We started walking towards Sugarloaf park, a tiny local nature preserve nestled in-between the city’s main thoroughfare and series of dingy, yet charming old houses from the turn of the century that were inhabited primarily by untenured professors waiting to move into some idyllic subdivision away from derelicts like ourselves. It being nighttime and we being the equivalent of two-to-three-pack-a-day smokers—one joint is the equivalent of about 15 cigarettes-worth of lung damage—we only made it halfway up Sugarloaf hill before collapsing on the first bench that gave us wooded cover. Without saying anything, Davis pulled out the bong, pre-packed, and took a long burbling drag from it, the carb being pulled from the water-pipe releasing a sound that seemed to suck all the air out of his lungs. I half expected his chest to cave in and for his body to shrivel up all-dehydrated looking like some guy in an Edvard Munch painting. As he passed the bong to me in accordance with pot etiquette based on the classic Musical Youth song, encouraging one and all to “Pass the dutchie on the left hand side,” Kieran started spouting his usual inanity:
“Hey bra,” he hand taken to nineties surfer slang for some reason over the past summer, “Bra, you know that fine-ass bitty Catelyn?”
“What, the girl on the rugby team who can grow a better mustache than I can?” I took a big hit from the bong and passed it to Kieran.
“Ewww, that’s fucking nasty man. No,” he said, pushing the weed ash down with the butt of his lighter. “That’s Katelyn with a K. I’m talking about Catelyn with a C.”
“Catelyn Morten,” Davis piped up.
“Yeah that Catelyn. I am totally tappin’ that right now.” Kieran ripped a huge bong blow.
I had to be a little skeptical about Kieran’s claim because, after all, it was Kieran, the man who claimed that he was a direct descendant of Albert Einstein and that his father worked for the CIA and constantly was overseas doing covert things in covert places with, wait for it, covert people. For all I know he could be related to Einstein, although it’s highly unlikely, but I know for a fact that his Dad is a self-employed “pest-control technician” at “Dewey Does It Vermin Control.” I saw the van when he came to pick up Kieran over spring break after his license was suspended on account of the DUI he’s picked up (he blew a .2, fourth-best score in Denison History). I have nothing against the pest-control business and think it’s fine, manly work, but it doesn’t pay like a secret agent does, which Kieran’s financial aid status could attest to.
“Kieran, the only thing you’re tapping is the side of your bowl when you ash it.”
“Hey man,” blowing out a gust of smoke, “don’t hate the player…uhhhh…just don’t hate the player”
“The game” Davis said as he took the bong from Kieran.
“What?!”
“He’s finishing your ignorant maxim for you. ‘It’s don’t hate the player, hate the game’.”
“That’s what I said.”
I couldn’t deal with the sheer stupidity of the situation so I picked a joint out of Davis’ backpack and headed up hill to steel myself for future imbecility. There was a spot on the north face of the hill that I liked to think only I knew about, that had two rotting oak chairs which had been embedded in a rather steep portion of the park. When you reclined back you were about 45 degrees below flatness and it felt like you could topple down the hill if you farted too hard. I lit the joint and wondered how it had come to this? My two closest friends had been skimmed from the algae-coated end of the gene pool; one practically mute and the other afflicted with verbal diarrhea that was more repugnant than it’s bodily counterpart. They were drug friends. The only thing we had it common was getting high and that ain’t much. I’d expected college to consist of bohemian coffee house discussions of Camus and Sartre, punctuated by witty banter and a heightened pop culture sensibility. Instead I was with two twenty-year olds who had smoked themselves retarded and had the combined IQ of a slow dolphin.
But then I considered the alternatives: frat-boys chug-a-lugging keystone light by the caseload, chest-bumping and ass-patting their way to totally hetero male comraderie and massive liver damage. Sorority sisters giggling, giggling, giggling all the goddamn time in between casual blow jobs and coke binges. The pathetic inside women who sat back in their dorm room bean bags watching Pride & Prejudice—Mr. Darcy take me away!—sipping on raspberry vodka and fruit juice. The foreign exchange students, mostly from India and Pakistan, who were too eager to please, too earnest to be taken seriously and completely ignorant of the nuances of everyday conversation, even though their English was better than mine. The dark, brooding, emo set whose idea of a pick-up line was, “want to see where I cut myself?” and who wore nothing but black like they expected a casual funeral to break out at any moment. This was my teenage wasteland and I felt like I was sitting atop a giant trash heap of squandered youth. I was the King, led to Pride Rock by Mufasa: Everything the light touches is my kingdom. Sadly, it was nighttime and the only light was the burning ember of my now spent joint.
I trudged back around Sugarloaf to find, much to my chagrin, Kieran and Davis exactly where I had left. I wished I was one of those airheaded mothers that left their babies in the car in the middle of August while they went shopping at Food Lion, Kieran and Davis being my unwanted progeny. Without saying a damn thing Davis handed me an already cherried bowl, which I mutely took and toked.
“I’m hungry,” I said passing the bowl the Kieran.
“Yeah bra, I’m fucking starving.”
Davis nodded his head in assent.
“So, what do you guys want to eat?”
“Let’s go back to my room and order some pizza from Elm’s.”
