62 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
62 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
We'd been in Amsterdam for 5 hours, finally settled into a
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(relatively) cheap hotel, and my non-smoker fool of a travelling
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companion wanted to go to a bookstore. No problem: I left him
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there and went walking to the 'coffeeshop' I'd seen down a nearby
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alley.
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Having just come from The Evil Empire (America) I was of
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course still nervous about the whole prospect of buying hash out in
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the open. Wouldn't there be CIA agents by every counter, ready to
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pounce on anyone who looked American? Fuckit, at least I'd die
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doing something I liked. So I went in, and waited and watched
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while some dude looked over four bags chock full of long, fine,
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sweet-looking chunks of hash, deciding what to buy.
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He finally chose, and the guy behind the counter put the other
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bags back. They'd been talking in English, so I said to the
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customer, 'You American?'
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The guy kind of grimaced, and said, 'No, German', and took his
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hash over to a table where his friend was waiting.
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OK, I fucked that one up. The guy behind the counter turned to
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me expectantly.
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'Um... I wanna buy some hash.'
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He looked kind of pissed off and slid a 'menu' at me. I looked
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over the list of shit, and finally decided I'd go with Jamaican. I
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bought my 25 guilder's worth, started to head out, when I realized:
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shit, I got no lighter.
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Luckily there was a lighter machine by the wall. Unluckily, it
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only took coins, which I didn't have enough of. Even worse, the
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guy was on the phone. So I waited, and finally the guy got off the
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phone.
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'Um... I need change to buy a lighter.'
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So the dude gives me a look of 100% pure unconcentrated
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contempt, takes my bill, and gives me change. I couldn't figure it
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out. I must have broken a whole bunch of hash-buying ettiquette
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rules or something.
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So I book on out of there and get my friend, and we head out to
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the hotel. On the way there I tell him the story. I couldn't figure it
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out: even folks back in the states were cooler. Maybe it had
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something to do with the culture.
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We got to the hotel, I bent a coke-can into pipe-able shape
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(something you shouldn't do too often, by the way: the burning
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aluminum of the can's bad to breathe in) and I started initiating him
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into the world of hash-smoking. (He was an acid-head, so it wasn't
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like I was corrupting him or anything.)
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He had an Amsterdam guide-book with a section on coffeeshops,
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and he started looking through it. Turns out it had a short list of
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shops in it, with brief descriptions.
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'What was the name of that shop you bought at?' he asked.
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I turned on the room's TV to MTV-Europe. 'The Other Side,' I
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said.
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My friend started laughing. 'Fool,' he said. 'You just scored
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in Amsterdam's only gay coffeeshop!'
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At first I felt kind of ill, but then I figured, hell, hash is hash and
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people are people and we should all learn to get along and all that.
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So we smoked like the dickens and watched MTV-Europe all night
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(which is ten times better than the commercialized pretentious MTV
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we get in America by the way) and it was the best fucking thing in
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the world. It wasn't like we were deviants or anything, it was like
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we could be good members of society and get stoned on the
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weekends if we wanted to. I'm convinced that smoking legal is the
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best high, and I live for the day that I can light up in America and
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blow my smoke in the skies of freedom and democracy without
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worrying about the cops. May it one day be so.
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