Break On Through

            by Kate Jacobsen

 

It’s a wonderful Saturday afternoon in the middle of April.  The birds are chirping, the sun is shining and my friends and I are as high as humanly possible.  Having just spent two hours laying in bed, staring at the tie-dyed sheet on the ceiling and sharing four boxes of non-descript cheese flavored goodness, I recommend we all go for a walk.  This suggestion is promptly shot down when Henry points out that we can’t go anywhere because Jujubee is passed out on the floor.  I’d forgotten about Jujubee, and I look over to find him splayed out on the floor, a thin coating of orange powder covering his whole body.  He’s not about to wake up any time soon.

The tie-dye no longer interests me as much as it does the others.  They’re all still seeing the naked people, the dragons and the horses.  I’ve already started to come down, so the sheet is just giving me a headache.

            Illegal substances coursing through ones veins always seem to bring about deep thoughts, and I begin to reflect upon the people around me.  First there’s Jujubee.  The first time we met him he was so high that he couldn’t speak, and we adopted him as our companion.  He never really told us his real name, but that doesn’t matter so much as the fact that this is his house.  Apparently he has parents, but I’ve never seen or heard them.  In my professional opinion, his parents don’t exist.  Jujubee is the Christ child, reincarnate and raised by wolves, but that’s for another time. 

            Henry is the eldest of our group of friends.  He’s already eighteen and a dealer by trade.  He aspires to one day be President of the United States, at which time he will mandate a, “Get Your Groove On Hour” during which time all humans and land-bound mammals will have to get down with their own bad selves or risk being sent to jail.  Under any other circumstances I would have considered him my best friend.

            Then come the twins.   The legend goes that their mother was a gypsy, and when she found out that she was to birth twins, she threw knives at a map to pick their names.  Both are tall, lanky, blondes.  They’re fiercely loyal, with a penchant for tricks, adventures and small topiaries.  Montana, the boy, is quiet and reserved, while his sister Georgia is the opposite.  She says whatever is on her mind, good or bad, and won’t hesitate to beat the crap out of you if she sees fit to do so.  She’s the only girl in our group, and the most gorgeous piece of artwork you have ever seen.  Her tomboy years have given her a quick wit, a glorious tan, and the ability to drink any unlucky soul under the table.  Yes, as you can tell I’m madly in love with her. I always have been, and probably always will be.

            That leaves me.  My name is Kimberly (yes I’m a boy; it’s a family name, now get over it), and I’m a pretty reserved guy.  Drugs make me do some crazy shit sometimes, but most of the time I’m pretty chill.  I’m the only one of my friends with a license, though not the only one that drives.  Georgia drives us around occasionally.  When we get pulled over she just bats her eyes and away goes Mr. popo. 

            I open my eyes (I’d passed out onto the floor during the deep thinking, much like Jujubee) to find Montana standing over me, staring into my face.  He’s nudging my ear with his toe, trying to get me to wake up.  I stand up, call him a bitch and slap him.  It’s not that I’m angry or anything, it’s that I get very aggressive when I’m intoxicated.  He promptly shoves me into a wall (damn rugby players) and I go down like a felled tree.  I stand up again, ready to take on The Man. I propose a truce, and offer my hand for a handshake.  We shake, and as he turns to walk out to the kitchen, I pounce on his back.  He barely seems to notice the sudden attack, and flicks me off his back.  This time I try to catch myself on the coffee table, but I accidentally send it shooting into the wall. 

            “Oh shit.”

“Man that’s all you can say? You just popped a hole in Jujubee’s wall, while he’s

passed out on the floor.  You can’t get much more inconsiderate than that man.”

“Shut up.  Maybe there’s a way to fix it so that he won’t notice.”

I go over to inspect the gaping hole in the wall.  When I peer in, I’m expecting to see the wall on the other side.  Instead, I see a solid door hinge.  A big one. 

            “Shit dude, there’s a door behind here.”

            “Maybe you should cut back a little on the ganja man, you’re seeing things.”

            “Will you just come here and look at this? It’s not just the ganj.”

            “Shit, that is a door! “

            “Good observation skills, man. Should we wake Juju? It is his door, technically.”

            “I guess man, if it’s possible.  He was pretty heavily gone there for a while.”

We try to wake up Jujubee, but he’s still way too far-gone to fathom the fact that we just found a door in his wall.   We let him alone, and go wake up Georgia to show her the door.  She, like her brother, won’t believe me about the door until she sees it.   When we show her the new door, she lets out an uncharacteristic expletive and sits down on the rug.

            “Where’s it go?”

“I don’t know. We want to find out, but Jujubee’s asleep and I don’t want to tear down his wall without him.”

“I’ll handle that.”

Georgia walks over to Jujubee, and stares at him for a while.  Then she bends down, and whispers something into his ear.  Immediately his eyes pop open and he’s awake.  She helps him up, and they walk over to the hole.

