Originally, when we were both mired in finals and papers, the boy and I had quiet plans for Saturday night - a bottle of Pinot Noir, cheap sherry, cheese and crackers, and just the three of us that were still left in the apartment - the boy, my roommate Paul, and I, relaxing and recuperating from being steamrolled by this awful semester. No house parties, no going out to the bars, just a blissful, slightly snooty, tres exclusive evening of repast and recreation.

Then the boy asked if it was all right if two of our friends came and joined us, since we have about fifty friends we are supposed to see before we leave for the holidays. Sure, I said, and then I had the idea of inviting my friend Yasmina, who is going to be catsitting for me over break. Then Cathy, one of Paul’s friends, was coming into town, and Paul invited her. But this was fine - it had not yet blown up into a thing, which has happened to us before (college kids have an uncanny ability to find clusters of people with booze).

So we were hanging out, getting drunk on cheap sherry, and watching cheesy music videos from the Internet, and then both Cathy and Yasmina decided to leave to go to other parties. We were tipsy enough to let Yasmina persuade us to come along with her. “C’mon, guys, you’ll love the people that are going to be at this party. Let me warn you, though, they’re kind of hippies*.”
“Oh, not those people,” I said (I don’t think Yasmina was quite aware of the fact that over 80% of the people we hang out with live in eco-friendly cooperatives, are vegetarians or vegans, and pretty much are as close as you can get to hippie without actually taking a pot-powered time machine to the early 60’s). It sounded like a good idea, and she even offered to drive, so we went.

Haha. Big mistake. We walked in and knew nobody, the first time in years that I have walked into a party and seriously recognized nobody at all, not a single person, which was nuts. Those of you from big cities probably don’t think of this as a big deal, but Lawrence gets almost claustrophobic after awhile - I’d thought myself enough of a townie that I’d seen everyone that lives here at least twice on Mass Street, in coffee shops and bars, or the grocery store. It was like a bizarro parallel universe Lawrence, and it was unfamiliar and scary. Yasmina saw us look around, bug-eyed in wonder, and said, “Great! You will get to meet new people! This is awesome!”

I didn’t quite know how to explain to her that we were like the Untouchables when taken out of our comfortable social niches, without sounding irredeemably lame. So I tried to be merely redeemably lame, and attempted to start up conversation with people that were already trashed and I had, horror of horrors, already sobered up. Word to the wise: this doesn’t really work so well. To make matters worse, Yasmina saw me floundering, tore me away from Paul and the boy, who were left in peace to be socially awkward together; took me under her wing, and introduced me to some of her friends.

Now, a bit about Yasmina - she’s notorious for being extremely beautiful. No joke. She’s been stalked by half of the basketball team and the football team; she’s like some sort of goddess among nerds because she’s the daughter of a math professor. She’s sweet and is obviously aware that she’s gorgeous (she’s not blind and owns a mirror), but doesn’t really lord it over other people or anything. If she decided to drop out of college for whatever reason, she could sign up to be a supermodel the next day, and a week later be making tons of money to spend on cars and cocaine. So that’s her.

Then there’s me. I walked out of the house wearing jeans, a pajama shirt and a hoodie tossed over it, hair in pony tail, crooked glasses and a red eye (the red eye would be the reason that I was wearing those crooked glasses). I don’t think I’m an ogre or anything on even my worst days, but that night I was standing next to Yasmina, and following her around as she introduced me to her also attractive ex-boyfriends, who then began flirting with her. I felt incredibly awkward, as I had the sense that Yasmina (though she certainly meant well) was kind of offering me up as her new protegee or something. Like in “Mean Girls” or “Clueless,” when they slap some makeup on the dorky girl and turn her into a totally hot bombshell. I kept smiling and trying to be witty and cute, but the entire time I kept thinking, wow, wasn’t this the worst idea ever.

