Mr. Brandolini's Assignment

vi. columbusing

 ‘Hush,’ I mumbled, stepping onto the porch and ringing the doorbell. ‘Reserve judgement, o impulsive one.’

 It took Omar a minute to get to the door, understandably, considering the sheer size of the place. He opened it wearing, thankfully, a t-shirt and jeans, and surrounded by a blessed aura redolent of pot.

 Praise the omnipotent god I don’t believe in; the evening just got a lot easier to deal with.

 ‘I distinctly remember telling you seven o clock,’ he said, opening the door wide for me.

 ‘It’s not very punk-rock to show up early to stuff,’ I said, walking in.

 ‘It’s not very punk-rock to use your punk-rock as an excuse for stuff,’ Omar rightly said, and I ignored him, stepping over the threshold.

 ‘Omar, this is Jurgen, Jurgen, Omar.’

 ‘Hey,’ Jurgen said, sticking out a hand. Omar grinned and shook it enthusiastically. I wondered when they had started smoking.

 ‘You must be the boyfriend,’ Omar said, still pumping his hand up and down.

 Now they both had mirroring grins on their faces, only Omar was high off some probably-expensive weed and Jurgen was high off getting called my boyfriend.

 ‘I am, yes.’

 After they were done shaking hands, Omar led us down the corridor to his room. Before opening the door, he turned to us abruptly, as if he’d just remembered something super-important.

 ‘Wait, you guys aren’t straightedge or anything, right? Shit, I should’ve asked you before.’

 Jurgen chuckled.

 ‘We are hardcore bent-edge,’ he assured Omar, who looked very relieved, as we couldn’t already smell the people hotboxing in his room.

 ‘Good. Like, I have this friend who’s into the whole Krishnacore stuff and it just gets really annoying – anyway, come in.’

 I had never seen that much pot in my life. A mound about a foot in length was heaped on a mat on the floor; I was simultaneously amazed at how much combined wealth must have been present in the room to make that bounty possible, and apprehensive of how fucked up everyone was going to get if they intended to smoke all of that. Next to me, Jurgen said, ‘Hoo boy.’

 He’d smoked pot only twice or thrice before that night, and had gone through an unfortunate period of abstinence in the middle when he had been convinced that the smoke was ruining his skin. He would just sit with us with a scarf around his face, the only sober one in the room, before he went to the lengths of calling his dermatologist and clarifying the ‘hypothetical’ side-effects of marijuana on his skin, after which he was delighted to learn that it was, in fact, more good than harmful (and his dermatologist, realizing belatedly her glorious misstep, told him ‘but good is a relative term, it’s relative. Say no to drugs.’).

 ‘Guys!’ Omar slurred, wading through the smoke. ‘This is Leena, and her boyfriend Jurgen. Leena and Jurgen, this is Amelie, and this is Hannah. Hello hello, nice to meet you. Pass me the thingamajig, please.’

 The one who was Amelie said, in a pretty French accent, ‘Thanks for the gender-neutral term of endearment, Omar,’ which made me like her already. She was rail-thin and was wearing the kind of outfit I thought would never be possible in the kind of socio-political climate our country was plagued with: a Brady Melville crop top and shorts and a golden anklet. For a brief moment I admired how wonderfully satirical her outfit was. Gold anklets were a prostitute’s identifier in 1960’s Britain, and she was making an extremely powerful statement by combining one with an outfit that would be deemed ‘slutty’ by this liberated society we live in. Her impudence impressed me.