            I’ve always been an adventurous one, especially when intoxicated.  There was this one time in Nicaragua when I almost ran off with what I thought was the circus, but was actually a motorcycle gang.  That was an interesting day. Jujubee walks over to the hole, and inspects the hinge. 

“Dude, can we just rip the hole open a little more so that we can get the door open?”

“I guess man, whatever.  Just watch the rug, and try not to get the floor too dirty.”

Montana and I proceed to rip down the dry wall.  It comes down much easier than I would have expected, but that may just be my brutish strength and determination.  After a few minutes the whole door is visible, and what a door it is!   It’s eight-feet high, and solid metal.  The door itself is embossed with leaves, with a giant leaf in the center.  The words “A friend in need’s a friend indeed, a friend with weed is better” are carved into the top.   We move in to get a closer look at the door, and realize that there are words carved underneath each of the smaller leaves.

“Champagne. Santa Maria. Crystal. Super Skunk.  Dude, I have no idea what these words mean.”

“Ahh young grasshopper, I see that you are still young to the ways of the grapes. These are all names of different types of Ganj.  Pretty good types too.” Leave it to Henry to be the number one authority on weed.  While we’ve been talking, Montana has been inspecting the door. 

“Dude, there’s no lock.  It must be unlocked; if we push or pull hard enough it should open.”

“I don’t think that’s how these things work man. It’s probably a magic door.  We need to think of a magic code word that will let us inside”

Suddenly out of nowhere, a flash of blonde hair runs past me.  There’s a loud crash as it runs full speed into the door, and Jujubee falls to the floor again.  The echo from the door resonates throughout the room for what seems like minutes.  I don’t know whether to be worried for Jujubee or not, so I laugh hysterically and fall to the floor with Henry and the twins.  Through our laughter, I begin to hear a thundering voice.  I quickly quiet down the others, because the door has started talking to us in a deep and thundering voice.

“Why do you find it funny to try to break down the door of Hashish? You will never succeed”

By this point we are all pretty freaked out.  I’ve never been high enough for a door to talk to me.  I had a long conversation with a dog once, but never an inanimate object.  We form a huddle, and I elect Henry as our ambassador.  We send him out, and then go run to hide behind the coffee table.

            “Oh door of great power.  Why have you forsaken us?”

“You have disrespected me.  That little thing smashed into me to try to break me down.  I have been here for hundreds of years, and one little fly running into me is not going to make me open.”

“Sir, if I may ask, what will make you open?”

“I am Hashish, son of Cannabis the great.  It is my job to open the door when the great question is answered.”

Throughout this whole interaction the rest of us have been hiding behind the glass coffee table, afraid of the wrath of Hashish.  We can’t hear anything, and the only thing we see is Henry kneeling in front of the door muttering to himself.  All of the sudden, Henry stands up, bows to the door and walks back towards us.

“Dude, so what’d the door say?”

“He was lightweight pissed at Juju for running into him, but he got over it. He’s a pretty chill door when it comes down to it.  He made me answer some secret question that he’s been saving for three hundred years.  Nothing major.”

“Swear? What’s the question? What’d you have to do?”

“Come on now man, I can’t tell you what the question was.  It’s a secret.”

I swing at Henry, miss and fall onto the bed.  I’m about to get up for our second round, when thunderous noise shakes the room.  The leaves on the front have begun to spin and loud banging and popping noises are coming from the back of the door.  The door slowly begins to squeak open, revealing a long, dark hallway.

“Whoa,” Leave it to Georgia to be eloquent at a time like this.

“Dudes! We should explore this thing and see where it goes! We’ll be like the Goonies!  Maybe we’ll find a lost pirate ship filled with treasure and be able to buy back all our homes from the nasty nasty bank men,”

“Georgia, there aren’t any nasty nasty bank men.”

“A girl can dream, can’t she?”

We stand there, in awed silence, staring at Georgia, whose eyes have lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.  She really wants to go down that tunnel.  I’m just about to say no, lets go smoke some more, maybe enjoy a little tie-dye and forget about this whole door thing, when she looks at me.  Oh god, she’s looking at me.

“Maybe we should go down the tunnel.  It’s not like we’re doing anything here. Really, how interesting is tie-dye?”

“I mean, I guess. It doesn’t look particularly safe, and I’m not much of a tunnel man myself; I’m more into the hidden staircases.”

I was hoping that they would say no, or at least seem to think over my idea.  They just jumped in headfirst; if they’d seemed more worried, I could have backed out gracefully.  Now, I’m stuck. 

“Yah, well, we don’t even have flashlights. We can’t go down a strange sub-terrain tunnel without flashlights, it’s preposterous!”

“Juju has plenty of flashlights and shit under his bed.  It’s like he’s a friggin’ mole or something.” Damn you Juju. Damn you.

