The Marijuana Chronicles, page 10
She seemed surprised at my generosity.
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“What are you talking about? I’m always nice to you. I’m giving you shelter, food, clothes, and pot. What else do you want, a fucking kidney?”
“Kidney?” Birdie tilted her head.
Sophia and Annabelle made their way into the kitchen and started hovering. I waited till they’d gotten some coffee down then told them about Doon’s plans for them.
“Pennsylvania?” Annabelle said, wrinkling her nose. “I was born there. I have no wish to return. Not even ninety-five years later.”
“Does he think we’re like Frankenstein or something? How horrible of him,” Birdie said.
“Would we make money?” Sophia asked.
“It’s possible.”
“Would we go on TV?” Sophia pointed at the television set.
“Maybe,” I shrugged.
“Really?” Sophia’s eyes widened.
“Sophia, we do not wish to be put on display like zoo animals,” Birdie said.
“We don’t?” Sophia squinted.
“We don’t,” Annabelle said.
“Where can we go?” Birdie asked.
“Go?” I said.
“I don’t want to be experimented on. If we stay here, they will come for us.”
Birdie was right. But where could they go? They’d only been living in the twenty-first century for forty-eight hours. I couldn’t very well send them to, say, Maine, or New Jersey, and expect them to blend in, never mind survive.
“What do you know about Wyoming?” I asked.
“Like your wallet?” Sophia pointed at my weed-stash wallet open on the coffee table.
“Like the state out west,” I said.
“Cowboys?” Annabelle asked.
“Sort of,” I said. “I think nowadays the cowboys drive pickup trucks and wear helmets. The West isn’t that wild anymore, but nothing really is.”
All three looked at me blankly.
“Well?” I said.
“What would we do when we got there? We have no money, no nothing,” said Birdie.
“I’d get some odd jobs like I have here. And you would too.”
They looked at one another. Then they looked at me again.
“Okay,” Sophia shrugged. “I guess. But if it’s horrible, then I want to go be a zoo animal and be on TV.”
“How do we get there?” Annabelle asked, glancing all around, like maybe the twenty-first century had teleporting devices that she hadn’t noticed yet.
“We’ll drive,” I said. “My car fits four. And a dog.”
“When do we leave?” Annabelle asked.
“As soon as we pack up a few things,” I said.
I had nothing I valued in the apartment. As for my jobs, the developmentally disabled adults wouldn’t remember me for very long, and though I would miss seeing Henry, the big mastiff at the shelter, finally find a permanent home, it was about the only thing I’d regret.
What’s more, I’d have company.
I’d always figured I’d eventually rescue more pit bulls or try living with a man for more than three weeks. Now, instead, I had zombies.
At least they had normal-sized heads.
BOB HOLMAN is a poet, professor, and proprietor of Bowery Poetry Club. His new book, his sixteenth (if you count CDs and videos, which he does), Sing This One Back to Me, is from Coffee House Press. His series on poetry and endangered languages, On the Road, is shown on LinkTV. org, and his new special, Language Matters, will premiere on PBS. He is also working on a multimedia performance called The Trip. Holman lives on the Bowery in New York City.
pasta mon
by bob holman
Pasta Mon cookin in a limousine
Windows rolled up—poem written in the steam
Poem starts to change—to a recipe?
I’m cookin up a story! You still hungry?
Deep in the blue sea deep in the memory
Connected, perfected—totally poetry
Yuppie got a puppy & the baby got a Pamper
Doin the 500 in a Winnebago camper
Why?
Why?
Why Pasta Mon cry?
Back in the history I shot the deputy
For not makin sauce sufficiently garlicky
Everyone entangled in a single ecstasy
A single strand of Pasta Mon’s linguini
This is the wild life! Carbohydrates? Out of sight!
“Pasta Mon Fashions” give eyesight insight
See the world through spaghetti headlights
Ravioli figleaf? Pasta Paradise!
Why?
Why?
Fresh onions is why
So much pasta Mon cannot give it away
What’s the matter with a platter of pasta pâté?
