint and inhale affectively. Afterwards, we both pretended to be high. In actuality I felt nothing. We danced around the field, laughed and joked around only to find ourselves perched on an old wooden bleacher that sat beside the abandoned soccer pitch. Failure... again.
A few weeks later Bobby's family had some friends over to chat the night away and sip on some drinks. One of the couples that came to visit had a son around our age that decided to join us. We also made a call to a friend of ours who lived a couple of kilometers down the road and told him to come on over if he wished.
During Grade Eight I spent a crazy amount of time at Bobby's. We were always up to something mischievous add two more adolescent boys to the equation and something interesting was bound to happen. So, once the four of us were together Bobby presented the plant that would entertain us for the evening. He had taken some more of his parent's dope and wrapped it into a joint for us to pass around. Obviously, the joint couldn't be smoked by Bobby's house, so we made our way up to the main road. The sun was beginning to drop as the light began to decline. There was an old trailer up by the main road across from the convenience store that used to sell country style meals to passersby. Bobby and I, as well as our two friends sauntered behind the old trailer to light the massively obese blunt, and hopefully achieve some sort of high. Things felt different this time, I was a little anxious and afraid of what might happen if the marijuana did actually decide to "work". When it was my turn to take a drag off the joint, I had decided that there was no more messing around, I'd inhale so intensely this time that there would be no way I wouldn't get high. Holding the spliff with three fingers I inhaled recklessly and intentionally. My throat began to burn, and as I exhaled the heaving and coughing that ensued was almost criminal it was so violent. Luckily, there was no throw up involved and the second drag was easier than the first. When it came time for me to take a third whiff it suddenly dawned on me that how I was experiencing the world had been changed dramatically. Everything was the exact same, but somehow totally different. I was peering at my friends from outside my body, or so it seemed. What was normal and comfortable became foreign and altered. It was like my perception of the world went from normality to a trip to the cinema; same eyes but a different set of goggles. How I described it at the time was that I had suddenly become a character on the Wallace and Gromit show. There were no hallucinations or anything, it's just that all of the features my eyes were processing seemed almost clay-like and crystal clear. Hard to describe with words. On the inside I was terrified and was consistently attempting to calm my nerves. Bobby had previously mentioned that the high would last about 20 minutes; that was not my experience. On our way back down towards the river I glanced over and saw Bobby who was hysterically laughing and falling over. His eyes were blood shot red and he now seemed far less irritable than he had before we smoked. This was actually not Bobby's first-time smoking. It was as if he was becoming addicted to it, however; at the time many people had told me that marijuana was non-addictive.
Down by the river a short way from Bobby's place there was a tree house. This was sort of like a "ground house" though, because it sat beside a tree, but wasn't held up by it. I stumbled in there, dizzy and frozen with fear. I just felt out of control, and was hating it. There was a little hole build into the side of the "ground house" that afforded me a direct view of the house. Over a period of about four hours I'd obsessively peer through the hole to make sure none of the parents were coming over to see me. I was one hundred percent positive I looked like Nicole Kidman on the movie" The Others", paranoid and high (Nicole Kidman was just paranoid I think) and thus I'd surely get into a massive amount of trouble. I also considered calling my Dad, telling him everything that had happened and have him take me to the hospital in order to take away the high that now left me debilitated. These two fears were set on repeat and they tumbled around in my skull for the duration of time spent in the elegant ground house.
When 11:00pm rolled around I was starting to feel normal again; the high had worn off. I vacated the tree house and made my way over to where the other three boys were seated, one after the other we made our way into Bobby's slim green canoe. The river was anywhere from knee to waste deep. We could have walked across if we wanted to, but we weren't always keen on getting wet; the canoe it was. Once we arrived on the other side and the canoe was brought up onto shore we started to make our way across the golf course. The moon was brighter than I could ever remember it being. The smell of the autumn air and the moon's luminescence that cascaded down onto the flowing greens made the night feel semi- enchanted. As we walked up the hill that led to the clubhouse I couldn't help but notice the course owners house; directly in view of everything we were about to do. When we arrived at the clubhouse each of us peered over at the golf carts that sat a few yards away. They were lined up pristinely, side by side. The four of us checked each golf cart for keys. We found two quite quickly and started them up. It was fairly easy to figure out how to drive them. Off we went down the hill towards the fairways, towards the water and sand traps and towards the perfectly trimmed fairways. The entire time we were riding around in the golf carts I thought I'd hear someone yelling at us or see the lights turn on in the large house that sat on the hill close by, but that never happened.
In and out of the sand traps we rode, riding into them was fairly smooth, but getting out of them was rough and loud. The front of the cart would crash up against the lip of the trap as we made our way over it. Some of the traps were too deep to ride into, but most were just the right size. We found this out the hard way, however, due to the lightness of the carts we could move them in and out of the sand traps with one another's help. All parts of the carts would scrape, slide and struggle to get out of whatever greasy situation we got them into. When we got bored of that, we started to smash into each other. We'd fish tail one another's carts, they'd slide on the dewy grass, and race each other. After about an hour, paranoia set in, and we drove the golf carts back up to the clubhouse and parked them neatly where we had found them.
We never heard from the golf course. They were definitely aware of our constant presence, but for whatever reason we never got confronted about our little excursion that night. Bobby started bringing other friends over to the golf carts to give them a good ride; friends that weren't as cautious as myself, friends that were "more" reckless and impulsive. Eventually; as I had later found out, the cops showed up at Bobby's house and arrested him. They had pulled his finger print off one of the carts that had been more or less totally ridden off. I was happy it was not me getting into trouble. It was around this time that I started to distance myself from Bobby. He was getting more and more involved in the drug centered lifestyle, and I was always running around playing one sport or another. Bobby and I still talk to this day. He's got a good heart, but for whatever reason just ended up steering down a different road. I stayed away from Marijuana for three years after the ground house incident. That paranoia wasn't something that I wanted to indulge in any time soon.
