Chapter 13: Go Fast, Gack Mouth
Jocelyn and I waited outside. Ariel did her final count while Gordo entertained her. Jocelyn took off her uniform shirt, revealing her tank-top. I did the same, wearing a slim black tee that made my biceps look bigger than they actually were. We smoked Parliaments, bumping our heads to faint music that came from the strip club down the road, the rhythm just barely recognizable…
"Ay highspeeds, can't stop moving?" Gordo said from behind us. Ariel was locking the door.
"Fuck no!" Jocelyn laughed while clenching her teeth, a perpetual squeeze of the jaw, same as me. My tongue forever danced back and forth against the top of my mouth. It was impossible to stop the motion. My wrist was twitching back and forth on its own accord. Jocelyn's leg was bouncing up and down and she kept squeezing her thighs together in an erotic motion.
"You know why it's called go fast? Cuz you—" Gordo twitched his arms at his side and bent his neck like he was having a seizure. Me and Jocelyn died laughing, falling to our knees until we were crying with physical pain.
"Oh fuck… Oh my God…" Jocelyn said, trying to regain her composure. We were blasted off to the fucking moon! Gordo and Ariel smiled at us warmly as if reminiscing on their first times they went fast.
"You two can come over if you want. Up to you. I'd recommend it. You'll be up for a loooong time," Ariel said. Jocelyn agreed immediately, fidgeting for her keys.
"Hold up! You're gonna follow us, alright? Drive slow, casual. Don't wanna get caught up," Ariel said. Jocelyn looked at me with a cheeky smile.
"Alriiight, fine…" Jocelyn said. "Actually, Kashi, can you drive?"
I felt like our relationship just hit a new level. "Of course."
"I didn't even know you had your license. Just be careful, alright?" Ariel said.
We followed behind their Impala and reserved our urge to scream out the windows at every homeless person we saw, aka late-night tweakers. We maintained our grip on reality. Fuck no we were going to jail. Not on an epic night like this… Well, Jocelyn barked at a few stray bums, but I could tell she was reserving herself. I did my best to focus on the road. I felt like I drove even better high than when I was sober.
We stopped at a gas station near 19th & Bethany Home, a territory we rarely embarked on. Everything here was ghetto and even featured a few poor souls selling their bodies for a $20 bill. I never seen so much police in such a short time. We seemed to integrate with the fellow bums well enough since there was no 'hoe-stility' as Jocelyn called it.
When we entered the store, it wasn't a gas station any longer, it was a wonderland full of goodies. We felt like little kids at a festival, prancing around with a pep in our step, a huge smile plastered across our faces. Gordo bought a 32 pack of beer. I bought a few packs of Parliaments for me and Jocelyn. The Indian cashier stared at us like we were robbers as we giggled over nothing and acted like stereotypical drunkies. It was liberating; a secret only our squad knew, like our actual bodies were on the moon and we were simply interfacing through these earthsuits without a care in the world.
Gordo and Ariel lived in an extravagant house, despite it being in a bad part of town. Ariel made pretty decent money being a store owner. Still, it was nothing compared to Jocelyn's mansion. It looked like a nice place to settle down.
The backyard was clearly Gordo's sanctuary. In the center was a firepit. Surrounding it were loads of unfinished projects, wooden pallets, wooden logs, a woodcutting ax, buzzsaws, drills, welding tools… He could start a small business here if he wanted to.
Gordo lit up the firepit. The heat felt strangely exhilarating and I kept inching closer and closer to it, testing to see when I was going to get burned. Jocelyn pulled me close to her. We sat on wooden logs. It was chill. Jocelyn pulled out a joint and we smoked it down in a minute. She kissed the last two hits and threw the roach in the fire.
I barely felt the buzz from the weed—the g funk overpowered any other sensations I had. Ariel claimed it was chilly outside so we reluctantly entered through the sliding door into the living room.
"The kiddos are asleep?" Jocelyn asked.
"Yeah, my sister put them to bed earlier."
"Oh, your sister stays here too?"
"Yeah," Ariel pointed across the living room. "She's not here right now, though. Kids' room is that way, guest room over there, guest bathroom right there."
