Chicks and Stoners
A thick, smokey haze dominates the small bedroom of a brown-bricked California bungalow. The fog, sitting still in the upper-third of the room, creates a swamp-like mist. Rays of sunlight peer through the cracks in the venetian blinds, striping the air with white and grey lines. A puny, pasty arm stretches out from under the blanket towards the bedside table where a home-made bong sits next to an overflowing ashtray - a slow, steady flow of white smoke rising from each. To call the room a pigsty would not only be a cliché but an understatement – curry house toilet bowl would be a more accurate analogy.
The arm coming out from under the blanket begins to move towards the bedside table. Its elbow cracks as the arm straightens out. The fingers reach the wooden surface of the table and tip-toe through the ash-tray, around an empty beer bottle, a bag of pills and a heap of empty plastic satchels, before stumbling onto the the glowing red button of the answering machine.
An American, female voice speaks:
[YOU HAVE, SIX, NEW MESSAGES]
[BEEP]
“Jay Stone. This is Jenny Miller, you know, from across the street. I just wanted to call and let you know that I've called the local council who have told me to contact the police about the garbage that you refuse to pick up from your front-yard. It's disgusting. Myself and the other residents of this street would appreciate it if you'd be bothered to get rid of it yourself instead of us having to take further action. If you fail to change these matters, I'm afraid I may have to make things a bit more serious and get the police involved. I've asked you once, nicely, and I don't want to have to ask you again, okay?”
[BEEP]
“Ah, hey Jay. It's Toad. I know you don't like us leavin' messages on ya machine, but, I'm stuck mate. I can't score anywhere. You gotta help us out bro. I'll make it worth your while.”
[BEEP]
“Jay, Jenny again. From across the street. I can't tell whether or not you've received my previous message or if you're simply choosing to ignore it, but I have to assume that either way, it's obvious you have no respect for the street you live on, or the people who share that street with you, so unfortunately, I'm forced to call the police. We're fed up with your garbage, and your behaviour, and don't think that none of us have noticed the type of people who frequent your building at God awful hours of the night. I assume you wouldn't want the police to know about something like that, right?”
[BEEP]
“Hi Jay, it's Mel, from The Arms last Thursday? I was just calling to take you up on that drink. And also some of the other stuff too, maybe? Are you free around dinner time tonight? My number's oh-four-one-three, seven-five-nine, three-eight-three. Give me a call if you're still interested. Bye!”
[BEEP]
“Jay, you don't belong here. You don't belong on this street, in this city, country, or even this planet. You are a disease that eats away at normal people like myself, and curse us, eventually causing the end of civilisation and humanity for ever. I've never come into contact with a human being, if I can call you that, like you, ever, in my entire life, and I will be so happy to never meet one ever again. You are a slob, and a pig, and a stoner, and a … CUNT!!” (At this point, Jenny actually pulled the phone away from her face in surprise and clasped her hand over her mouth, quietly chastising herself for her deplorable use of vocabulary) “I hope the reason why you haven't responded to these messages is that you are dead, and if that's the case, which I hope it is, then I really hope they take you away with the pile of crap sitting on your front lawn and bury you at the dump where you belong.”
[CLICK]
Jay's fingers slowly creep further along the top of the answering machine and tap another button.
[MESSAGES DELETED; YOU HAVE, NO, NEW MESSAGES]
Unfazed and incoherent, Jay coughs the offensive, phlegmy cough that only a heavy bong smokers possess. It sounds like parts of his lung being hocked up through his throat. He rolls over to scratch his nuts and opens one lazy, red eye, fixing it on his bedside pipe.
“Hmmmm?” he groans, mulling over the formidable decision to punch another cone or not, which he is either too stoned or too lazy, or both, to do. He quickly goes back to sleep and is again soon snoring. His snores are only half as phlegmy as his coughs, meaning each throaty outburst merely renders anyone within earshot mildly sick in the stomach - a slight change from the standard esophageal eruption that usually occurs to those privy to his horrendous guttural splutterings.
