Читать книгу Ganja Tales - Craig Pugh - Страница 4

Dude, strange story. You’re not gonna believe it. So I went to our bro Ted’s house yesterday. You know Ted, he took off for Oregon last year. He’s back, with a guy who blows glass. That’s right, a glass blower. Rasta dude. I kid you not; got dreads three feet long. White guy. Teaching Ted how to blow glass. Hell yeah, I’m serious. Is that crazy or what? Ted . . . he’s always up to something.

So I called him yesterday morning ‘cause I heard he was back in town, and he said, “C’mon over, we work everyday in the shop.”

And I said “What shop?” and he said “The garage in back of the house. Come check it out. I haven’t seen you in The Day, brother.”

So I go down to their little shack of a shop around mid-morning, and the guys are already in the garage getting started. First they were smoking a bowl.

Do I have good timing or what?

So I hugged Ted and met Dave, and we smoked some killer bud, dude. Wake-‘n’-bake, you know what I mean? Then Dave said he needed to make some money and he turned and lit a nozzle on the countertop, about the size of a gun, four hoses feeding into the back of it--two red, two green: propane and oxygen. Blow ya sky-high if you aren't careful. Ted handed me some safety goggles. “Put these on bro, you’re gonna need ‘em to look at the flame. Watch Dave work now. He’s pretty good. He learned in Eugene, dude. Yeah … Snodgrass … all them guys.”

Dave went to a kiln in the corner and pulled out a 2-foot glass rod with a glass figure about the size of a pickle on the end of it--just a raw, blob of a shape. But the embryo of a pipe waiting to be blown was inside the blob like a dream inside a brain. Dave stepped on a foot pedal and a small blue flame shot out, becoming longer and broader until a big flame with a yellow core was blazing like a Jedi light saber. He said it was about 3,500 degrees. Is that hot enough for you? Dave stuck the glass inside the fire and bathed it, spinning the glass rod to keep the figure on the end of it whirling and twirling.

“Keep it still and it melts,” he shouted. Rasta beats bumped from the box, mahn, reggae, and the flame hissed; no, wait a minute; the sound was more like a roar, like when you put your ear to a conch shell on the beach and hear the ocean. Then Dave stepped on the pedal again, and the flame became a small, blue-burning heat tip, and he had this thin, glass rod in his right hand and he held the tip of it to the pipe’s surface. “This puts silver and gold on the clear Pyrex as base colors,” he explained, and as he turned the glass in the flame, a faint, opalescent mother-of-pearl color emerged, like an Easter daybreak, man.

And this Dave guy kept saying “Heat it, spin it, blow it, show it.”

Is that cool or what? So he held his left hand up with the blob of a glass piece in it. “This one’s the girl,” he said. Then he set his right hand on the torch. “And this one’s the boy. Glass and fire; it takes both to make a pipe.”

Sweet, huh? I’m telling you, this Dave guy is a trip. So here’s the part you’re not gonna believe. Two people show up, a guy and a girl, about 25 years old I’d say. Maybe married, I don’t know. The chick? Pretty good looking, dude, pretty good looking, a real sister. Dude! She busted out an ounce of ‘shrooms! No kidding. Well, what can I tell ya? It’s been a while since I tripped, but those ‘shrooms looked so sweet: not very big, but plump little fatcats, caps and stems all connected. Pretty.

So Ted goes inside to make tea from the mushrooms, and the guy, his name was Stephen, is this astrologer dude. Check it out – he starts telling Dave about his chart. I’m not kidding. He’s going on like, “This is a good time for you to make money through creative enterprises.”

Oh duh! I mean, Dave blows glass, OK? Even I can figure out that’s where his cash will come from. And then this Stephen guy asks Dave if he’s in a relationship now, and Dave says “Sure!” and Stephen goes: “Wow! Really?”

But check it out. We’re all watching Dave shape the glass piece in the flame, taking it out, putting it back, keeping the temperature just perfect for shaping and blending in colors. And this flame is life itself, dude; it transforms the glass.

