… the story of UD‘s college drug use.
Everyone’s talking about college drug use, onaccounta the Georgetown University drug lab guys, and a lot of people around UD‘s age are reminiscing about the drugs they did in the dear dead dorm days beyond recall…
When I search my mind for images of UD high, at Northwestern University, I discover one measly memory-trace. (Alcohol-wise, the results are no better. I remember vomiting spaghetti into a toilet after drinking hard liquor. End of alcohol story.)
It was Christmas, and my roommates had all gone home. I was still in Chicago because, being a fuck-off, I’d postponed taking a take-home final until the very, very last minute. I remember the test was about Walt Whitman in particular, and Romanticism in general…
I sat at a desk that wasn’t mine – don’t remember which of my roomies used it – and I played vaguely with stuff in the top drawer while pulling myself together…
Right away I saw a very fat marijuana cigarette. I took the joint out and lit it, figuring being high while writing about Romanticism made plentiful, plentiful sense. I also turned the radio on, figuring listening to loud music while writing about Romanticism…
Because I was a weed virgin, I got astoundingly high almost immediately.
The radio was tuned to an insane born-again preacher berating listeners about their sickening materialism, most starkly on view during the holidays. He shrieked of UD’s evil ways, her selfish ways, her godless ways, and threatened her with damnation.
UD listened, enrapt. She leaned close to the radio and took in every word, weighing it carefully. She forgot about her exam. She took a few more drags. Not many. She was high as a kite and the owner of the joint would never know anyone had touched it. She listened to the man as if he were Kant on the categorical imperative. She marshalled her intellectual resources to follow his argument…
But she had no resources, and after about fifteen minutes she gave up trying to follow his logic and turned instead to her Whitman essay.
She got an A.
Why do you think she went on to become an English professor? UD can do this stuff in her sleep. Or blotto.
October 26th, 2010 at 2:14PM
Man, we are gonna have to start drug testing these English majors. Unfair competitive advantage.
October 26th, 2010 at 3:43PM
oh gosh Mary Oliver is reading some of her poems here at Women’s conference long beach- we are waiting for arnie meg and jerry to talk- she is killing me
grasshopper, the journey, blackwater
we are the land of prop 19–george soros just gave a mil to the cause- so there is hope for it
personally, never did a thing for me
–but, really, find an alternative to Tabasco sauce – kick it up a notch with something south of the border
October 26th, 2010 at 7:46PM
Well, Whitman’s poetry invites such debauchery. After all, he looks like a dead-head who sings about a kid who asks about grass and even fetches it with his hands, and Whitman, slightly flummoxed by it all, says that it’s the flag of his derangement, out of green stuff woven, or something to that effect. Like CA prop 19, Whitman is a danger to one’s good sense. Kevin
October 28th, 2010 at 4:20PM
“I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.” WW
No wonder you did so well on your WW essay, UD.