Across the street Jenny Miller brushes her teeth. Twenty strokes on each side, top and bottom, front and back, and then a swift, circular motion for another twenty strokes over clenched teeth. She spits, rinses and gargles, before putting on some lipstick and smiling at herself in the mirror. She fixes the collar of
her crisply ironed white shirt and checks her teeth again to make sure she has no lipstick on them. Her socks are pulled up to just below the knee, leaving a good fifteen centimeters before her black skirt starts to cover her thighs. Her white shirt is tucked into her skirt, tightly, and over this she wears a thin black vest large enough to hide her visible bra, yet subtle enough to makes her boobs look bigger when all the buttons are done up.
“Today will be a great day,” she says to herself, still smiling. Jenny is a devout workaholic with little-to-no social life and an almost-rich, liberal family. She projects an angelic demeanor at the best of times, yet when confronted with issues that challenge her ideals as a Christian, a perfectionist, a once, semi-feminist, or as a 'kind-hearted individual', then she can turn extremely nasty. In her younger years she'd copped some jeering from some male peers who made note of her resemblance to the bespectacled and pony-tailed librarian character who seems introverted and shy until she locks you up in a cage, whips you, and performs her sadistic sexual pleasures on you. Jenny hates Jay with the intensity that a bull hates a red-flag waving matador. She'd rather be smashed across the teeth with a snow-shovel than to be stuck in a room with Jay Stone – unless it was a courtroom.
Walking out her front door she's stopped abruptly by the sight of Jay sitting at his window sucking on his beloved bong. He knew she'd see him, and he also knew that this pissed her off like nothing else.
“Urgh!” she screams, jumping around and thrashing with fury - her previously combed hair already messy and frantic. “I fucking HATE you, Jay Stone!” She shows him her long, knuckly middle-finger for more than an ample amount of time. Jay just smiles back at her, slowly exhaling through his nostrils. She storms off in a huff to rival any teenage girl who'd been denied attendance to a party by their parents - minus the inevitable slamming of the bedroom door – but as soon as she turns the corner she fixes her hair and asks her Lord to forgive her for what she'd said and done.
Jay seems to be completely content being a scumbag/shithead/loser/piece of shit/whatever else people enjoyed calling him. He takes these insults with a grain of salt – flowing over him like water off a ducks back. He accepts the fact that he personifies each and every one of these things, and embraces the fact. When he's out drinking or eating or socialising, he exudes the confidence and charisma of a Hollywood hit man, effectively playing the role of the man with no worries in the world. Consequently, this results in the usual outcome of women finding themselves overcome with an intrigue and attraction that other men find inconceivable, and, naturally, they become jealous, and furthermore start to hate him. No amount of insults or harsh tongue-lashings can change his opinions about the fact that he lives in absolute squalor, sells a vast array of drugs to college students and college professors, receives a modest inheritance (thanks to his graciously neglectful - and dead - parents) and smokes an amount of dope each day that could support a small city in Jamaica for a year or so. Jay enjoys the life he's living and feels that nothing would ever be able to change it. Not even that bitch Jenny Miller.
That night, Jay sits on the floor of his apartment in the dim, bluish glow of his TV. His head rests on a garbage-bag full of dope as he watches a Led Zeppelin DVD with abnormal intensity. His bong is next to him, smoking away as usual, and next to that his chop bowl, with the remnants of a large sesh scattered round the sides. Besides the bowl are two empty capsules that once contained a highly shredded and potent form of psilocybin. Jay's eye-balls are all pupil as he stares at the screen, contorting his face and body to the music. A smile runs across his face and he shudders hard, the way guys do when they piss. His daze continues as the police knock loudly on his door.
“Mr Stone? This is the police. We have to talk to you. Will you please answer the door?” They give him twenty seconds before continuing: “We have reason to believe that you may have a large quantity of illegal narcotics and amphetamines in your possession, and if you don't come and open this fucken door for us in five seconds, we're gonna bust it down... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1.”
The door cracks off its hinges and three hefty coppers plunge into Jay's drug den.
“Phwoar! What bloody died in here?” asks the fat, pointy-faced cop with a moustache.
“I dunno mate, but he doesn't look too dead to me,” replies the tall cop with a head like an ACME safe. “This guy hasn't even noticed we're here yet.”
“He's trippin' fucken balls!” says the third, slightly-less-goofy-looking-but-obviously-superior cop. The three policeman look at Jay, who hasn't looked away from Jimmy Page's six-minute guitar solo. “Come on sunshine,” he says, grabbing Jay by his hair, “you've got enough party crackers and disco biscuits in here to keep Oxford Street buzzin' for a year.”
