Not too long ago, I had escaped from a South American prison, a rare thing. I was an Englishman in a foreign land at that time doing odd jobs. This is the story of how I was invited to a party, with promises of cocaine and women. Little did I know what would be asked of me.
I was at home recovering from the week of rites and partying. It was summer, the season was well under way, and the town was bustling. My “friend” A. rang my house phone to warn me to travel clean that day because there were police everywhere, a show of force mostly. He then coyly asked if I had any more of that cannabis I had given to him the week before. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about at first. I smoke so much and from so many places. “Are you talking about the Kush?” I asked. “Was it a Master Kush?” Apparently, it was, and I told him that some old gypsy in some part of the slum had put me on. He asked me to come with him to get some. He would meet me outside in 15 minutes.
Surprisingly, he was there on time and it was noon. This was a man who had never been out before 3:00 PM as long as I’d known him. I heard the honking downstairs, and he was in front of my building in a green 288 GTO. And I began to sober up and realize that his urgency about some old Kush might just be the beginning of an adventure, and I wondered if I had missed some code in what he was asking me and telling me. Did I really miss something?
He drove us to one of the only high-class hotels in the area. Meridien sounds right. This was the invitation, and I began to believe him about how he came to be driving this beautiful car. They actually let us up to the penthouse and what I saw there was nearly unbelievable. So many people, crammed into this place, all lost in their own kind of revelry. Women of such beauty like from movies or a grainy TV image or a fantasy, and all in various states of nudity, some fucking. I saw a local drug lord known too well to me, I saw some of the top-tier traffickers I read about in newspapers and magazines, actors and singers, and flowing wine and champagne. It was barely past noon. But it was the women I remembered best, and they circled, all circled around the center of this whole orgy: M., the most renowned, highest paid, most elite baller on the planet. A little man who was everything you would expect. He glowed, a halo emanating from him even among these stars and beauties. I also noticed in the center of the room on a glass table a mound of cocaine that pulled me in with its gravity and soon I had had more than I care to recall.
I was feeling good and wondering if I was still dreaming when he walked over to me, M., and started talking to me. “You’re the man with the green goddess.”
“Not me. I know where to find it.”
“I know, I want to come with you to find it. I want to see where this Kush comes from. Someone tell me why I never get tired of good pussy, but cocks have a mind of their own, that sublime you sent over, I never get tired of, neither me or my cock.”
I wasn’t sure what he was saying. I was too intoxicated by then. At most, I figured it was what I’d seen in myself and others like him: he was bored and wanted to go on a search. I have no idea what my friend A. had told him.
“I heard this kush is in the shanty hells. Let’s go get it. I’ll take the Ferrari and follow you guys in the Corvette, a beautiful American car.”
I don’t know how long I was in the penthouse. It may have just been a moment. It felt like I had scooped shovel loads into me in that moment. We three slipped out of the party with hardly anyone noticing. A bodyguard was too busy having fun to realize we had left.
When we went outside, I saw a green bush and it was brilliant. It shone like the sun which was still directly overhead. We went to the garage and got the ’69 Corvette. M. was supposed to follow us, but he crashed the 288 into a hydrant. He left it at the spot and joined us in the Corvette. A. was driving. M., realizing he was in no state to drive, was in the passenger seat, and I was squished in the no man’s land between them in the back.
I told A. to head west. I really wasn’t sure where I was going, but I don’t think there could be that many gypsy kush dealers back then. I kept giving directions with some confidence and intuition. I had gone there deep in the night myself searching for some good weed.
As we drove, I heard the two having a frantic conversation. M. couldn’t stop talking. But I was having trouble following the conversation, not only from discomfort, cramped and hot, but maybe disinterest. I wanted to be back at that penthouse. It made no sense to me why we were doing this. He had all the cannabis and coka and women back there, but he just had to find this great smoke that he had dreamt up, and I knew he would be disappointed. I just hoped they didn’t leave me over there. Anyway, when a superstar asks you to go on an adventure, you go. This would be a story to tell that no one would believe.
