A few years back, I was doing my second stint in Boise after leaving NYC. I decided to move in with my best friend, which you should never ever do, not even in a million years; not even if you are homeless and forced to sleep inside of dead animal carcasses and eat your own toenails. I’m not here to talk about that though; I’m here to tell you a ghost story.
It was a dreary fall evening. Marie, Kyle and I were enjoying one of our many hash nights at the ol’ household, which generally resulted in us taking at least two trips to the grocery store, watching Hitch and playing Mariokart. I’m sure that we did other cool stuff too, I just can’t remember it.
We were sitting around giggling at the walls, imagining what else we could eat and debating on whether or not men’s penises evolved into being flaccid, or if they had always been versatile like they are now. I would imagine that primitive man would constantly be breaking them in half had they been cursed with permanent erections, which is where flaccidity came in. So either they were born with flaccidness, or they evolved into it; I had no argument supporting the speculation that the Cro-Magnon man was born with a constant hard-on, but seeing as how Marie didn’t seem coherent enough to ask, and Kyle’s only contribution was the fact that his penis was the size of a Red Bull can (with pictures to support the claim!), I didn’t dwell on it. Maybe it was a case of the survival of the fittest, and the weak dicks just fell off; creating women. Who knows?! Evolution and creationism are moot points; it all lies in the fault of the penis, as with everything else that happens in my personal life. For the record, if it isn’t already painfully obvious, I hadn’t gotten laid in a while and it was reflecting in my daily conversations. I was about to discuss the original purpose of male nipples, when in my peripherals, I saw a ghostly gleam next to my left shoulder.
I sat completely still, pipe in mouth, thumb on carb. Assessing my priorities, I finished my hit and turned to my friends, “Did you guys see that?!”
Marie slowly looks towards me in a daze and profoundly says, “huh?”
I was more focused now that I had puff-puff-gived and relinquished my responsibility as a group smoker. With more energy this time, I responded, “I just saw a fucking ghost, and I’m not even fucking joking”
Marie froze. “What??!!?!” She’s a little freaked out; prior to this event we had decided that the little closet underneath the stairs in our house was haunted and guaranteed a most slow and painful death to anyone who entered; kind of like Pamela Anderson’s vagina.
I started to comfort Marie when I saw the entity again; “Holy shit! Did you see it that time?!”
Marie jumps on the couch and assumes the fetal position. “Yes, I did.” She looks over at Kyle, wide-eyed, “I seriously did”.
Kyle, who has up until this point been focused intently on a strand of carpet on the opposite side of the room, suddenly realizes that we are addressing him. “What?”
The gleam emerged yet again and was visible by all three of us. I jumped out of my chair and ran to Marie, who was preparing to huddle with me in a frightened embrace. Kyle joined us, alarmed. We all sat there on the couch together and watched the chair for an uneventful ten minutes. My nerves were just starting to calm when, to our horror, the ghost appeared again! I couldn’t be the victim anymore and decided to take action; I got the phone and called my mom.
“Maaam! There’s a ghost in our house and it is scary! It’s right next to the chair and it almost touched me!”
Time passed slowly as my mother pondered this in silence.
“Honey, have you been smoking pot again?” “No mam, of course not,” I said with obvious distaste, “It’s hash.”
Mam was useless against the ghost, which was now emerging more clearly into our living room by the second, threatening our livelihoods. We needed to do something and quick.
Suddenly Marie says “Do you guys smell smoke?”
Kyle and I look at each other and giggled; of course we smell smoke…in fact it may be time for another hit.
Marie rolls her eyes and goes to investigate, stopping first at the table to grab a gummy worm that had been separated from its’ package and placed it in her mouth. Mmm. Gummy worms are the best when high. After her thorough evaluation that included moving the chair that I was sitting on, looking at every possible place around it, and finally inside of it (this is a polyester 70’s recliner type chair), she jumps back and screams, “It’s on fire!!!!!”
We suddenly re-entered reality and realized that when there was the smell of smoke, and actual smoke (which does look very much like a ghost, thankyouverymuch), there was probably a fire. Apparently when taking my last hit, I blew the cherried nug into the chair and the polyester, possibly the worst and most flammable invention ever made, slowly started melting into a smoky abyss.
We start to panic. What could we do?
Well, scratch that, first we laughed our asses off, both in relief that there was no premonition and at the realization of our stupidity. The fact that I had lit a chair on fire and believed that the smoke was an apparition was pretty fucking funny. Definitely one for the “I killed my grandma and ran over a kid in the drive-thru because I was high” commercials.
Anyway, the source of the flame was located inside the disco monstrosity, and we were unable to reach it without taking a knife to it. Although this may have been an improvement to the look, Marie had an emotional attachment to it and wouldn’t allow us to; it is beyond me why she would risk burning our house down to save this sanctuary for bell-bottomed hippies and John Travolta.
After careful assessment, we decided to extinguish the fire with water. We raced to kitchen, filled pans and cups with water and proceeded to drench the chair. Finally, after this 40 year old polyester chair was wetter than Jenna Jameson in a tsunami, the smoke disappeared. We sighed in relief, re-ran what just happened through our heads and laughed. Then we loaded another bowl.
Disco may be dead, but the chair still remains. Even if it does smell slightly like a chimney.
No comments:
Post a Comment