‘Would you like a smoke?’ says the dude with the ponytail.
‘Would you like a smoke?’ says the dude with the ponytail.
‘Well, um, no, um, maybe,’ I say, checking the time.
11 a.m. Six hours to go before the speech. Five-and-a-half if you count the radio interview with the ex-mayor of San Diego, which I suppose I could cancel if things get messy.
‘How strong is it?’
‘Oh, it’s fine.’
Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that one before. On the other hand, this is California. Where the weed is now near as damn it legal, so long as it’s for ‘medicinal’ purposes. And this scenario does kind of qualify me, I think: stress due to excess travel; pre-speech nerves. Plus, of course, as a journalist I consider it a sacred duty to immerse myself wherever possible in the local customs.
The joint tastes light, floral, pleasant.
‘Have I got any surprises coming later or is this it?’ I ask, very mildly buzzed.
‘This is about it.’
‘All right then. Just two more puffs, then that’s definitely it.’
After two more puffs — with no apparent ill effects — I ask what I’m smoking.
Ponytail shows me a fat bud, like a bonsai triffid, sealed in a jar.
‘Ultimate Death Knell White Widowmaker Devil Weed,’ he announces. (Or similar.)
Ulp.
‘You say it’s not strong, though?’ A note of panic in my voice now.
I would ask more but already my connection with the outside world has started to grow fuzzy. People are saying words, speaking sentences, but whenever I try focusing on specific bits to understand what they mean the conversation accelerates far beyond the point where I can make any meaningful contribution. This may present problems in a radio interview, it occurs.
‘Yeah, I had to stop smoking that stuff. I was getting no pleasure out of it. It’s just so strong. Like, you’re tripping for three hours, at least…’ Ponytail’s wife is telling me.
I go into the garden to escape the chatter, whose complexity is doing my head in. There are pine trees. It’s hot. I hold my breath, possibly for five minutes, possibly ten seconds, I can’t tell. The stonedness doesn’t go away.
Ponytail is showing me the surfboards in his garage. I’m so gone I can’t even make the right approving noises.
We get into the car and go for some Mexican. The menu — in English — might just as well be in Sanskrit. The range of options terrifies me. Luckily, I cover my back by having what everyone else is having. Does anyone realise how completely and utterly gone I am? (Memo to self: must stop sniggering randomly and inappropriately.)
Ten minutes, or possibly an hour, into lunch I find myself shivering with cold. We move tables so that I’m in the sun. Then, an hour or maybe ten minutes later, I feel like the sun is boiling me alive. So I retreat into the shade. The burrito things arrive. Everyone else eats hungrily. I was hungry too before I turned up at Ponytail’s house. Now, though, I’m only eating because if I don’t everyone else will notice I’m not eating. But it’s not easy: it’s the gastronomic equivalent of one of those nightmares where a nameless force of evil is chasing you across marshmallows in ultra-slow-motion.
Then it’s over and we’re saying goodbye. I haven’t dared ask what the time is. If I know what the time is it will only intensify the horror: this speech this afternoon, it’s one of the most important I’ve ever had to give. I’m addressing 50 specially invited guests of the San Diego millionaire who funded this whole trip to promote my book Watermelons. He thought he was going to get some witty aperçus on the subject of the green movement. At this rate, he’ll be lucky if I can remember the book title.
We drive south, my companion and me. I really could do with some Led Zeppelin right now: III, IV or Houses of the Holy for preference, but none is immediately available. My companion puts on some acid free jazz. Normally I’d rather have my eyeballs chewed by bullet ants. Today, however, I’m all but immune to external stimulus. Which is rather the problem. The last time I was this stoned was 15 years ago in Dahab, on this vicious Bedouin weed supplied by the (now dead) Old Harrovian who turned the Marquess of Blandford on to heroin. It was so intense and horrible I got a whole chapter of a book out of it. Back in the Sinai, though, I didn’t have a speech to deliver at the end.
We stop in a McDonald’s. I can eat most of a large fries, which must be a good sign. Also, I’ve got some iced tea in the system and I think iced tea might just be the most brilliant drink ever invented.
On the outskirts of San Diego, something shimmers at the edge of the freeway. It’s so blinding white and bizarre — at once kitsch and ethereally beautiful — that I think it must be an hallucination. Later, I gather it’s a Mormon temple.
Now we’re pulling up outside the HQ of my millionaire sponsor. I do the radio interview from the car. It’s as if someone else much cleverer and more fluent than me is speaking on my behalf. I feel confident. Relaxed. So relaxed that I’m going to abandon the speech I’d prepared and wing it.
When I step in front of my audience I feel not a twinge of fear. ‘This is going to be cool,’ I’m thinking. ‘They’re going to love this — and I am too.’
Afterwards, my friend takes me to one side. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘That’s it. I am never, ever, ever going to let you go in front of an audience again when you’re not stoned.’
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