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All Photographs + Text © 2005 Christopher Keeley
Mary's first story
Mary's second story
+ Part Two +
Subject:
It had been a year since my dad passed away. I was fourteen years old and in the ninth grade. My favorite hobby at the time was writing pen pals, something I did since I believe the age of 11. I had over a handful of pen pals. I could not wait to check the mail every day when I got home from school. I had one pen pal (my first) named Jill that I had been writing to continously for a couple years. She lived in Indiana and was the same age as me. I remember though also that after all those years we spent writing each other she started to sound boring and nerdy to me. Like she would send me letters written on stationary I could only imagine someone's grandmother using (I know, sounds questionable, like what, I can't explain) or even worse the Lisa Frank stationary little girls who play with Barbies collect. She would always talk about 4-H this, 4-H that, I;m in this 4-H club I won this ribbon in 4-H ect, ect. So one day I stopped writing her because to me she was a dork. I simply just lost interest. In her and pen pal-ing all together.
I was in Junior High. I knew I was going to go back to school after summer break and be a totally different person that school year. I use to like all the music only my older sister and twin brother listened to which mostly was rap and r & b. I started to listen to other kinds of music, especially The Cure almost on a daily basis. I also liked Marilyn Manson, Korn, Tool, The Cranes, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, and a ton of other bands. I wore (what was considered "freak" clothing) J'nco Jeans, hoodies, and even took over wearing my mom's Dr. Marten's which pissed her off, because those were her special one hundred and some odd dollars shoes she got for herself to wear occasionally whenever her arthiritis from a knee accident that happened years before made it at times uncomfortable for her to walk. I knew she would not spend that kind of money on shoes for me, and I really wanted a pair. Instead she got use to me wearing hers. I would not take no as an answer regardless of how much mad she got.
Then there's my twin brother Eman. We were not that close when it came to being in school because I think we both were too cool to talk to each other since we had to live with each other. Or something silly like that, I don't remember. But I do remember the day we grew closer. The both of us were sitting at home playing the video game Land Stalker on sega genesis and listening to his Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt album. We somehow lightly got into the topic of cigerettes or marijuana and he had a secret to confess to me. I remember him saying "You have to promise me you won't tell mom or M "(my older sister) and of course I promised him. He pulls out a little bag of marijuana and my eyes widened. I asked him what does it do? I was curious because I already was into smoking cigerettes thinking how cool it looked between my fingers, all because someone I knew stole a carton and gave it to me, and well, I was under the impression thinking it was the thing, because so many others were. My brother goes on to telling me "It (smoking pot) was not even that bad, really, it feels cool, here, take a little, try some". I put it in my hand and thought to myself wait a minute, this is illegal. Perhaps I was willing to trust in what he said because he was my twin brother. He convinced me to try it. Marijuana was something that us kids in the family were fimilar with seeing growing up. My dad smoked it. We use to go for family car rides back in the day when we were all really little and I remember my dad would ask my mother to hold the steering wheel as he looked down at the newspaper on his lap and rolled a joint while in the driver's seat cruising along. (I look back now still thinking, how did he do that?). I did not know better as a child and I use to be curious at times seeing my dad sitting on the couch rolling a joint. I use to eat a few of the beaners and I liked the taste. I didn't know what they were. I knew it was kind of bad but it was not bad if my dad was doing it because my dad was not a bad person. I never had any intentions on even wanting to try it. It was just there often in my life. Something my dad did. He did stop as we started to get older, at least stopped smoking that around us. But even after then every once in a while I could smell it through the vents in his truck. My brother brought out a home made pot smoking bowl - the ghetto pop bottle and tin foil creation. He showed me how to use the shot gun to hold in the hit when the bottle got cloudy and then to let my finger off it to inhale the extremely smoky hit that filled my lungs and made me cough to the point of almost vomiting. It was very easy to smoke pot in my house, I lived in an old school house and my mother's room was downstairs by the kitchen and living room. To get to our rooms you had to go down some stairs to the family room, then there was a flight of stairs leading upstairs. The upstairs is large enough that it could be made into an apartment. From then on we would talk about weed and I would attempt to smoke with him every time we had the opportunity to get away with it, seeing that I had not got high yet and it was going on my 5 or 6th time smoking it. By then I was thinking I was probably the only person ever who has tried it more than a couple times and never got high!
