BLUE COUP D’ETAT

In honor of our man in Poland, a story from years ago . . .

Met up with Tim last night for dinner. I decided to get drunk to celebrate seeing him for the first time in over a month and also with the aim of getting tired early and passing out at a reasonable hour, not to be, not to be. Tim’s getting married in Moscow Dec. 27th after breaking up with his long time girlfriend Aldona two or three months ago. His fiancé’s name is Annia and he’s known her since he first visited Russia while he was in high school however things fell apart way back when and this isn’t really what I want to talk about anyway so we ate and then drank three pitchers of beer which gave me an itch to go to a strip club instead of going to sleep but instead Tim offered to smoke a joint with him back at his place in Queens to which I readily agreed thinking that I was lucky to be saving some money. So we took the M60 from 116th to Queens and continued our drunken conversation right up to his couch in his newly occupied and overly cluttered, unpacked basement apartment where he paused to roll a joint with the disclaimer–”It might be oregano, I got it off the street near Washington Square Park”. Well it was something maybe not oregano but definitely not pot. After smoking the whole joint and getting an unpleasant lemon flavor stuck on my tongue we agreed to go to the beer garden and wash away the bitter disappoint with a mug of pilsner which only served to solidify our mutual conviction that we should go on a quest for the real pot–we wouldn’t buy any unless it was the real stuff. So at about 1:30 a.m. we boarded the N train bound for 8th Street but we had to get off on 14th because it was running express. Both of us were ravenously hungry at this point and pissing in any secluded corner we could find like furtive dogs. So I started to talk about the good pizza joints with Stromboli rolls and we stormed ahead, our purpose two fold–get high, get stuffed. After a short walk we suddenly came within sight of the Washington Arch (actually it wasn’t such a short walk, we zig zagged undecidedly South) at which point we took on our looking for drugs mask–Tim’s was a questioning smile, mine a skeptical frown. Almost immediately we were met by a toothless man named Will who said he had a quarter or half-ounce, coke, and ecstasy. The quarter or half ounce was less than an eighth but definitely pot, bad pot but pot nonetheless. We passed on the coke, but the ecstasy was somehow intriguing. The pills had a letter “P” pressed into them, which he told us stood for Pokemon. Anyway we got ripped off for over eighty dollars and walked away with two pills and a seedy stemmy bag of dirt weed. Sometimes you pay stupid stuff for adventure. We popped our pills and rambled towards our pizza place–I thought we were going east but it turned out to be west which was just as well because we found this place called Ben’s Pizzeria and they have great rolls, this Indian fella that’s been working there for the last fourteen years told me all about it. He took a lot of pride in the freshness of the rolls. The young guy working there with him actually had to call him over to pick out the right rolls because they were unmarked rolls–only the man who baked them knew which one was which. Tim and I both had the Sausage, Peppers, and Onions roll and while they were baking Tim went to the bathroom and rolled the joint. Actually first he got suckered into buying another one of those “P” pills by a persistent drug dealer standing outside of the pizzeria. As we found out the pills were some mild stimulant that made you feel good at first and then wouldn’t let you sleep later, some shitty speed. Anyway Tim disappeared into the bathroom for a long time while I talked to the old Indian fella and when he finally made it out the rolls had just come out of the oven and we commenced with a 4am feast which was peppered with prideful remarks by the soft spoken Pizzeria late night manager. However, I never asked him to repeat himself despite the fact that I could hardly hear him, I just kept feeding him with questions about working nights, fresh food, the owner, rising rents, etc. Then we left, the air had grown damp with impending rain and we fired up a joint halfway down the block. Definitely pot, definitely harsh, bud scwag but it got us high. Again we walked South when we meant to head North and made our way to the Prince Street station instead of our intended 8th Street destination. On the way we made a detour to Greene Street rolled another joint on a metal park bench in the cool drizzly morning then walked half a block to some fashion victim store and smoked our second joint on their stoop. A cop car rolled by but merciful kept going and we made it safe and sound to the N train. We continued to chatter drunkenly with stoned pauses until I bid an affectionate and sleepy farewell to my friend, my comrade, my buddy ole pal at Time’s Square. I gave him the “Keep on rocking in the free world” fist pump as the train lumbered off to Queens and wondered what the hell was in that pill…