I’m not nearly as shy as I used to be - I used to be so cripplingly awkwardly shy that I wouldn’t raise my hand in class, or even talk when called upon! - but there are certain situations in which I revert back to my instinctual tendency to hide in my hypothetical shell (which I really wished was an actual shell that night), and one of those situations is talking to very attractive men who are not obviously nerds. It’s not even a matter of me finding them so attractive that I am tongue-tied - I’m typically attracted to nerds, case in point, my current beau - it’s just that I find them really hard to talk to. Frat boys are generally included in this category, as well as other guys that look like they could be in movies (as the starring hero role, not the brainy / goofball sidekick). So on top of feeling frumpy next to stunning potential pinup Yasmina, surrounded by other not-as-beautiful-but-still-quite-beautiful-people, and trapped (she drove, remember? I wasn’t terribly keen on being sour grapes and taking her away from her friends / cadre of admirers), I was also bored and acutely aware of my social loser status. Forget taking the time machine to the 70’s, I’ll just go back to my middle school years, thank you.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me at the time, the boy and Paul were entertaining themselves by seeing how many things they could take from the snacks table without the really drunk people knowing. Paul reached over and snuck a lighter by the chex mix, no big deal. When retrieving said lighter, Paul notices a little film canister. It wasn’t film that was in the canister. Paul knew what was in that canister, and goaded the boy to get that canister. The boy, using his extra-special-careful touch (that, according to his dad, should some day be put to use in some medical field, say, surgery, but more than likely will just be used in the culinary arts and in situations such as the one being currently described), reached over and grabbed some Chex mix and the canister as well. All this while carrying on a conversation with two inebriated guys sitting next to them. Sometimes it pays to have a ridiculously high alcohol tolerance.

Finally we met up again, me having escaped from the beautiful “O.C. cast member” type circle of people, and discussed what to do about the party sucking and us escaping. I scrolled down my list of phone numbers looking for people who would rescue us, which turned out to be zero: the potential people would either 1) be already wasted at this time, 2) be already in bed at this time, or 3) would probably save us but then we’d have to endure their company, so no. So I reluctantly told Yasmina that we wanted to go home, and she was fine about it, and she took us home, and that’s when I discovered what the boys had done.

Paul: Heh heh. I got this pretty sweet lighter from the party.

Me: Cool. At least -you- had some fun, while I was being dragged around and displayed like a pet toy poodle -

The boy: Heh heh. We also got this. Smell this.

Me: Holy SHIT! You guys didn’t -

Paul: Heh heh. Yeah we did.

Me : I can’t believe - ohmigod, you guys STOLE POT from someone - holy shit!

Paul: What’s he gonna do? “Hey officer, someone stole my illegal drugs.”

Me : Holy cripes, I can’t believe this, that is so totally wrong, you don’t -steal- drugs from people that they paid for, that’s so mean, but hey, can I try some?

So we went out on the back porch and smoked our ill-gotten weed, and took shots of arak (horrible, nasty, licorice-tasting, vicious 120-proof liquor that the boy brought back from Lebanon, oh god why did we do that), while musing on what an awful idea that was, and wasn’t this so much better. Yeah, we actually got crunk, like in rap songs featuring the artistic stylings of Lil’ Jon (WHAT WHAAT?), off of stolen weed. This is probably tame to most normal people, but hey, I KNIT and READ for fun, and subsequently don’t get out much. By far, this was the craziest night of my life, especially considering how it started and where it ended up.

Being hyper-paranoid, I am a little worried about the owner of said weed somehow stumbling upon this blog and getting angry and tracking me down and sending me harsh emails or something. But the only people that read this anyway are a) from Baltimore, and b) people that are also probably unaware of this bizarro parallel Lawrence, and as such likely don’t know the individuals involved. In the event, however, that you are reading this and we took your weed, buddy, I’m sorry. The party sucked, though, and your unwilling contribution made three people much happier, if that’s any consolation!

Also, this was the first time that I’ve gotten high. I tried smoking once before, but probably was doing something wrong, as it just made me feel kind of tired and uncoordinated. I thought this was probably the same case and that I somehow was immune to marijuana - “I don’t feel anything, man, gee this sucks,” and then all of a sudden, bam, instant cloud around my head and a strong sense that everything was cool in the world, everything was really nice, wasn’t Yasmina nice for taking us to the party, isn’t this arak stuff really awful and burning our throats, but that’s okay, cause it feels tingly and warm now, like the universe. Good times.

* - By the way, these people weren’t actually hippies by any means. They were far too clean. Sheesh.