[This is part three in a series called Laccolith. It might make more sense if you read parts one and two first. But then again, it might not.]
The first time I came home high, really high, my dad did his level best to ignore it. I can’t quite understand why he chose to pretend that it wasn’t happening. Maybe he was drunk; I was too high to tell.
In Scotland in the 1990’s it was difficult to get potent green cannabis. The alternative was a style of hash that earned numerous nicknames deriding its quality. ‘Soap bar’ (shit bar), ‘soft black’ (soft shite) and ‘golf ball’ (shite ball… probably) were the main staples.
(It was said that soap bar and golf ball got their names from the method of smuggling, but that could be bullshit as it was told to me by some twat who sold drugs to 14-year-olds).
It was usually smoked as a spliff with tobacco and had a pleasant gouchy effect. But to get a high from ‘shit bar’ before you fell asleep on the floor, it was necessary to smoke a lot of it very quickly. This involved boat-races, bongs, brownies and buckets.
Buckets: Take a two-litre empty coke bottle and cut the bottom off. Then manufacture a gauze from tinfoil (or indeed, gauze, if you have it). Make a ‘mix’ from toasted ground up tobacco and hash. Rub that till it is quite fine.
Fill a bucket up with water. Put coke bottle in the water with the top just above the surface. Carefully light the mix as you slowly lift the bottle out of the water.
The pressure equilibrium will force air through the burning mix creating downward convection filling the bottle up with smoke.
Once the bottle is almost completely full of smoke, remove the gauze and mix which should be completely burned. Now place your mouth over the bottle top, push the bottle down into the water and inhale, forcing two litres of toxic smoke into your little pink lungs.
Sit up, hold, exhale.
This is part 3 of Laccolith. Sorry it took so long to get here. Go read parts 1 and 2 if you haven’t already. I can’t promise they will elucidate the point of this story but they might.
I hope to post more often this year and perhaps this loose assortment of graphic autofiction will eventually coalesce into something that resembles a story. Maybe it wont? In which case, I’ll just call it art.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading these pieces. There is an arc and I do know what the ending is, I’m just not sure which route to take to get there. Glad you are here with me. Share it with someone who you think might dig it. I’d be most grateful. Maybe they will be too.
Keep writing. The arc will reveal itself as you progress. (At least, that's how it works for me, INFP, hardcore Intuitive.)
I read all three. parts, engaged from the third which I happened into. Good writing, I love it. BTW: I don't think the so called "weirdos" are that, they are the one that the see wrong things people do and cannot tell the world in any way they can recognize, internalize and stop doing them. I think. Not a weirdo myself, but close.