I arrived home from Topanga in a good mood and was ready to succumb to another night of watching Netflix in the nude. Then a friend of Nick's called, who I had met the weekend before, and asked if I wanted to drink. I was of course, down. He gave me a lift, spotted me a bottle of wild turkey 101 and we went back to his apartment to drink with his girlfriend. Long story short, I tried taking a prescription painkiller, which when paired with a whole pint of bourbon, resulted in incessant and unchecked ranting arguments till dawn, followed by 13 hours of frighteningly refreshing hibernation sleep. I woke up at 7 the next night, briefly enraged at the people who I thought were being loud as shit before the sun had risen, and realized that it had already come and gone. Disconcerted by this information, I demanded a ride home and tried to cope with the horrific, unsettling disorientation. Well, no more painkillers for me. Early the next morning (Sunday) I had an interview at a Farmers Market stand and then planned to meet my cousin to drive down to a mini-family reunion, somewhere in the desert. I arrived back at my aunts and was worried I'd be up all night, considering my freshly fucked sleep schedule, but I passed back out around midnight and managed to rise again at 7.
I woke up Sunday morning in a daze and drove to a place called the Larchmount Farmers Market, right down the street from Paramount Studios, and met an acquaintance of my aunts to interview for a job. I didn't know much going in, but the short, fast talking, Italian man who I met and interviewed with was hiring for an Italian food company that made fresh pestos and pastas. I ended up helping run the stand all morning and even got to meet one of the guys from Kiss, who apparently is a regular there. Before I left, I was assured a job as a logistical manager, basically to help this company run their 18 farmers market stands and was told I'd be eased into the position. Hurrah, potential progress. I left around noon and drove to meet my flamboyantly gay cousin Mark, who lives right off Sunset Blvd, and who my Dad affectionately refers to as "Peach". My dad had one brother who was about 10 years older than him, and thus I have a bunch of much older cousins out in California who all have careers and such, one of whom is Mark. It was his siblings and their families that we would be spending the afternoon with. I hadn't seen him in a decade, except via Facebook, and met him outside his West Hollywood apartment that afternoon. I'm a big fan of Mark; he is rambunctiously outspoken, intelligent, straightforward and hilarious. We had a few minutes to spare and went into his apartment, where he immediately handed me a rice Krispy treat. It had M&M's and smelled like an Evergreen tree. A Canna-Krispy Treat. He warned me of it's potency and advised I only eat a little bit. I hadn't planned to get baked, especially since I'm naturally awkward enough around semi-random relatives, but said "Fuck it" and ate half. "It's gonna take a while to take affect," said Mark, "In the meantime, here's this," he said, handing me his bong. 'Good Mother of Jah', I thought to myself, as I indulged much more heavily than I knew I should have. So we smoked, watched football for a few minutes and then left to drive an hour south to meet my other cousins. Needless to say I was absolutely fried.
We arrived and I went through "The Extremely Stereotypical Series of Greetings With Moderately Unfamiliar Relatives Process". During which, I experienced the inevitable stoners conundrum; I knew that I'd be fine by simply embracing the buzz, but quickly became paranoid they knew I was high, which invariably made me overcompensate in my attempts at normalcy and ultimately turned me into a stuttering, nonsensical Helen Keller noise machine. Regardless, I managed to reasonably converse with the group of relatives throughout the afternoon and into the evening, putting all of my efforts into not completely losing my shit. I'm sure I seemed normal enough, but can't attest to how sane I actually appeared because my memory is tainted by the irrational logic of a high person. In my mind, everything I did and said seemed perfectly rational and reasonable. Although in hindsight, inhaling chips and salsa with every other breath of air I took, may have been a dead giveaway. Also, I ate the other half of the rice crispy treat midway through the visit, which prolonged my battle to continue conveying some moderate sanity. It ended up being a good time though, as we mostly watched football and ate a delicious spaghetti dinner. I just tried to keep my attention from drifting and my comments as minimally psychotic as possible. Around 8 that night Mark and I headed back LA, just as my thc buzz was finally beginning to fade.
That was two weeks ago and to be perfectly honest, nothing of particular interest has happened since then. Content with my improved employment situation, and generally feeling like less of a piece of shit, I procrastinated away a lot of my weekdays on Reddit and Netflix. After putting up my last post, like I said, I fought an uphill battle against my motivation, for no sensible reason, and have started, stopped, written, and rewritten this damn post about 25 times. Last weekend I worked again for my "training" day, but it only took about 5 minutes to learn the complex inner workings of a stand at a Farmers Market, and I quickly settled into the grind. I made jack shit in terms of money, but did get to leave with an armload of the leftover pasta and pesto, and a bunch of leftover baked goods from stand next us. The owner of the bakery stand was large, gay British man who told me he "could listen to my Southern accent all day long", kept giving me more bread and cakes, and offered me a temporary job. I would almost have been offended at the blatant objectification if it hadn't been so unexpected, absurd and side splittingly hilarious. Definitely worth my overall semi-discomfort from the interaction.
The past week I discovered my cousins longboard and spent the days riding down to the beach, exploring Venice and Santa Monica. Despite being generally alone, skating down to Venice Boardwalk and people watching as I rolled amidst the hordes of trinket peddlers, musclemen, junkies and tourists, will certainly be a fond and surreal memory. In the weeks ahead, as I continue to search for a car, fun, apartment and additional job, this cash flow ought to provide some new opportunities for excitement. With my and your slight entertainment as my semi high priority, I will indulge each opportunity with as much bourbon fueled decadence as I can mentally and physically muster.