It’s true that Juju has flashlights under his bed.  He also has everything else imaginable: A twenty pack of individually wrapped Twinkies, six tubes of Tube Sox, two un-opened handles of Bacardi and four un-opened tins of sardines.   As soon as I see the flashlights, I know that we’re actually going to have to go about this.  To save myself I yell

“Nose-goes has to go first down the tunnel”

Hah, that’s how we do it.  I win, and Georgia loses (she’s always had slow nose-goes reflexes).  I figure that I’m safe so I bend down to pick up some food from under Jujubee’s bed, as we may be down the tunnel a long time. Too late for my own good, I hear from behind me

“Second time’s the best time!”

DAMN!  She got me. I’m not able to get to my nose in time, and she pulled the all mighty triple-dog-dare of the nose goes world. Damn.

“Well, if we’re gonna go, we better go.”  Getting philosophical in times of stress is one of my many trademarks. 

We stock up on the staples:  our trusty pipe named Chunky, what little dank we haven’t smoked yet, some sardines, one of the handles and two flashlights.  We all don sweatshirts, ‘cause the dark looks pretty cold.  All set to roll out. 

As we step into the tunnel, a distinct smell reaches our nostrils: Eau de Marijuana.  We stand there amazed, astounded and slightly contact high just from the smell. 

“Dude, Juju, what the hell is this.  It’s like a growing room or something.  Are you sure that you didn’t know this was here? The smell is so strong that I can’t believe you wouldn’t be able to smell it from your room.”

“Montana, what the hell are you talking about?  Juju always smokes in his room, why would he notice more of a pot smell?”

“O.K…Well…Moving on…”

“Shut up.”

“Right.”

As we walk further down the tunnel, the smell gets stronger and stronger.  It’s getting harder and harder to concentrate.  Just when I’m beginning to think that I won’t be able to go any further, we meet another door.  This door, though the same size or bigger than the first, is much less ornate. This one has a keyhole, but we don’t have a key. 

We search everywhere for the key, feeling the walls and walking back and forth along the corridor looking at the ground.  We even send Jujubee into it at top speed to see if it too is a magical door, but this time no voice comes forth.  We start walking back up the tunnel figuring we’ll come back soon with a great big axe and get the door open that way when Henry has an epiphany,

“I know where the key will be! It’s where all great keys have been hidden since the beginning of time!”

He runs back down the tunnel to the door.  He has to shuffle around with his feet a bit, but eventually he finds it: the welcome mat.  Of course! The keys are always under the mat!  He throws the mat to the side, and there it is.  A key about the size of my forearm, wonderfully embellished with five pot leaves.  We stand there in silence for what seems like an eternity, until I can’t take it any more.

“So, are you going to open the door? Or are we all going to sit here in the dark looking at a key for the rest of time?”

“Fine, fine. Don’t get all bitchy just because I wanted to take my time admiring the fine craftsmanship of this piece of history.  Here, I’ll open your door for you.”

The key glides in without a hitch.  He turns it, and the same popping and whirring noises start again.  Eventually the noises stop, but this time the door doesn’t open by itself.  We all look at each other, hoping someone else will volunteer to go push open the door.  No one can be sure what’s behind the door, whether it’s a rabid dog or the kingdom of Narnia, but everyone is sure that they want to know.

I walk towards the door, put my hand out and gently push.  What I see next takes my breath away.  Behind the door is a room, but not just any room; it’s a stoners dream room.  Along a wall lies boxes of every type of marijuana and tobacco imaginable; some flavored, some in bright colors that I’ve never even seen before.  Another wall holds paraphernalia of all types and sizes: glass pipes and bongs, papers and everything else you could ever possibly want. 

In the middle of the room is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.   Sitting on the floor, surrounded by five velvet cushions is a four-foot tall golden hookah.  It is incredibly ornate and detailed, with tiny cannabis plants growing up the golden sides.  I almost want to cry it’s all so gorgeous. 

After a few minutes of stunned silence, everyone fans out to separate parts of the room.  Henry immediately goes over the wall of weed and begins filling his pockets from every box he can reach, while Georgia and Montana run to the pipes and begin lifting each up to the light.  Jujubee goes right to the hookah and starts inspecting the hoses, trying to see if they are useable.  They’re as clear as possible, so he puts in some mango-flavored tobacco and lights up a coal. 

I just lay back on the cushions, basking in the aroma of weed, mango and dirt.  I don’t know how or why this room got here, but like the others I don’t really care.  I don’t know if this room will last, or whether when we leave it will be like coming out of the wardrobe and we will never be able to go back.  What I do know is that I’m here right now with all of my friends, about to get completely baked, and I currently have not a care in the world. 

Henry throws a brick of weed to one of the twins, who breaks some off and starts up a bong going around.  I could be worrying about plenty of things, but I don’t, and when the bong gets to me I just sit back, inhale and enjoy the chronic.