Teenage Wasteland Read online



  Teenage Wasteland

  by Cliff Burns

  “I shall not repeat (Marco Polo’s) story of the Old Man of the Mountain, who used to administer hashish…to his younger disciples when he wanted to give them an idea of paradise.”

  The Poem of Hashish by Charles Baudelaire

  (Translated by Sallie Sullivan)

  He was seventeen going on a hundred as he waited on the darkened doorstep.

  He knocked again, harder this time.

  “Come on, come on,” he muttered.

  Then the door swung open and there was Lloyd, ugly old Lloyd, sporting an illegal smile if he ever saw one.

  “Heyyy, Jamie, c’mon in.” He stepped inside, escaping the brooding twilight. “You wanna take off your shoes? I washed the floor this afternoon.”

  “Sorry.” Jamie pulled off his huge Nikes, set them on newspaper with three other pairs of running shoes.

  “Everybody’s in here.” Lloyd led him down a hallway festooned with posters of rock ‘n roll icons—he called it the “wall of infamy”—and into the living room. Shaun, Lloyd’s brother, had just popped Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy” into the CD player.

  The music helped. Some of the propaganda Jamie had been force-feeding his conscience began to sound pretty convincing. It’s going to be all right, he reasoned. Nobody’s going to get busted, nobody’s going to knife me and take the money I earned working all those Friday and Saturday nights at fucking Dairy Queen.

  “You already know Shaun. That guy over there,” Lloyd pointed at the couch, “is the one, the only, Doctor Demento, the master of disaster, the sinister, the unreal, the supernatural, the super-human, the totally-awesome-out-of-this-world dope sucker himself…Lyle.”

  The man Jamie had come here to meet was in his early twenties. His seamless, adolescent face was plain, its features unremarkable, contours maddeningly vague. Though he was still a novice at the game, Jamie could see that possessing such a face had its distinct advantages. It was, he supposed, the perfect disguise.

  Even though Lloyd had just made introductions, Lyle didn’t offer his hand or say anything. He sort of gave Jamie the once-over; it was a casual perusal at best.

  Dick, Jamie thought.

  Shaun cranked the volume a bit more. “Listen to that,” he urged, masturbating an invisible guitar.

  “You wanna get high, amigo?” Lloyd asked him. “You can try some of the stuff you’re buying.”

  “Sure.” Jamie debated sitting on the couch next to Lyle but in the end chose the floor. “What do you think of it? Can you give it a rating?”

  Lloyd laughed and looked at Lyle. “I can only say this: it really fucked me up. Need I say more?”

  “Right on,” Lyle murmured. Jamie didn’t see his lips move.

  “I guess that’s as good a recommendation as I can ask for,” Jamie commented.

  “Don’t worry,” Lloyd said, giving him a thumbs up, “you’re definitely getting your money’s worth.”

  “I don’t sell shit,” Lyle intoned from the couch.

  “That’s good to hear,” Jamie said.

  “These people,” Lyle waved his hand regally, “these are good people, y’know? Excellent people. My kind of people.” Jamie tried to look attentive. “They have good taste in music, they’re generous…they make me want to do good things for them. Hey, have I ever ripped you guys off? Have I ever said no? Let you down even once?” The two brothers dutifully shook their heads. Lloyd caught Jamie’s eye and smirked at him. “No way. Not me.” Lyle looked at him. “I hear you’re looking for two o-zees.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I think I can help you out there.”

  “Great.”

  “—but…see, the thing is, the price I’m asking is pretty steep. Four hundred for two ounces. Best I can do.”

  Jamie nodded. “That’s the price that was quoted to me.”

  “That’s the price and if you wanna tell me to stick it, I’ll understand. The town’s pretty dry right now. I don’t mind hoarding it for awhile.”

  “It just so happens,” Jamie dug into his pocket, “that I have four crisp, new one hundred dollar bills right here.” As he held them up he was thinking: well, that’s that. Jesus, this is one of your humble servants. Please don’t let my dad find out about this. Let me have the dope sold, the four hundred back in the bank, plus a few extra bucks for my trouble. If I can manage that in a week at the outside, I swear I’ll read the Bible faithfully, try to make it to church more often, even sacrifice my firstborn child to you—JUST GIVE ME THIS ONE FUCKING BREAK!