Not again. No. I refuse. I had eaten delivery pepperoni pizza from Elm’s Pizza Parlor for the past four nights and on average 3 times a week for the past month. OK, I lied. Two nights previously we had ordered pepperoni and sausage to shake things up, but that wasn’t enough. It would’ve be one thing if their pizza was any good, but their sauce was sweeter than a snickers bar, the crusts were always too damn doughy, and I was convinced their cheese was that fake Kraft mozzarella shake in a can.
“There is no way you’re getting me to eat that shit again.”
“C’mon bra,” Kieran implored, “Elm’s is the shit.”
“No, Elm’s is shit. And for the love of God could you stop calling me ‘bra’? I feel like I’m in an deleted scene from Point Break.”
“Well, we could head up to the hill and get some Taco Bell or Pizza Hut.”
“Nixing that. I want my bowels to function for the next week or so.”
“Their quesadillas are the shit, bra.”
“Nothing you say is the shit ever is the shit Kieran. They keep those quesadillas under a freaking heat lamp for about a week before they give it to you.”
“Alright man, what’s your bright idea?”
The thing was, I didn’t have a bright idea. I felt like I had exhausted every option in this culinary Sahara. The food at the student union was drek, the cafeterias were crap and closed by now (was it really 9:00 already?), and everything I already ordered every dish that the sole late-night eatery in “downtown” Granville had to offer. The place, Brews, as the name suggests served up glorified bar food and I was not in a mood to shell out $7.99 for a half-cooked burger. We started walking back towards Stone in silence, I thinking all the while of the food I left back in Cincinnati. Mark Twain might have said that he wanted to be in Cincinnati when the end of the world comes because they were always twenty years behind the times, but that still put me in 1986, which was better than this place that seemed stuck in the ‘50s.
“I could have Indian food if I wanted too in Cincinnati; succulent little Tandoori chickens glistening all pink-red and steaming from the Tandoor oven, the onions and peppers attacking my nostrils. There was Chinese food in Cincinnati. Good Chinese food. Not the crap out here where the chicken tasted like chunks of sponge dipped in General Tso sauce, but real Chinese food. I’d go to the China Gourmet and get the Pan-Seared Rainbow Trout done up with ginger and scallions, bathing in a pool of clarified butter and its own juices.”
My food reverie lasted the entire walk and before I knew it I was back in Kieran’s dorm room, watching him dick around on his computer. I had to think of something else to eat fast or else we’d spend another night in his room, baked, eating Elm’s, and watching Grandma’s Boy, a movie that I’m ashamed to say I enjoy. There’s something very satisfying about watching a movie that revolves around central characters that do nothing but get stoned and watch video games while you’re doing nothing but getting stoned and watching video games.
That’s when it happened:
“Let’s go to Steak ‘N Shake.”
This statement was monumental both in the fact that it was the first complete sentence I had heard Davis utter in almost a week and in that it sounded fabulous: Steak ‘N Shake. They were famous for steakburgers; not hamburgers, but steakburgers; big meaty, manly hunks of cow bleeding all over the bun and melting in my mouth.
“We are going to Steak ‘N Shake.”
I didn’t care that it was a stoner cliché and that it was a little too Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. That just made it a meta-experience for me. It was another life-imitating-art-imitating-life situation like when I had stared at the giant Seurat in the Chicago Museum of Art like in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, staring at the tiny little pointillist pinpricks until the painting didn’t look like a painting anymore.
“I don’t know bra. Steak ‘N Shake is a long way away.” Kieran was not enthused.”
“But that’s the whole point, man. It’s a journey, an experience, an epic quest. We are Odysseus sailing home to Penelope. We are the Jason and the Argonauts seeking the Golden Fleece. We are Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters driving in Nowhere to find our karmic destiny. We are—“
“I get it bra. You’re an English major. Just shut up and let me think about this.”
“There’s no thinking about this, is there Davis?”
“No thinking.”
“You heard the man. So grow a pair and lets get gone.”
“Nah, I think I’m just going to chill here for a little bit.”
“Suit yourself man. Hey, Davis, you wanna smoke a bowl in the car before we head out?”
“Sounds good.”
“Alright then. We are out. Enjoy Elm’s you sad little man.”
And with that we were off; off on our historic trip to Steak ‘N Shake. Walking to the parking lot I felt like Magellan, walking towards his ship to circumnavigate the globe. I failed to grasp at the time that only Magellan’s boat and not Magellan himself completed the trip around the world. Magellan got butchered by a bunch of Filipinos with swords and spears. But, that historical tidbit was clear out of my mind because we were two men on a mission and would not be stopped. When we got to the car I decided to drive off to a no outlet street on the outskirts of town to smoke so as not to arouse the suspicion of Denison security. The street was on an incline and after pulling a u-turn I put the car in park, yanked on the E-brake and stared down this tame road in a quaint hamlet unused to my kind or my deeds. I kept the car running because I wanted to listen to music and because it was colder than frozen hell outside, but made sure to turn off my headlights so as not to arouse suspicion. I was clandestine, cautious, and surreptitious. I felt like I could have run a special op for the SAS if they asked me to.
