Bing loomed over his kitchen counter as he had a hundred times before, peering past the open box of his beloved paraphernalia. He stared at his iun wedged carefully off in a corner, all set to record when he was ready. He found himself dreading the mumbling, soupy mess he had come to expect of his own captured voice.
Most previous recordings had been mere wave-like distractions . . . just rhythmic sets of commentary that poured out in the free-form flow of his everyday daydreams. He was now about to get high with the official intent of using whatever would come.
Being poised in this moment just before following through on a decision was a scenario sadly odd enough to notice. There could be no turning back, mostly because he felt he had yet to really move.
Still, he had somehow convinced himself to at least reach this place of appearing ready for whatever might prove worthwhile. Magic floodgates would soon be swept open in the smoke of burning plants, he hoped. And all Bing had really had to do was shield his fledgling belief that there could be a difference in leaning in and not away.
His chosen strain for the night was called Mr. Nice Guy. In the greenish mound of torn-off specs now resting in his pipe’s deep chamber, he was sure he glimpsed undertones of bluish purple.
He raised the pipe’s shiny lip to his lips, and flicked a cheap, see-through lighter like nothing. Fire touched and glowed as he inhaled, as slow and smooth as ever.
His gaze returned to the iun, his ever-patient friend and partner waiting as always for its other to take the lead.
But when were the funny thoughts supposed to come? Even letting the question skim his mental membrane was like watching the most intriguing pattern dissolve from peripheries to just another blank wall upon turning to see.
In shrouded shadow visions of things caught up to and overwhelmed, Bing wondered amiss about what he was meant to do or figure out. He recognized such wonderings as fruitless.
He took another puff, then another, blowing the smoke in tight blasts up and directly into the greasy opening of a frayed-out duct high above his stove.
There was silence, like a center point between titanic, gradual whirs. There was a mist, sparkling everywhere to magnify reflected light.
What was he always so worried about again? Weren’t all the lines he had already really funny?
This shouldn’t be so…
A flash, and Bing reached across, seeing the gape of his own knowing smile lit up across the little screen as he tapped and heard the recorder’s tell-tale beep.
Was it all really happening?
What was he supposed to say again?
Oh yeah…
“I love how weed kind of forces you to be honest with yourself,” he began. “I feel like I need that now. It might sound bad, but this one’s just for me. So, how come when I’m straight I come up with all these extra, unneeded explanations for things? I make up all sorts of steps for myself that aren’t even… Really, I’m just addicted to weed. That’s all. I like it. I want it all the time. But I convince myself it’s all this other stuff. Paranoid thoughts. It’s like I just worry too much. It must be a chemical thing, right? The chemicals in my body make me feel however. How well I’ve slept, what I ate, and everything else. But maybe a lot of how I feel depends on whether I’m doing what I told myself to. So then am I supposed to just take responsibility and do it? Should I keep trying to be the . . . the whatever…? To choose to do it until it works? I don’t know if I can. What do I really want in all this? What am I looking for right now? I keep saying I need to put out these lines that come to me when I’m high. But is that really true?”
A few seconds replaced each other before Bing’s words continued on, a little slower: “How can I do comedy without…? I mean, it’s not like I have a signed deal, or any experience, or… What good could possibly come from trying to…? How could it turn into any kind of a real future for me? Shouldn’t I have started when I was way younger?”
Another pause, and: “But I did. Here I am . . . all my thoughts . . . all my feelings, and my weirdness, and… I’m just someone that’s . . . well, I guess just everything I happen to be. For whatever reason, all the stuff that causes me to be this way, and think this way . . . it’s not really something I can take credit for, right? Can anyone, though, really? I don’t choose to think of jokes when I’m high. I . . . I am what I am.”
Bing let his last words rest in the air as he eyed the open Mr. Nice Guy canister. The dispensary had even tagged the little plastic, purple jar with a zany-looking, wasted smiley face.
As the large timer on his iun’s face slipped over and beyond two minutes, Bing heard himself carry on, perhaps forgetting this time to fear the potential cringe-worthiness of the sound: “I . . . am . . . a person. I’m a thing, too. I’m not just something other things use . . . I mean, things like chemicals and all the stuff that makes me feel the way I do. Whatever. The bottom line in all this is . . . I just want to . . . to…”
He laughed.
And the laughter grew . . . even as he took account of what horrors had almost taken place just before becoming this current Bing. It all seemed so obvious. He had never really wanted to hurt himself. But how truly, deeply funny it seemed that he could miss it all so easily.
He spoke again, smiling: “I don’t want to do comedy to . . . to get signed or whatever . . . or to make a future. I want to do it to make friends. To make people laugh. People . . . people are . . . funny. I just want to be . . . funny me. That’s all. It was always there, I just…” And the last word his friendly iun caught that night was: “Watch…”
I don't know anything 