Keep the homefries burnin—a sorbet gourmet
You too can have your own authentic Pasta Mon beret
Pasta Mon starrin on his own tv show
Yesterday’s menu’s already obsolete-o
Today, I’ll show you how to roll a pasta-filled burrito!
W/ no habichuela on the tuxedo
It might boil over—the pot is bubblin
It might boil over your mind that’s troublin
It might boil over—dynamite!
Might boil away to nothin, spoil your appetite?
It happened to me while readin Weekly Reader
The future was comin—it would be beater
Beater. Deffer. Bigger forever.
Sun on the horizon—it was always risin
The Future is here—the Past is a goner
All stuffed in a pasta shell of once upon a
Time when the rhyme would be flora and fauna
A cheese syntheses: Utopian lasagna
A nickel for a can & a nickel for a bottle
A trickle-down sound from the nickel that bought you
America the Beautiful in quarantine
A cardboard mattress and a cardboard dream
Barbecue trash cans linin the Hudson
Dogs are howlin as you throw the spuds on
Pasta Mon’s recipes gettin kinda smelly
Rat ratatouille & vermin vermicelli
It might boil over the pot is bubblin
It might boil over it’s your mind that’s troublin
It might boil over—dynamite!
Might boil away to nothin, spoil your appetite?
On the good ship Pasta Mon
Where the last macaroni is stuck to the pan
& the ship is sinkin
& the food is stinkin
& you just keep drinkin
O, oaweoh …
And remember!
“Bud” spelled backward,
… is “Dub”!
PaRT III
ReCReaTIOn & eDuCATIOn
CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN is the New York–based author of A Tiger in the Kitchen. She was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, InStyle, and the Baltimore Sun; her work has also appeared in the New York Times, among other publications. The Singapore native has been an artist in residence at Yaddo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She is working on her second book, a novel, and is the editor of Singapore Noir, a fiction anthology that Akashic Books will publish in 2014.
ganja ghosts
by cheryl lu-lien tan
The lousy bugger was taking so long to get ready that Jackson’s balls really started to itch.
The tropical heat was so stifling, the scratchy polyester covering of the settee was so painfully glued to the bottom of his sweaty thighs, that Jackson wondered why he had bothered to come back to Singapore during the summer. He desperately wanted to scratch himself but he could hear Seng’s mother shuffling about somewhere nearby. In the industrial-strength fluorescent light of Auntie’s small living room, there was no hiding anything. After years of not seeing Seng or his mum—better to behave tonight.
“Aiyoh, my god …” Jackson mumbled, glancing at Richard, who was next to him on the sofa, tapping away on his phone, looking as fresh and talcum-powdered as he had an hour ago when they arrived at Seng’s. Fucking irritating, Jackson thought. After just a few years away in the States, his body had forgotten how sweltering Singapore was when it wasn’t monsoon season.
“Eh,” Jackson said to Richard, who nodded, not taking his eyes off his phone, “what are we doing tonight?”
“Fucker,” Richard responded, looking up and poking his third finger in Jackson’s direction. “You don’t remember, ah? Singapore, Wednesday night—nothing to do, lah!”
Seng’s door opened suddenly, sending a blast of ice-cold air into the living room. Bugger couldn’t even share his bloody air-con, Jackson thought. Seng, oblivious as usual, slowly made his way around the room, picking up his platinum TAG Heuer from the dining table and slipping it on his wrist, taking his keys off the hook next to the altar, then stopping to light a joss stick, bowing three times to his dad’s grim face in a framed black-and-white photo before jabbing the incense in an ash-brimmed rice bowl.
“Eh—girls, stop complaining. Tonight is different, lah,” Seng said to his friends, tapping his hand on his chest pocket, stopping when his fingers found the shape of his lighter. “Ma,” he shouted toward the kitchen as he reached into his back pocket for his Marlboro Menthol Lights, “we’re making a move!” Sliding a cigarette between his lips so he could fire up the moment they left, he raised two fingers, gestured toward the narrow, chipped door, and started walking.
