When Got Stabbed Being Stoned All The Time Saved My Life
POST :: 109 :: RE/WORK :: Like, does a hawk see a dragonfly and say, ‘well shit, I thought flying was just my thing?’
When I got stabbed, it was being stoned all the time that saved my life.
It happened on Labor Day, back when I was twenty. I’d just gotten married to my girlfriend, the one I’d been dating since high school. We got friendly in 10th grade, in this study skills class they made all the dummies take — what a fucking joke. We made a game out of giving the teacher a real hard time. I’d been keeping my head low before I met her, which was easy enough. I wasn’t really good looking or really weird looking—didn’t turn heads. Well sorta dragged me out of my shell.
That’s her name, Well — just Well, not short for anything. I loved that. I’d say her name and follow it up with some lame-ass joke, like, ‘Well all be’, ‘Well, hot dam’, or her fav, ‘Well well.’ She’d laugh a little every time, and I’d be so fucking grateful. I was afraid of the bit going stale, which woulda been like me going stale. Giving Well a laugh was, like, the first time I felt like I had something to give someone.
I got more to give these days, or try to think that way. I’m working this line cook job at a farm-to-table spot up in Hillcrest called Local Root. It’s rough, but I dig it. My manager doesn’t seem to mind that I’m stoned all the time, as long as I keep up with the tickets and work clean. I think I have a knack for it, line cooking I mean, which surprised the hell outta me. I’ve never had a knack for anything, aside from being stoned.
The study skills teacher’s name was Ms. Preeus, like the car, but spelled weird. She had a lazy eye and hair like a mop soaked in hot sauce, a total mark. Any chance we got, we fucked with her. I’d bury her pens in the dirt of her desk plants and stick stuff to the ceiling above her desk with chewed gum. One time, when I was out sick, a dry eraser I’d stuck up there the day before fell on Preeus’s head. “She shouted ‘FUCK!’ and started crying bro. She left the class. It was so funny.”
Well told me all of the next day. It stuck bad with me. I didn’t like, want to be mean, I just needed Well to like me. I laid off Ms. Preeus after that.
Well was on the shorter side, and a little chubby in a hot way you could call curvy. My dad used to say chubby chicks were more grateful, but only in front of my Mom, which was fucked cause she was built like a broomstick. She got her licks in too though. They were always digging into each other, never missing a chance to slide the knife in. I almost felt like they stayed together because of that, like they didn’t want to learn someone’s weak spots all over again. Hell, I’d probably be on that same trip, if I hadn’t gotten stabbed. I never learn anything the easy way.
It’s whatever though, cause what is there even left to learn, you know? Like, here at Local Root Even if I think I’ve made up some recipe, I just find out a dude’s got a whole Subreddit about—how to make trumpet mushroom jerky, or Mexican Cola pho broth, or some other shit. That’s sorta what I love about being stoned. When I’m stoned, I get ideas and they feel like mine. Sometimes the dish sucks, but sometimes it’s really good! Who cares if someone’s done it already. Like, does a hawk see a dragonfly and say, ‘well shit, I thought flying was just my thing?’
I started smoking near the end of 10th. Well finally invited me over to her house to smoke with her and her older bro, Beverly. I said, ‘cool’, all chill. Like I wasn’t nervous as all hell about going over to Well’s house for the first time, to get high for the first time, with her older brother who, well, Well had told me some stories.
Beverly dealt weed — this was back when Cali still had dealers, and not dispensaries — and kept Well well-smoked. Bev was friendly, but in a wound-up sorta way that felt like it could flip to violence any second. Dude was a grenade with a smiley face painted on it. Sitting in his garage, waiting for the joint to make it my way, had my nerves racked.
Bev hit it first and started coughing fierce, saying, ‘this is good shit’, between hacks. Well grabbed it from him and hit it without a goddam peep, even in 10th grade she could out smoke anyone, her throat was a deep fryer. When it made it to me I tried to square up, but got smacked almost instantly with a coughing fit rough enough to make Bev’s look nada.
‘Good shit right’, Bev said, and I nodded, cause what did I know about it?
Then Well says out of nowhere, ‘this is dog shit bro, feels like I’m licking a public park grill grate.’ Then starts laughing.
I thought this was badass, cause Bev scared the shit outta me. But also, it put me in this shit spot of having to pick between laughing with Well—who I was trying to impress, you know—or siding with Bev—who scared the shit outta me. Well was looking at me. I felt like she was savoring my tension—like I was being tested.
Instead of throwin’ in with either of them, I just threw myself under the bus, saying something like, ‘this is my first time smoking, it’s all grillgrates to my bitchass’, or something like that, coughing the whole time to drive it home.