Ted comes back with a tray of mugs, and everyone but Dave and the astrologer drinks the mushroom tea. There was a big ol’ ‘shroom in the bottom of each mug, and we swallowed them. Trippy, dude. And that chick, her name was Tara, she gagged big-time on hers--chucked it right back up! It came shooting out of her mouth and hit the floor and I’ll be damned if Dave’s dog, a pit bull named AK, didn’t leap off the sofa and snarf that ‘shroom right down. No, I’m not kidding. And we’re all yelling, “No, AK, no!” but Dave said “That’s all right. AK used to trip ‘shrooms all the time in Eugene.”

Can you believe it? So now we’re tripping with a pit. I look at all the glass on the countertop in front of the torch. Jars with different length glass rods in them look like multicolored spaghetti: ruby, pink, amber-purple and lots of thin clear glass. “Just straight Pyrex,” Dave says. And the light coming in through the glass door starts shining on all the different-sized and colored rods, making rainbows, dude, the colors all shifting. Awesome! Now get this. Ted starts showing me the kiln. He lifts the lid and explains how it works, but all I can do is stare at these four pipes baking in there. Maybe it’s because I was tripping those ‘shrooms, I don’t know, but each one of the four pieces looked like a season.

Does that make any sense? I mean, one pipe looked like winter--all blue, white and cold; reminded me of Finland. Another flared with summer colors--yellow, orange, red; a pipe from Algiers or Morocco. The third was spring--bright greens shooting through this long glass tube. Costa Rica, baby, tropical rain forest pipe on a lily pad. And the fourth piece of course had your autumn colors: brown, black and gold. And I thought, “This guy’s a friggin’ genius, man.” And Dave keeps rapping about glass blowing, saying how it’s an ancient craft that goes back even before the Egyptians. You want history? They got it. Dude, glass blowing’s been around as long as ganja and astrology. Blowers even have their own patron saint, I kid you not. Saint Anthony Abate. Straight up. Don’t ask me how to pronounce it smart-ass; I can’t even spell it.

Then Ted really blows my mind. He whispers: “Dude, I think Dave’s girl just left him. Last night, Dave was out at the bar with some friends and Tammi came into the shop. We had a big talk. She told me Dave doesn’t ‘see’ her, but if she were a piece of glass he wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes off her. Then, a minute ago when I was brewing the tea, I saw a yellow envelope on the kitchen table. Addressed to Dave. Sounds like she said adios with a Hallmark card, huh?”

Well, I’m listening to Ted tell me this stuff, and it’s blowing my mind because I saw a chick throw a suitcase in a car and drive off as I was getting there. So I whispered to Ted: “Redhead? Dreads like Dave’s?”

“Yep,” Ted says. “That’s Tammi, all right. Long-gone Tammi.”

Can you believe it, dude? His woman left without saying a word. Crazy. And he doesn’t have a clue!

So, we go back to the workbench where Dave was making a sweet bubbler for Stephen and Tara. I think they brought the mushrooms into town, dude, ‘cause they were from the Northwest--Vancouver, Eugene, somewhere like that. They said people trip ‘shrooms out there every day, dude. Can you imagine? Maybe they put ‘em in the water. Wanna trip? Take a drink. Now that’d be livin’! The electric community! I’m there, dude, that’s all I’m saying.

But anyway, this Stephen guy is telling Dave that since he’s a Sagittarius and Ted is an Aries that it’s natural they work with fire. Is that a trip? Fire signs working with fire. I don’t know what sign that Tara chick was, but I’ll tell you one thing: she was fire, dude. Hot, hOT, HOTTT!

So Stephen and Tara leave. Hell no they can’t hang with us. Can’t hang widda one-man gang, bro. Now we’re tripping balls. Shit’s meltin’ everywhere; visuals coming on like gangbusters, and Ted, he’s such a hoot, he looks at me and winks, then says to Dave, “So Bro, what have you and Tammi been up to?” And I look at Ted like, have you fucking lost your mind? ‘Cause I know my mind was lost, dude, out wandering in the forest of foggy mushroom mist. And Ted’s crazy if he thinks I’m going to help him tell Dave that his girl’s left him. Like what do I know about chicks? I know they’re trouble, that’s about it. And what they want from guys and what we want from them are two very different things, know what I’m saying, dude?

Then, check this out--Dave starts rapping about women. “Yeah, man,” he says, “Women. You just gotta treat ‘em right. Like the glass here, dude. You gotta talk to it, work with it, make love to it.”