Eman was best friends with a neighborhood kid Eric. Eric was coming over my house on a daily basis even long before the prior year of my dad passing away. Eric and my brother acted as most "boys" did their ages, when they got together they were immature and sloppy. Eric was a pest. There were times he would not bother to take his shoes off coming in my house when there was snow outside. Or, as this occured almost every time he came over, with the exception of my mom not being in sight, the first thing he would do is look for food and help himself to eating all the food he wanted or to say the least, could find. Other times he and my brother would go through my personal shit in my room and laugh at the notes they found from friends to me. They pissed me off all too often. Then this kid Neal started to come around. Neal was friends' with Eric who introduced him to my brother. I remember one time the three of them were laughing and acting so stupid when they were around me. Every time my brother had these two idiots over, things always looked so messy around the house. They did not seem to respect anything, instead used my house to their advantage as a place to chill when my mom was not home. To my surprise soon enough I was about to finally find out why they acted the way they did.
One day my brother, Eric and Neal invited me to chill with them. So I said okay and to my surprise Neal pulls out this big bag of pot. Like a baggie full. They were going to try to smoke me out but I knew that was not going to happen because I never got high trying before and didn't think I could. They ask me to start off the rotation and there's a joint and a normal pot smoking bowl going in the circle. I kept holding up the rotation because by the time I was done hitting the joint I was practically coughing up a lung outside the window, then I was expected to hit the bowl right after. We sat there and smoked a lot and I remember I thought I threw up while coughing, instead I realised it was phlegm and spit caused by the irritation of the harsh smoke clouding my lungs. Neal would not stop packing up the bowl, it was one after the other until they finally called it quits and had this idea to go back out riding the 4 wheelers in the snow. It was like they forgot about me and I remember yelling out the window, HEY! WHERE ARE YOU GUYS GOING! DON"T LEAVE ME!" Did they listen? Hell no.
I suddenly found myself dazing down at the blue carpet in the room. It was moving! There was a pattern I kept seeing when I looked down at one particular dot that caught my eye. I ran downstairs and collapsed on the couch to try to relax. I was hullucinating. I hid my face in the pillow trying to think. I was totally numb. I could not feel any of my senses working correctly. Everything around me was dead silent because no one was home. Then I started hearing voices. I started to twitch. I found myself staring at the blinds on the window and they were moving and I kept thinking of how piano keys move when some one plays the piano.
I had to get up. I ran straight to the kitchen. I found myself scavenging through the cupboards in an effort to eat some chips or cookies and had no luck because my brother and his friends already got to the food!!!! Then I see a big can of Family Size Campbell's vegetable soup. I opened it quickly, poured the soup and the water into a pot and waited impatiently for it to hurry up and get heated. I wasted no time eating it once it was warm instead of hot, like how soup is normally served. I think I ate the whole can in a record span of like 2 minutes. I remember I could not taste anything. Even when I took a moment to pause to try to think for a second at what the hell I was doing. I didn't care. I could not stop eating. I had what I later learned was the munchies. After over indulging every bit of food I found from then on after the can of soup, I went upstairs and layed in my bed. I hid myself under my blankets and hoped that this feeling that I was not use to would go away, because this first time being high shit was not fun being alone. I found myself getting out from under the covers and doing weird things like setting my alarm clock so I could try to sleep it off. I could not sleep. I could not stop twitching and hearing things.
My younger sister Jo and lil' brother Tony come home from school. Me and my brother had a half day because we had time to study for exams the next day, which was obvious I didn't give a shit because I was too busy trying to get high. I was beginning to think that maybe it would have been better if I would have chose studying, rather than to sit here high as a kite for the first time off weed alone.
Me and Jo shared a room and we had the nes nintendo system hooked up to the tv in our room. I think I lied and told her I did not feel well. I kind of felt bad also that I was high in the presense of my two younger siblings and they had no clue. Tony came in our room to join her for a game of Super Mario 2 . I stared mesmorized by the screen and out of randomness I bursted out laughing uncontrollably to the point where I fell off my bed. My sister and brother thought I was just acting dumb and ignored me and once again I found myself staring at the screen and laughing so hard to the point that I was curled up on my bed trying to find a way to breathe, my chest was hurting so bad. I was fucked up. That went on for some time. Giggling. Laughing. I think they were too young to suspect I was on a drug. Till this day I still feel bad I was forced to see them while under the influence. And my mom. I refused to face. I stayed in my room and made it look like I went to bed early for school tommorow. I slept like shit. I was still so high.
Morning comes around. I'm in big trouble. I'm still high off the weed I smoked the day before. I have to go to school. I'm in the class room. I could not focus on what the sentences I was reading were asking me. I saw swirls on the chalk board. The circles on the scan- tron sheet were moving. I prayed the bitchy spanish teacher would not call on me for any reason that day.
Needless to say I bombed and failed my exams and I swear I was still high the day after. 3 days I stayed high. I am not even remotely kidding.
I was 14 when I first got high....
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