Thirty - Jill Emerson [28]
(Not my phrase. David used it.)
We talked. I don’t remember what about. Not about things, really, but just loose bubbling talk. We were already high, a little from what we had had to drink, and more from being high on each other. Arnold and I sat on the floor on pillows while David got the grass ready. There was music playing. Mozart. David likes only classical music, has no interest whatsoever in the new sounds. Mozart played. Arnold kissed me. I sucked his tongue, put my hand on his leg. David came back, holding a little brass water pipe, Indian or Ceylonese, I forget. There was a discussion about that at some point, whether the water pipe was Indian or Ceylonese, and we established tentatively that it was one or the other.
David sat on the floor with us. He touched Arnold’s cheek, twirled Arnold’s moustache. David is clean shaven with a schoolgirl complexion. He leaned across Arnold and kissed me. I reached around so that I could hug them both at once. “I love you both,” I said. “Oh, I love you both.”
The grass was a mixture of Panama Red and hashish. Panama Red is a particular kind of marijuana which is supposed to be particularly good, I guess. No one explained, just announced the composition as if stating a premium brand name. Panama Red. Gee, Dad, a Wurlitzer.
I hid my ignorance under a bushel.
The little water pipe passes from hand to hand. I suck gently on the mouthpiece, take the smoke directly into my lungs. (At least I remember that much.) The smell is of course familiar, not only from college days but because you smell grass all over New. York, constantly. People smoke in the streets, not hiding in closets as we just about did in college. But the taste is also familiar. I remember it from that far back.
It is very mild in my throat and lungs. I remembered it as being harsh and hot but this is milder than a cigarette. Very much so. And the pipe passes, with no urgency, no need to get high too quickly, and we talk.
I remember none of the conversation. Or maybe it’s that what I remember isn’t worth recording. It was all in and of that particular moment but doesn’t wear well.
The truth is that I was high before I realized it. At one point I was sitting there, not at all conscious that I was high yet, and I got up and started to move to the music, and it came to me that I wanted to be naked, that my clothes were confining me, choking me. I stood there swaying to Mozart—and why had I never before realized that Mozart could be danced to, that Mozart did everything but demand to be danced to? And in time to Mozart I removed every stitch of clothing, brandishing each piece gaily before me, then tossing it away like a stripper flipping garments into the wings.
Somewhere in the course of this performance I realized, with a cheerful little giggle, that I was absolutely stoned out of my head.
David pulled his turtleneck over his head. Arnold unbuttoned his shirt. Time and space were all grass-distorted. They undressed all the way and glided smiling toward me. I kissed one and then the other. I closed my eyes and went back and forth, from one to the other, kissing them, and I didn’t even know who I was kissing. David was clean shaven and had no hair on his chest but I was stoned and seemed to be simultaneously kissing a man with a moustache and pressing my breasts against a hairless chest.
I singsonged, “Georgie, Porgie, we’re gonna have an orgy!”
And we fell down laughing.
I sat on the floor and they sat on either side of me and we necked. I took David’s cock in one hand and Arnold’s in the other. They were both nice and hard. I leaned one way to kiss the tip of one, leaned the other way to kiss the other.
Everything felt so clean.
They carried me to the bed. Lifted me and carried me, one at my head and one at my feet, swinging me gaily as they walked. They put me on the bed and got on the bed with me. I lay with my eyes closed and I floated. Off in space, spaced out, weird, I don’t know all the words for where I was, so stoned, so utterly stoned on grass and hash, and I don