The g funk made me want to exist only with a cigarette in my mouth. It seemed Gordo read my thoughts as he sparked up a Marlboro Red.
"I can smoke in here?" I asked.
"Duh," Ariel said, pointing at Gordo smoking.
"My bad, I was just minding my discrepancies."
"You good bro. Mi casa…" Gordo pointed at me to finish.
"Su casa."
"Ayyy!" Gordo reached his palm out to me. I repeated the usual palm-slap we usually did, but Gordo reprimanded me.
"Nah nah, don't do that white boy shit no more. Here, let me show you how we do." Gordo grabbed my hand and walked me through the right way to slap palms, ese style. A slap n slide back, fingers grip each other's right before release, then the index finger points forward at each other like shooting a gun.
"Atts some slick homeboy shii ahahaha," Gordo said. I felt very cool.
I sparked a Parliament and handed Jocelyn one. She lit hers by kissing her end to my ember.
"I can see both your mouths clenching," Gordo laughed. "Virgin lungs!"
"Leave them alone, Gordo," Ariel said with a smile.
"Nah, it's all good. Just make sure if you dishing it out, you can take it," I said sarcastically.
"Oooo, I like that, I like that," Gordo nodded his head while puffing out smoke with the cigarette still in his mouth.
"Especially from her." I pointed at Jocelyn. She was staring off into the distance…
"You alright, Joss?" Ariel said.
"She look like she gonna kill someone," Gordo said.
Jocelyn snapped to attention. "Fuck. You said something?"
We all laughed.
"You were looking intense. We were just worried about you," I said.
"Yeah. I'm ok. Just really fucking high," Jocelyn said while grinding her teeth. Her eyes were huge and her jaw muscles were twitching. She looked like a psychopath. So did I.
"Shiiit, you did take a big hit earlier," Gordo looked at Ariel who had a strange look in her eye like a secretive concern.
Ariel tapped Jocelyn's shoulder. "Come here, let's get a beer."
Jocelyn followed Ariel to the kitchen, keeping her head turned toward the wall like she was indeed looking at something…
Jocelyn took a seat on the living room couch. She took off her sneakers, propping her socked feet on the glass table. Mannerisms were not Jocelyn's thing, especially now. She felt spun out of her mind. Her chest was heaving up and down. Her pupils were dilated like black holes, just like mine. It was even more noticeable than when we were on molly. This was a whole different entity than before. Our optics burned with laser guided focus, an unreal intensity on whatever we happened to look at… Creators of our own world with the power to do anything we put our minds to.
That's when it hit me… We had been awake for 2 days, this would be the second night? Holy shit… I didn't feel a sliver of fatigue, not anymore. We're gonna be sleeping good tomorrow morning!
Ariel passed me and Gordo a beer. Ariel nodded her head toward the bedroom while looking at Gordo. He nodded and brought me into the main bedroom while Ariel tended to Jocelyn.
Their bedroom was just as big as the living room and had an entire mirror wall that doubled as a walk-in closet. He slid the mirrors open. In the corner was a shelf. Inside a hidden compartment was their stash of substances and tools for consumption. Glass pipes, bongs, glass trays, straws, razor blades. I was satisfied to see there were no syringes. Even high as I was, that was one thing I would out-right refuse. No needles for me! We're better than that.
The jaw clenching continued perpetually along with licking the top of my mouth to the point it was getting raw. I sipped my brewski, hoping for reprieve.
"I got major fucking cottonmouth," I said to Gordo as he sifted through his secret compartment.
"Nah, that's gack mouth, ese!" he said with his back turned to me, his shoulders jumping up and down from laughing. He pulled out what he was working on; a glass pipe, the bowl filled with shards.
"Ay, can you get my wife? And your girl too."
I nodded my head and got the girls. When I returned, Gordo was shirtless for some reason as he hit the pipe. He held the stem with his thumb and index finger while lightly twisting it side-to-side while his torch tapped the bowl, pulled it away, then tapped the bowl again and again with the flame. He exhaled smoke out the side of his mouth with his lips still to the pipe like he was sparking a cigar. The previously clear glass in the bowl had turned into a yucky brown liquid that slid back and forth along the bottom. There was a large pool of this liquid that solidified after about 10 seconds of Gordo not torching the bowl.