“And so much weed he'd be able to supply a small Jamaican town for a year!” says ACME head, looking for some support in his colleagues, who only shake their heads in disappointment at his shit-house attempt at a joke.
“We've all heard that one before, Lenny. Come on mate. If ya wanna hang out with us, ya gonna have to keep the comments fresh and funny, mate. Even this dickhead thinks that's a shit joke.” Again they look at Jay, who hangs from the policeman's grip like a severed head, pouting his lips and continuing to stare at the screen still displaying Jimmy Page powering through his solo. “Now, let's go put you in a box you fucken turd.”
Jay leans back in his chair, finding a way to look comfortable, even if he really isn't. Jenny Miller sits across the courtroom, hands in her lap, her arse barely touches the edge of her timber seat.
“Now, Mr Stone. You know what you've been charged with,” the magistrate says. “You've decided against legal representation, which in your case I believe to be foolish, and you've sat here, in my courtroom, failing to provide a case for your innocence. You have no excuses. You've merely wasted my time. In fact, I'm quite anxious to hear your defence against the evidence that the prosecution has provided. You offer no plea, and you show no remorse for your actions.”
“That's because I've done no actions.” Jay pipes up only to be immediately shut down by the magistrate, who, to Jay, looks like a cabbage-patch doll wearing a legal gown. He begins to imagine a puppeteer under her desk, controlling her mouth as she
reprimands him for being “an idiot” and “stupid” and “a waste of her time”. He begins to picture a group of puppeteers all crammed
in below her large desk, working on intricate and ingenious contraptions to make the life-size magistrate puppet look real. He smiles at this thought, and releases a breathe of laughter through his nose.
“What are you laughing at, Mr Stone? Do you find this funny? Do you understand that these charges are very serious, and you could be going to prison for a very long time? I have to tell you, Mr Stone, that the state has been urging us to find creative and appropriate ways to sentence the criminals in our courts, and I'm struggling to find an alternative to prison for you. I am trying to think of something that may not ruin your life, Mr Stone. I'm trying to do you a favor, and all you're doing is disrespecting me, and the system I stand for. The more you sit there, comfortably, smiling and laughing to yourself while I'm up here wasting my time, the more I'm going to lean towards locking you up. Do you understand that, Mr Stone?”
Jay looks up at the magistrate, who looks quite red-in-the-face and flustered. He leans forward, towards the microphone, inhales, and burps into it. This creates an echoing, distorted noise that reverberates through the courthouse, and an awfully foul smell. The magistrate stands at her bench and presents the meanest of stink-eyes Jay had ever seen.
“Mr Stone,” she shouts, “I have never seen such utter disrespect in a courtroom, or any type of room, by a human-being of your age. I am shocked and appalled.” She puffs out her chest and picks up her gavel. “Mr Stone. I have decided on a unique punishment for your actions. After showing your complete lack of respect for the law, and humanity, I am hereby sentencing you to be stoned to death.”
A confused hush comes over the room. Everybody turns to look at Jay, except for Jenny Miller. She ecstatically walks out of the courthouse doing a little fist-pump dance in celebration of her triumph.
“Are you fucking kidding me? That is the greatest thing I've ever heard! You know, your honour, I thought you were a bitch, but, you know, you're actually like the coolest chick I've ever met! I sure as hell would love to get stoned to death! Hey, ya think I could get your--”
“Sit down Mr Stone. Your simpleness baffles me still. Listen to me, did anybody ever say to you as a kid, 'sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me?' It seems like you have no perception of how your lifestyle may affect others, Mr Stone. It even seems to me like you're unaware of the implications it is having on yourself. People like you and conventional society just do not mix, Mr Stone. They just never will.
“And I think you also might be a little confused as to what being 'stoned to death' really is.” She ironically puts her fingers in the air to imitate the inverted commas, enjoying taking the piss out of Jays stupidity and almost puppy-dog-like innocence.
“Well, I'm so totally interested in finding out, ma'am” Jay says, looking up at the magistrate the way a son looks at his mother when she's announced the existence of a surprise she has for him. “When can I get started?”
23RD AUGUST 2011