Sometimes I could make out the baller’s sweet voice, broken English and other languages speaking so much at once. A. asked him why he prized Kush so much more than cocaine, all the mountains at his disposal, I was interested in hearing the answer, which is probably why I heard the question.
“Let’s not forget the chicas, my friend, maybe nothing sweeter than the chicas, and as dangerous as the coka, but that saturn, that good Kush if you can find it and if you make the effort, it will gently show you that you are in a prison, and it will even give you the keys to your prison if you let it. Anyway, anyone who thinks they can tell you how to escape a prison hasn’t even started, hasn’t even tried to escape,” he explained, and I still couldn’t understand much of what he was saying, until he turned back to me and said, “You know a thing or two about prisons. Yes, I know my travel companions.”
At some point, we were at a stop sign. A group of young men spotted the star. “Scimmia,” I heard, a whisper and murmur at first, then louder and louder, until they were screaming at the star, who remained unbothered. We drove away. A. asked if he wasn’t bothered, and if he wanted us to try and find them and take care of them. “No, no, of course not,” M. replied. “You have to understand that this is not about the skin, it’s just a shortcut, how they say subterfuge, this is a civil war, and it always leads back to what people want, all people, which is to slaughter their brothers and sisters, but of course it’s hard to admit that to oneself, what people really want more than anything else, the sweetest taboo is to slaughter their children. Mass hell and slaughter. I’m under my drugs and we are about to find the best Kush I’ve had in a decade, it’s the Kush that reminds me of something, when I was a boy before I found the ball and the game, I didn’t speak, I didn’t speak I think until I was about almost eleven years old. My father had an old car, and he would park it on the side of a hill, no gear, just the parking brake. Every evening he would park it there I don’t know for years, he would park it there and go to the bar and eat peanuts and watch football with his mechanic friends, and tell me as a child not to pull the parking brake. Telling a child what not to do. How could he not know? He didn’t want a slow mute child, like I was to him. But deo concedente, I never pulled the brakes, I saw and watched and saw kids kicking a juice drink box, playing, and later I started kicking a box stuffed with other boxes, playing keep up and keep away, too, and then a ball, and then one of those playmates shared some kush with me. Libera. It’s hard to face the truth of things. And no one can tell you. I still remember the fraying plastic of that first ball, and that dank spit-soaked tobacco leaf.” He could say things mere mortals could not, but I still failed to see much of his point. He had become too isolated to make sense. One can only get away with this by being a world-famous baller and the best.
I saw flashing red and blue lights behind us and it took me more than a few moments to realize that it was the police pulling us over, and I tried my best to pretend that I was in my right mind. A. pulled over. As the officer approached us, A. pulled out a small bag of white powder from his pants pocket and threw it in the back at my feet. I stepped on it. The officer approached and peered through the open driver’s window. A second officer stood behind the car, watching, his hand casually on his weapon. Behind his shades, the officer’s expression visibly changed from corrupt contempt to uncontained glee when he saw M. sitting in the passenger seat. M. flashed that brilliant smile. The officer reached over and shook his hand, and hurriedly let us go about our way, as he sought more suitable quarry I suppose.
Later, it was just me and M., walking. Somehow, without the flashy car, no one recognized him. We walked the small city smoking the Kush. There was graffiti all over the walls. Territorial markings, urban language that could mean life or death. And there was a great bush again and I realized it was daytime and remembered it was summer and the sun was still high in the sky becoming a soft evening and the leaves of this bush were so brilliant, and there were flowers, small buds and wild berries on vines crawling against the fences, it’s hard to explain, and I thought to myself, I must still be high, and I said what would he do, take drugs and play divine.
M. turned to me and said, “Someday you will have to save the world.”
“I’m just a nobody stoner,” I replied.
“That’s why you have to do it. The Eye of God doesn’t hear; he sees.”
Then there was a street opera on a corner, the costumed performers casting shadows on the wall. We stopped, listened, and watched under the setting sun. I don’t know what opera it was. The music and “Papageno!” were all I remember.