Jocelyn and I looked at Gordo's fat upper body that was plastered with tattoos. Hundreds of separate pieces that did not fit together at all. Some designs were more artistic than the rest. Some were downright scribbly and looked very amateur.
He passed the pipe to Ariel. "Ladies first, eh?"
She took the pipe and passed it to Jocelyn. "It's alright, you can go next. You wanna try lighting it?"
"Fuck yeah!" Jocelyn said, her teeth still clenched together, her eyes permanently fixated to their maximum circumference. She stepped up to the challenge, grabbing the stem with three fingers.
Ariel said, "So, you're gonna light the bowl, but you don't even need to touch the flame to it, just keep it close. You're cooking it slowly, not burning it. Twist the pipe side-to-side to cook it evenly… Once the bowl fills with smoke you can start inhaling. But not like you're smoking weed; like a cigar. Remember?"
"Uh huh, I got it," Jocelyn said, her lips firm with determination.
Jocelyn sparked the torch and held the flame under the bowl.
"Keep it farther away—there, just like that. Now let it build… Twist it… And go!"
Smoke built from the bowl and Jocelyn began inhaling. She blew out a cloud like the flames of a dragon, just as big as Gordo's hit, filling the ceiling with a river of smoke like an upside-down stage prop.
"Holy shit," I said.
"You a natty! What the fuck!" Gordo said. Ariel was impressed and nodded her head. Jocelyn was indeed good at doing drugs. Whether that was an accomplishment or not, it did not matter. She shrugged her shoulders like it was no big deal with a smugness on her face that made us all laugh. Jocelyn handed the pipe to Ariel and then suddenly, Jocelyn released the tension in her body.
"Woooo, SHIT!" She stepped forward and slid her back foot like she was doing a rear-lunge and stayed in this position as she tilted her long torso side to side. It looked like she was doing yoga as she raised her arms to the ceiling, revealing her clean-shaven armpits and light muscle definition.
Ariel took her hit, then Gordo filled the pipe with fresh glass and handed it to me. I knew I had to light it myself; I wasn't going to let Jocelyn one-up me like that!
I tried my best but I couldn't get the glass to cook. I failed miserably. Jocelyn coached me the same way Ariel did for her. It was almost seductive the way she whispered the instructions of my own demise in my ear. I exhaled a medium-sized cloud and did a strange rear-lunge and stretched my body to the side, hanging limply, clenching my jaw even harder, so much that I feared my teeth might shatter any second. It felt too good to stop. I twisted my jaw to the side and it popped and sent a rush of endorphins to my brain.
Gordo nodded for me to follow him to the backyard while Jocelyn and Ariel continued smoking. I wanted some more too, but I'd stand by for now. I was already on cloud nine. We sparked a cigarette outside as Gordo showed off his tools.
"Someday I'll show you how to cut wood. And welding too, if you want."
"Yeah man, that'd be sick."
Gordo looked at me with a pondering smile. He curled his arm around my shoulders and spoke with his face forward.
"You know what, Kashi? I think that you, my friend, are an old soul. Ay, you look kinda like Bruce Lee. You like him?"
"Bruce Lee is the fucking best!"
"Ok, ok. Let's see—what he say about that?" Gordo pointed toward the moon. It was full tonight and very pretty.
It was my time to shine. I did my best Bruce Lee impression, a Chinese accent speaking American words. "It is like a FINGA pointing a way to the moon. DON'T concentrate on tha finga or you will miss all that heavenly glooory."
"YEAAAH dats what I'm talkin bout homeboy!" We broke apart and slapped palms, pointing our finger-guns at each other.
"That's my shit. You know why, ese? Cuz that's life. You ain't concentrate on the big things or you let the little shit ruin you."
I folded my fingers and listened intently like I was sitting in a philosophy lecture. I thought Gordo was very wise; a contradiction to how he usually presented himself as an ignorant cholo.
"You smart tho, homeboy. Just take care of your operation, your girl, shiiit, have a little bit here and there. You'll be alright." We slapped palms again and finished our stogies then went back inside through the sliding door.