Btw, I realize that this particular post may disqualify me from ever attaining public office and may also result in mild disapproval from some readers. However, I implore you to read to the end for evidence of my possible redemption...
Weed was a constant presence in my undergrad, not necessarily in reference to my own use as I was too afraid to jeopardize my tenuous position in the voice studio to risk a puff. I actually believed that my teacher would hear the weed in my voice during warmups and would immediately proceed to toss me out of the program. However, weed was a part of life for most of the musicians I was lucky enough to be surrounded and influenced by, many of whom have since gone on to become some of the strongest musicians on the Chicago scene (and elsewhere.) I never questioned or knew where it came from...weed was simply there. About six months into my freshman year, I found a wrapped stash tucked away on a bathroom shelf while cleaning my boyfriend's apartment. (yep, I have always been OCD enough to clean the apartments of past boyfriends..) He responded with glee, while sheepishly admitting that he had likely hidden it away shortly after smoking and had promptly forgotten. Soon after that, I decided it was time I try.
My friends had never exhorted, nor applied even one ounce of pressure on me to partake with them. However, upon my word, they began endearingly planning my 'first time.' We picked the Friday of a three day weekend and one friend, another voice student a couple years my senior who never had less than a kind word for anyone, came up with the perfect solution to my smoking dilemma...Brownies. However, in all of our careful planing, we had overlooked one very important fact... I really love brownies.
That Friday night, I sank into an overstuffed frayed couch whose past life probably involved someone's grandmother. Surrounded by eager friends shrouded in innocence and excitement that only youth provides, with the smell of incense and baking in the air and Michael Jackson alternating with Jamiroquai in the backgound, I picked up a brownie and took my first bite.
The problem with eating rather than smoking is that one cannot necessarily gage the amount of weed taken in. When one smokes, one can have a puff and then wait for a slight effect before deciding whether there is need to continue. When one eats, one can simply be hungry, possibly taking in more than needed or anticipated. After my second brownie, my fingers and toes began to tingle and my body felt comfortably weighted down, (thus proving that I would never be one of those musicians with the ability to perform enhanced by any sort of drug.) I turned my head, my eyes stubbornly focused on one point, only to have the room swivel to catch up seconds later. Shortly after that I mentioned to my boyfriend that I needed to use the bathroom, but I needed him to remind me. And not long after that, I asked him if I told him that I needed to go to the bathroom or if I had merely thought it. My brain had become utterly useless and it became clear to everyone that I had had too much.
After that night, weed played a miniscule role in my life, a mere puff every couple of months in the company of friends, or a peaceful presence in the face of a brutal migraine. Weed had proven a much safer alternative to accidently overdosing on Advil or to the suggestions from doctors of increasingly stronger and addictive pain killers. A few years later, a close friend, overtaken by curiosity, sat on my couch, a tiny joint in her hand and her husband within reach. Upon taking a small puff, she turned to me and immediately said, "I don't feel anything." Her husband and I laughed while quickly taking the joint from her hand.
I had never had cause to fear weed. After all, weed had not caused my mother to be pulled over for a DUI with her kids in the backseat... Alcohol had done that. Weed had not caused my mom to disappear for days on end... Alcohol had done that. Weed had not torn apart my family and filled my childhood with fear and dread... Alcohol had done that. However, that being said, my overly liberal view of weed is fast being altered. I live in Uptown and am surrounded by what is rumored to be a gang drug turf war and while I am not naive enough to think that Marijuana is the strongest drug fought over, I also recognize that it is a healthy part of the sadness afflicting this neighborhood. I do not fear weed, but as I hear gunshots and read the news, I am beginning to fear it's social costs and am loathe to contribute. (I find it ironic that I had to use spell check for the word marijuana..) Recently, I have called friends who enjoy their weed. I have asked pointed questions, not necessarily wanting names or specifics, but finding that the trail of bread crumbs, despite the degrees of separation, almost always led back to a dark corner, a gang, a contributor to mine and many other neighborhoods current troubles. The ease and availability of weed in my college days lost its naivety. In the concept of supply and demand, in my younger days, I had been a contributor.
Uptown has made the news these past few weeks which would be fantastic were a hostage situation not needed to reach that end. We have had multiple shootings, a couple in the same exact spot where a broken police camera captured nothing. The hostage situation was amazingly resolved with no shots fired and a few arrests though very few details have been made public. The Uptown Update blog has become home to much bigotry and hatred, many posters marking 'low income' and 'criminal' as interchangeable and posts becoming extremely personal and in some cases, quite unkind. As usual, no one seems to know what to do that could be considered even remotely constructive. However, one citizen has managed to take the chaos as an opportunity to set up volunteer slots at the local soup kitchen, Cornerstone.
This past Tuesday, I loaded up on DayQuil and nose spray and headed over for a quick lunch shift while praying that in my haste to help, I wasn't infecting Uptown's entire homeless population with my cold.
In the midst of piling food on trays and teasing men into taking the green beans and not just the fries, I began talking with my fellow volunteer, a well spoken black woman with strong opinions of her home Uptown. As she had lived and worked in this community and knew far more than I, I wanted her opinions and ideas. As she talked, she mentioned the ineffectiveness of activities such as positive loitering as it merely drives a bigger wedge.. after all, what good can a group of white people standing around do. What could they possibly know, when so many of Uptown's problems are rooted in race and poverty? While she had a strong point, I felt as though I was being lumped into that group of clueless white faces, unable to understand poverty and pain. I resented that because while I no longer wear my childhood disfunction as a badge of bitterness for all the world to see, I resented the fact that one might look at me and simply see a little rich white girl who hasn't a clue of the surrounding pain. I resented in much the same way a black man would resent judgement, merely for being black rather than being judged on his own merit. I had, after all, kicked, screamed, cried, begged and fought to beat my past and I refuse to have that struggle disappear under a pale visage.
As I walked home Tuesday afternoon from helping to feed a few hundred hungry people, I walked past bird poop and graffiti, under rusted el tracks, past sad aimless people and I searched, ...Oh how I searched for a spot of beauty in this neighborhood. Wonderfully, I found it in a returned smile of a little girl, swallowed whole in her puffy coat, mittens dangling, hat askew...
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