  When Lyle saw the money there was a flicker of interest, a tantalizing glimpse of inherent humanity. It was gone in a blink, quickly defaulting back to his normal, zoned out state. He slowly, almost reluctantly rose from the couch. “Would you care to step into my office?” Jamie and Lloyd followed him down the hallway to the kitchen. As the three of them sat at the table, Lloyd stuck a match to the joint he’d brought along. While Lyle rummaged through a white plastic grocery bag, Jamie toked up. The stuff smelled good and by the third or fourth hit, Jamie knew it felt good too.

  “My compliments to the chef,” he said in Lyle’s general direction.

  The dealer wasn’t listening. He was setting up a small, but elaborate scale. While Jamie watched from a nearby cloud bank, he meticulously weighed the dope.

  “Okay?” Lyle asked.

  “Looks fine.”

  “I don’t want you thinkin’ I ripped you off.”

  “Don’t sweat it.” Jamie handed him the joint.

  “You want me to divide this into quarters for you?”

  “That’d be great,” Jamie said. “I was wondering how I was gonna manage that.”

  “If you’re gonna deal, you gotta have a good set of scales.”

  “Huh-uh. This is meant to be a quick score, something to get me some fast spending money. My dad’s got this Vulcan death grip when it comes to money. Every time I want to buy something it’s always SAVE IT FOR COLEGE. Fuck, what am I supposed to live on now?” Lyle trimmed the buds with a small set of scissors.

  “You think you can get rid of two o-zees that fast?”

  “I have to. If my dad finds out what I’ve done, he’ll cut my balls off.”

  “You could say you were merely showing a healthy interest in the capitalist system,” Lloyd kidded him, “trying to comprehend economics by becoming involved, goddamnit! What we’re talking about here is fucking supply and demand, man. That’s what the whole system operates on. That’s it in a nutshell.”

  “I’ll say it was a project for Social Studies. Along with, like, a thousand word essay—”

  “—like when they make you write about ‘How I Spent My Summer Holidays’—”

  “—only this time it’ll be ‘How I Turned All Of My Friends Into Hopeless Junkies’—”

  “—‘And Made A Tidy Profit At The Same Time’!” Jamie and Lloyd yukked it up, flying high, getting off, but Lyle remained stiff, unsmiling.

  “You guys sure talk a lot,” he grunted.

  “Hey, man,” Lloyd said, “chill out. We’re just baked.”

  “Shit,” Lyle sucked the dregs of the joint. “This stuff doesn’t do much to me any more.”

  “I don’t know what planet you’re from but us Earthers are right fucked up, isn’t that right, James?”

  Jamie nodded, listening to his fingertips hum.

  “That’s okay for you guys but, me, I’m a connoisseur.” Lyle dug into the plastic bag again, retrieving another pouch of dope. He threw it across the table to Lloyd. “Here. Roll us a nice joint out of that.” Lloyd looked down at the baggie. Then he looked at Jamie and they both looked at it. The dope was black, jet black, and it appeared damp, l
ike freshly turned dirt.

  Lloyd picked up the baggie, opened it, stuck his nose in and took a whiff. Immediately he recoiled, dropping the baggie on the table with an exclamation of disgust. “Whoa, that’s…Jesus…”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lyle asked.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s dope, best dope in the world—”

  “It ain’t dope. It smells like…I dunno, man, you smell it.”

  Jamie took the bag, sniffed tentatively, was assailed by a thick, rancid odor and he too thrust the pouch away. “He’s right,” he told Lyle, “the stuff’s gone rotten or something. I wouldn’t smoke this if I were you.”

  “What do you guys know? I’m telling you, you smoke this shit and you’ll get off like you’ve never gotten off before.”

  “Yeah,” Lloyd cracked, “I hear you get off pretty good when you die. I ain’t interested in finding out for myself.”

  “Gimme that.” Lyle took the baggie, peeled off a slip of rolling paper, peppered it with some of the black dope, rolled it into a neat, tight cylinder. “There’s nothing like it in the whole world,” he told them. He lit up, took a good, long hit. “Best shit ever,” Lyle breathed, offered the joint to Jamie.

  Jamie was already ridiculously high at that point and feeling cocky as hell so he took the spliff, gave Lloyd a shrug and phhhhhhsssst!

  The stuff was wicked, harsher than the scummiest homegrown he’d ever smoked. It coiled and writhed in the back of his throat and Jamie suddenly pictured a cluster of larvae hatching in his mouth, white, bulbous, eyeless heads erupting from wet flesh; he almost gagged.

  But it was dope, amazingly good