After all these years, the bugger still had the same kwai lan air he had even when he was fifteen. Whenever they walked into any room, whether it was a lecture hall or the front VIP section at Pump Room, Seng always swaggered ahead of the two of them, chest puffed out, chin slightly up, as he surveyed the place, watching people as they watched him, wondering who the fuck he was. Not that the three of them were a gang—but with Seng looking so kwai lan, Jackson was always on guard. If other guys thought they were some sort of gang or just trying to be fuckers, who knows where a staring contest could lead even in the most stylo of clubs.
“Richard, why must you be so negative?” Seng said, turning just slightly as he opened the door to make sure the other two were indeed scrambling off the settee. “Guys, tonight—don’t worry. You just wait and see.”
Jackson tried to keep up with Seng and Richard as they quickly shuffled down the three flights of stairs, puffing and flicking. Jackson had stopped trying to smoke in Chicago after a brief attempt, just to fit in with his colleagues at the insurance office. After some months of politely holding a cigarette and resisting the urge to gag while inhaling, he had decided to accept the fact that he was going to be the sad fuck left alone in the bar or at dinner whenever his colleagues went out to have a smoke. But Seng had given him such a look when he tried to explain that he didn’t actually like smoking that Jackson just gave up and took one when Seng held out the box.
“Eh, seriously—where are we going?” Jackson asked again, wondering if he should have stayed home. His throat was starting to feel scratchy from the smoke and the heat. It was insane. Just because the three of them were best friends in secondary school didn’t mean they still had anything in common. And Seng had always been crazy—god knows what he had in mind. Great—Jackson could feel himself sweating even more.
“Almost there, lah,” Seng said, breathing heavily as he darted between a few pillars and ducked into a narrow parking lot. “Kau beh so much!”
Jackson could start to hear the chipper hum of evening kopitiam chatter as they crossed the parking lot. Seng held his right palm out, asking them to wait outside the open-air shop when they arrived. Stamping out his cigarette with his shiny brown Prada sneakers, he smoothed back his gelled hair and sauntered into the heart of the coffee shop. How the guy managed to afford all this atas European-label crap on his shipping-company peon salary, Jackson had no idea. Even Richard had a much better job than Seng—some midlevel manager at Citibank or something—and he never wore any name-brand shit.
Jackson watched as Seng exchanged whispers, then a little cash and something else, with the kopitiam uncle. Uncle reached underneath his counter and pulled out six cans of Tiger beer and a few packets of chicken-flavored Twisties, putting them in a red plastic bag and handing that over. Seng shook the uncle’s hand and slowly walked out. The whole exchange took less than two minutes. No one had even looked twice at them.
Seng was silent as he stepped outside, pausing briefly to light another cigarette before starting to move again, this time more quickly. Richard was quiet, texting as they walked, careful to keep his footsteps right behind Seng’s. Jackson glanced around—the squat towers of cheap flats passed by slowly. There was a slender road before them, one of those old bus stops on the other side that looked like a faded, oversized orange mushroom, and next to that was a set of narrow stairs.
Ah, that’s where Seng was going. The old place—a fortress of trees that was, at first, a good place to play hide-and-seek, and then later, a safe place to take girls in the early pak tor days. With all those trees around, who needs to spend fifty dollars at Hotel 88 for two hours of privacy? If the girls were enthusiastic enough in the park then, okay lah, worth it to spend the fifty at a hotel.
When Seng got to their old usual table, a chunky stone fixture with five short stools around it, he sat down, gesturing to Richard to open the beers, grunting loudly when the guy took a few seconds too long to set aside his phone. As Richard opened three cans, nudging one over to Seng and then Jackson, Seng yanked out a little plastic bag and a small flat pouch from his pocket.
“I make the first one, ah—but you better watch carefully.” Seng pulled out a small piece of paper from the pouch, laid a few pinches of what looked like dried tea leaves on it, and started rolling. “This uncle here not going to roll all the ganja for you two lazy fuckers.”
