Suburbia - Pill Crusher

The Clubhouse really deserves it own proper post but some old master somewhere said something about keeping the reader in suspense or some shit, i don't really know, in short the Clubhouse is my sanity in the sea of the vanilla suburban cesspool, the place i go to fucking relax and drink beers and pull tubes and have anywhere from inane conversations about the minutiae of the spotted frog to in depth philosophical debates on the artistic merits of footballers, to musings on Russian short stories and music and outer space and everything in between, i love this fucking place because it's a haven for weirdos and misfits hidden among the polished facade of normalcy that is suburban living, no one here aspires to be anything more than what they are, stoners and drinkers and lovers of drugs and debauchery of all shapes and sizes...

And so it was recently that a girl was sitting at the kitchen counter, away from the telly and the talking and staring rather perplexedly at little lime green square, a Xanax, she had whispered to someone that she was having a bit of a problem crushing said pill when someone told her to ask Kono, he'd know what to do, i was quite fucking stoned and concentrating intently on opening my bottle of beer when i kindly looked up and said what's the problem? she was a brunette with large brown eyes and red streaks dyed through her hair which was pulled up haphazardly behind a black headband, oddly enough i'd been smoking some Headband not long before, i gazed down at the scene like an aging MacGuyver...

She said she couldn't seem to crush it and i asked her if there was a coating on it, she looked at me blankly, and i said a coating, a time release thing to keep you from doing exactly what you're trying to do with it, she smiled blankly and i examined the pill, i told her it seemed as if there might be one on there but i couldn't tell for sure but if there was there were ways around it involving a damp paper towel, a plate, a microwave, it could be done but i also said if there was no coating that this method would dissolve the damn thing and so i scored the pill a bit and then took the Snapple bottle she was using and Presto! it crushed right up. Unfortunately though neither of us made sure the bottle was empty or the lid securely fashioned and before we knew it the dregs of Snapple were dissolving the pill, i told her to quickly dab it on her finger and she did and went one better by using her little straw to slurp up the few drops that had almost caused catastrophe, she winced at the taste and took a drink of water and then moved back into the living room...

It took all of 20 minutes for her to ask me to crush up the other half and of course i obliged, i went to work crushing and chopping and spreading, then putting it back into a pile and chopping some more, a ritual i was once well-versed in, i handed her back her Ralph's card and noticed she was dividing the gear in two lines, what a polite kid i thought and headed back to the sofa, as i walked away she asked if i was gonna do one and i thanked her, smiled, and politely declined, the dozen or so bingers having done more than their trick i was quite pleased with my display of self control, she offered the rest of the room the same and then proceeded to zoot both little green lines and then take up a seat on the couch...

Before long that Xanax had loosened her tongue proficiently enough to get her gabbing away and telling us how just last week her friends and her had bought a whole bunch of ecstasy and Xanax and proceeded to go on a 4 day bender of which she could remember very little other than that it was a swell time, a wave of nostalgia washed over me thinking about the days when i used to do those things, a week or two or three of anything and everything, days upon days of acid and weed and booze, the kids are alright i thought, of course i was going to tell her to be careful but instead began telling a story about getting pure MDMA back in 1994 and how we used to mix it in with the Kool-Aid and slug it down, the dregs always bitter but always the most important part and she looked at me and said, 1994? that was a year before i was born which brought howls of laughter from a couple of us as she smiled and thought about drinking a beer...

It was then that we began debating the fine line of Xanax and booze and i for one offered up how many nights of Xany bars and booze had led me to piss myself more times than i'd care to mention, of course the call went up for me to mention and i listed a number of places of when i pissed and what i pissed on, of waking up at noon and wondering why i was naked from the waist down and why my jeans were balled up on the floor and wet, the wine of youth i believe it's called and it was then that the young lady decided to wax philosophical and slag of the straight world and higher education, that she was gonna be an artist and shit and man if the grin didn't spread across my face, it was a fucking load of bollocks, it sounded an awful lot like this kid i used to know except that guy was a bit more eloquent and demonstrative when he spoke, i catch quick glimpses of him occasionally...

Now years ago i was reading an interview with Mike Watt of the Minutemen (and the re-formed Stooges for a time), and what Watt said was that you shouldn't be a dick and judge the kids cause none of us control when we're born and so it's no fault of your own if you miss some musical or cultural movement and that we should give the kids credit for doing their own thing and digging into the past and learning... when it's all broken down the hippies and the punks were not that far apart in their world view and so i've always taken Mike's words to heart, i like to hear what the kids are digging, what they're reading, who they're listening to, (Bowie was another shining example of keeping tabs on youth culture), it's being curious, on the other hand i was always keen to hear what those who went before me were into and in the process learned lots 'O shit, her lines were nothing i hadn't heard or even said before except i was never one to bad mouth the halls of higher education and so when she stopped i asked if i could give her a different perspective? sure she said...

I explained that college was one of the best things i ever did, sure i owed money when i got out but the real question was what are you going to school for? to get a job? or are you going to get an education? i said the purpose was to get an education, there's all kinds of shit to study that doesn't involve the business of making money i told her and in your spare time you sit in the library and read books and educate yourself, it affords you one of the last times of your life to spend hours upon hours of fucking about all in the name of learning something, and hell it's not like you need to go to Harvard, i'd find the cheapest place and make sure it's nothing like where i was from, thus making you learn even more shit, i've never actually used my degree in my life and yet i used what i learned during those years everyday... of course i also told her she could say fuck it and travel the world or better yet go to school overseas for free and that roughly 30% of the population has a bachelor's degree and before she slagged it off she should realized it's not like you just show up and they hand you some fancy paper with your name written in calligraphy but in the end you'll have to work and deal with people and things far outside your comfort zone, in short it's a fucking right laugh and i also recommended taking copious amounts of drugs and having as much sex as possible but did add that was just my personal opinion... lastly i stated that whatever she did she shouldn't go to school for art cuz that was the one damn thing you can learn on your own... it's just a thought i said as i drained my beer...

She sat slightly nodding her head and dwelling upon my little soliloquy, i got up off the couch and walked my bottle to the recycle bin, stretched and grabbed my coat, shook hands and bumped fists and said my goodbyes. my Xanax'd up friend looked at me and smiled and said that was pretty cool, that she had never thought of shit that way, i told her us old-timers have our moments...  and then it was out to drive the loop, that wonderful little route home, the stereo humming comfortably, the houses mostly dark, the streets mostly empty,  raccoon eyes glinting yellow in the headlights...