Bev reached over and two-finger flicked me in the dick through my shorts, sayin’, ‘we deflowered this kid, Well!’
Well smiled, grabbed the joint from my hand and ripped it. I think that’s when—doubled over in pain, seeing her face swimmin’ in a smoke cloud—I decided I wanted to be hers, if a kid can decide a thing like that.
It was still a minute before Well and I were, like, dating, but I started hanging out with her and Bev every day. We’d get stoned in their garage, bull shit, watch shit, and listen to music, lettin’ Bev tell us why every song was the best song.
‘Yo, Tupac understood, like, duality and shit . . . ’
It was hard to get a word in edge-wise when Bev was on one about Tupac, or anything else for that matter. Well and I learned to speak without speaking. It got to be where we could have whole convos with smirks, kicks, and eye-rolls.
In 11th, Bev hooked me up with quarter-pounds of flower and I started small-time weed dealing. When word about my hustle got to the rich kids out in North County I didn’t have to work much to find clients. I’d hang at the park off Santa Fe Drive, behind Papa Tony’s Pizza, with Well. Well would handle cash and I’d run stash from behind this stubby palm tree. We were a good team, back then. It was all overkill, nobody would have snitched me out. I hung with Bev, and Bev had a rep — kids were afraid of Bev. We never really moved from that spot — Papa Tony’s had solid cheese slices for a buck. That was enough back then.
I started to bite a bit of Bev’s rep, which is hilarious because I’d never even been in a fight before — or since really, unless I count gettin’ stabbed, which I don’t, you know?
I started turning the heads of girls looking to hang with a low-stakes bad boy—tryin’ to get revenge on Daddy’s curfew, or piss off a jock ex. That’s what I figured anyway, I mean, what else did I have going on? I was scrawny as hell, still am, and being stoned all the time had my eyes all sunken and bloodshot. Swimming in black hoodies and a fat tongue pair of Osiris shoes, I looked like a skate spot’s grim reaper.
Well noticed, cause it was around this time when she finally staked claim. One afternoon in Bev’s garage she leaned towards me outta nowhere and starts making out with me, like, hard, with Bev right there! So I’m trying to enjoy this moment I’ve been wanting since I met Well, and also was waiting to get my shit kicked by Bev. But he just says, ‘dam Well, ‘bout time’, then hits his new ROOR bong — a two footer. It cost that fool half a grand, and he broke the next day.
Thinking back, it wasn’t a really nice kiss, or, I mean, a gentle one. Well kissed the way a rancher brands a cow. It worked though, I mean, who else was I trying to belong to?
The kiss was like, still 2 years later before I got stabbed. Things were tight for a minute. Well and I eked out a pair of diplomas, and everything kinda stayed the same until I quit dealing. The money wasn’t worth the hassle after weed went legal in 2016. Bev had decided to branch out to heavier drugs, but got rolled pretty quick with a thousand capsules of MDMA — ‘therapy-grade bro!’ — hidden in a spare tire of his new Dodge Charger. Well wanted me to fill the slot, cause I mean, we knew most’ve Bev’s clients, but I wasn’t brave enough to pick up his torch.
With Bev gone, we kinda spiraled. We started having these gnar fights. One ended with Well slugging me in the face — yelling, ‘why won’t you fucking marry me!’ We tied a courthouse knot at the courthouse a few days later, me rocking a shiner. We thought it would mellow us out. It didn’t. It ended up feeling like we’d called our love on its last bluff. We’d made the final move, now all that was left was the rest of our goddam lives — which wasn’t looking like much.
I got a job at a Mission Supply, pickin’ up the rags and linens from all the coastal food spots. Well was working as barback off-n-on, while studying up towards an esthetician license, but she was dragging on finishing.
One night, I got back to our apartment early. It was Labor Day and a bunch of my stops were closed. Parked outside I heard music blastin’, but that wasn’t weird. Well was always blasting music when she was stoned. I hung out in my car, smoking a spliff, thinking maybe Well and I could go to In-n-Out or some shit, maybe Papa Tony’s, that might be cute. Once I finished the spliff, I got out of my car and heard Well kinda yelling. So I opened the door quick, in a panic, to make sure nothing bad was happening, you know? Well, the first thing I see is Well straight up cowgirling this dude’s lap on our couch, The Weeknd blasting loud from a blown out bluetooth speaker clipped to the fuckboy’s backpack.