“Ganja?” Jackson said, almost shouting. “Are you crazy? We can get arrested, you know.”
Richard jumped up, looking angry. “Oi—keep quiet! You want us to get caught, is it? You don’t want to do, just fuck off, lah! Don’t stay here and kill our mood.” Seng just stared at Jackson, still holding the smoke in his hand. Richard sat back down, taking a long sip from his can.
It’s not that Jackson had never done ganja—it happened once at a frat party at Loyola, on some drunken night when a cute girl had offered it to him and he felt he couldn’t say no. He hadn’t felt much of anything then, though—not from the pot or the girl. In the end he decided that, okay lah, at least he could say he’d tried pot once. Maybe better to just be a good citizen and call it a day. He never saw the girl again either.
“Fucker, how?” Seng said. “Want or don’t want?”
The feeling was old and familiar to Jackson—trapped, mostly. A little exhilarated but trapped. Amazing how the years had passed, they were all thirty now, working men with real jobs, and Seng still managed to bugger him into all these things.
“Okay, okay,” Jackson said. “But you start first.”
Seng lit up the joint, took a deep puff, and inhaled, holding it in for a long moment as he passed the smoke to Richard, who did the same, then passed it over to Jackson. The joint felt warm between his fingers and he could smell its sickeningly sweet smoke. Jackson wasn’t quite sure what to do.
“Oi,” Seng said. “Kani nah—you not going to smoke then just pass it back, lah, okay? Don’t waste.”
Jackson put the joint between his lips and sucked deeply, holding his breath and trying hard not to cough. He passed the joint to Seng and the cycle started again. None of them said anything until the joint had made a few rounds, with Seng taking a last long puff before flinging it to the ground and grinding it out.
A cloud of deep, sweet air swaddled them now. Jackson was slowly exhaling, bit by small bit, trying to sense whether he felt any different. He heard a sharp squelch—Seng had opened a bag of Twisties and started loudly crunching away.
“Jackson, I tell you, ah, you been away so long, this country, ah—crazy already,” Seng said. “You missed all these fucking stupid things! I tell you also, you won’t believe.”
“Eh, tell him about that guy!” Richard suddenly shouted, starting to laugh. “Walau—weird fucker, man!”
“So there’s this guy, ah,” Seng began, “apparently he can only steam about his wife when she’s asleep. Aiyoh, so the fucker started drugging her at night, man—feed her sleeping pills all, so she’s really still when he pok her! Walau!” He started laughing. “Like that, still okay. Weird—but okay. But then one night, the fucker wanted to really make sure she didn’t wake up—their anniversary or some shit like that. So he tripled the dosage to make sure she really sleep deeply. But then, hello, the wife never woke up!”
Richard and Seng were laughing so hard neither could speak. Richard was doubled over, holding his stomach. Perhaps it was watching the two of them—or maybe the story? But Jackson heard himself starting to laugh too.
“I tell you,” Seng said. “I told Richard, those people at wakes—better guard their coffins, man. Now that the guy’s wife is dead and gone, he might start going to funerals to look for another dead girlfriend to pok!” Jackson was surprised to once again find himself whooping along with their laughter.
“Wait, wait—this one even more stupid, lah,” Richard said. “Apparently, ah, there’s this guy who got young, pretty mistress, lah. But then one day I think he want to break up with her or some shit. So apparently he met her by the side of some road to cut her off. Wah—the woman angry, man! She not only scratch his Mercedes and take off her high heel and bang it on the car and all. But then she started whacking him in the balls with her hands! Fucker just stood there with his head down, just accepting it!”
Richard had to stop for a moment until the mirth waned. “Wait—even worse. The whole thing—all caught on tape! Some guy passing by taped the whole thing on his iPhone then, kani nah, post on the Internet! Wuahahahaha—the rich fucker so embarrassed he can’t even drive his ten-year-old son to school anymore, you know! The moment he show up, the parents, teachers, even his son’s friends all laughing, pointing pointing at him for being such a no-balls fucker. This type of loser, better just do the world a favor and drown himself, lah.”