I didn’t know what to feel or do right then. I just froze, trying to figure out what I was supposed to feel—what I was supposed to do. Like, I should yank Well off this dude, right? Kick his ass? Well screamin’ the whole time, don’t kill him, don’t kill him, or some other movie shit. That’s what I should be doing. What Bev woulda done, hell, what Well woulda done. I was just scared. All I really wanted to do was run away.
Well saw me standing frozen in the doorway. She shouts, what the fuck, at me. At me? The fuckboy gets wise fast. He shoves Well off, yanks up his shorts and bolts by me, then back in for a sec to grab his bag, then back out. I hear The Weeknd fade out with his sprint.
All while Well keeps yelling stuff like, ‘what the fuck, you bitch, go get him, kick his ass, he was fucking your wife!’
I start yelling back, ‘fuck you Well, you’re mean, you’re so fuckin’ mean to me, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!’ I was crying hard. Crying like a scared kid.
Well starts pushing me and I start pushing her. She’s yelling, ‘don’t fucking touch me, bitch, lil’ bitch, don’t fucking touch me.’ She keeps pushing me and I keep pushing her and she hits the kitchen counter. She grabs this sharp-as-shit chef’s knife that Bev had got me last year for my 19th — ‘hand-pounded Japanese steel, bro, cuts through a can like a cucumber!’ Then it was in her hand. I froze again, watching the light glint off the rippled steel—like moonlight on water. I shut my eyes and waited for it.
It glanced off my sternum, then slipped in, catching the rib gap. I passed out, I think, cause all of the sudden the cops were just there. The neighbor had called when she saw Mr. Weeknd beat past her window. Well was saying how I’d pushed her, which was true, and I wasn’t saying nothing — just sorta on the couch tryin’ to breathe. One cop was pushin’ the Sublime t-shirt against my chest, the one fuckboy had left behind. I remember seeing blood squirt out and I passed out again, woke up for a minute in an ambulance, then back under.
When I woke up, I was cuffed to a hospital bed. A nurse was talking to a cop near the door, saying, “he should have lost more blood, but the incredible level of cannabinoids in his system lowered his heart rate significantly, helping to alleviate blood loss.”
The cop told me I was being charged with assault and battery and had a no contact order with Well. I started trying to like, my-side-of-the-story the shit, but when he asked me if I wanted to press charges I said no. I didn’t want Well to catch trouble. He said if I wasn’t pressing charges they’d have to go with her side of things. I get it, I mean I’m the dude. But I remember thinking it’s weird how one of us has to be guilty, like one of us had to fall. The cops made it feel that way, anyway. It was more funny than frustrating—I was on alotta pain meds. It felt sorta good that it would land on me, like I was finally being brave for Well. Doing her a last solid, cause after this we had to be done.
He asked me if I wanted to press charges one more time, and I said, nah, one more time. He shrugged and left. Took the cuffs off though, which was nice I guess.
Well ended up dropping the charge a few days later, so it all kinda went away after with a bit of paperwork at the cop shop. She left all my shit at my parents house while I was in the hospital, which surprised me. She even put the knife in there. I use it every day at Local Root, crazy right? Kinda weird, but it’s whatever — it’s a good knife and, I mean, it’s been in me.
In 12th grade English I learned about this German philosophy dude. I was stoned, but the class, like, stuck in my head. Like that dry eraser stuck above Ms. Preeus, it falls on me every now and then — fell on me in that hospital bed.
This German dude was maxing on pessimism, saying that life runs through the same feelings again and again, and there is more different shit to trigger those feelings than any one life could ever get through. Life is both same-old-same-old and like, unbearably huge. So, this dude says the only real logical move is to just off yourself, right? Just skip to the last page of a boring story that is always gonna end unfinished.
I remember this lesson landing opposite for me, though. My dumb-ass backflipped it right into optimism. The whole idea sorta took the edge off of thing, cause I already knew I’d probably waste my life, but — taking this sad-ass dude on the literal — what the fuck did it matter, it was a waste from the get. I could just kick back, get stoned, watch the show, and make some good food. What’s better than making good food?
It got me thinking, laying in that hospital bed, about all the bodies that had laid in it before me, hell, died in it before me. And all the bodies after me too — the people laughing, crying, grinding across time right now, getting ready to land in this bed, all hurt-up. Getting to heal. All these different people, same fucking bed. It made me feel like I was rolling deep, like all the hardness of life connected me to everyone in a big way — too big, really.
I started crying real hard. This nice night nurse heard me. She held my hand for a long time. I started telling her about Ms. Preeus, and the dry eraser. She started laughing, then I started laughing — both of us laughing right through my tears.
Damn Eternal Return, you can write in any style. Can’t wait for more.