And I’m thinking: “Buddy, what you don’t know.”

And Ted, he can’t leave well-enough alone because here he comes again, a woodpecker hittin’ the same damn hole time after time: “Dave … there’s something I gotta tell you.”

I wished there was something I could’ve thought to say--an interruption or something, but I stood there drawing blanks.

“Sure man,” Dave says, “what is it?”

“Well,” Ted began …

“Dude!” Dave suddenly shouted. “Would you look at this!”

The glass in the flame was a swirling cauldron of colors: peach, berry, orange, cherry; spinning yet all seemingly melting but yet, staying together, holding a molten shape. Pure poetry, man. And then Dave starts schooling Ted, ‘cause after all, he’s the apprentice, right? And Dave’s talking about this process called fuming, where you bleed in the color rod to the clear Pyrex shape you’re working with. Of course, it’s all with heat, all with the torch. Dave said it all works because glass traps fire’s heat, cooling it and keeping it for its own beauty. Is that cool or what?

So picture the planet Mars, all molten red. Now shrink it down to golf ball size--that’s what Dave had suspended in the flame. The shape was becoming a form. Then he did this etching stuff, where you take a piece of iron about the size of a pencil, and you start putting in swirls, curly-cues, swooshes– any design you want. For example, that astrologer dude was a Leo, so the piece Dave had made for him had the lion symbol; you know, the curly tail thing, all over the pipe. Talk about technique; if you push too hard the reamer goes right through the molten glass and you’ve ruined it. Touch and pressure are everything.

So this Dave is spinning and grinning, stylin’ and profilin’, and a guy shows up, Tim or something, and he says, “Hey, Dave, need any weed?

And Dave says, “Sure, need any ‘shrooms?

And this Tim guy says, “Is the pope Catholic?” And they both whip their bags out and trade: an ounce of kind buds for an ounce of ‘shrooms, plus Dave kicked him a piece. And I’m thinking, what a gig, you just sit there blowing glass all day and people bring you drugs.

Could you hang with that, bro?

So next thing you know we’re huffing again. Talk about smoking from a phat piece, you should see Dave’s personal bubbler. And this herb is killer: Willies, dude. I don’t think those guys even smoke schwag; I mean, why would you if you were surrounded by kind buds all day long?

Now Tim is talking about the band Tammi is in, and how they’re getting more gigs lately. He saw them play the other night.

“Dude,” he said to Dave. “Tammi’s good. She’s got a great voice.”

“Yeah,” Dave said, “that’s what I hear.”

“What! You mean you haven’t seen them?”

Dave’s shoulders sagged a little and a sigh escaped his lips like he’d explained this one before and was getting a little tired of it: “No,” he said, pausing. “It’s hard to leave the flame, brother.”

And the weird part was, at that exact moment we all realized that we, too, were staring at the torch, riveted by its hissing and roaring and burning. I’m tellin’ ya, when he cranks that bitch it’s a foot long. It grabs you, dude. It grabs you by the booboo.

And check this out. AK, that mean old bastard, he’s laying on the sofa with his nuts hanging out growling at everyone. So I’m all wrecked, and every time I look at AK he shows me fangs. And I’m thinking, Jesus, that dog’s gonna rip my friggin’ throat out. I couldn’t make friends with that dog for nothing, but you know what I say: Never trust a pit bull tripping ‘shrooms.

So here comes Ted again, talking about women. The dude is a freak, what can I say. I can tell he’s trying to get it back to Tammi, and sure enough, he says, “You and Tammi got any plans tonight, Dave?”

And Dave … it’s obvious he hasn’t even thought about it. Like they say: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, right? I mean, Dave, wake up and smell the kind buds, buddy. And while you’re at it, check on your woman, you know what I’m saying, dude? TCB buddy--take care of business.

So Ted can’t get Dave to stop thinking about blowing and start thinking about Tammi, which I guess has been the problem all along. Finally Ted gets tired of beating around the bush and he says, “Dave, there’s something I gotta tell ya. Can we go in the kitchen?” and I’ll be damned if the phone didn’t ring.

So Dave’s on the phone, and I look at Ted and say, What are you … crazy?

And Ted says, “Man, his chick is with another guy and he doesn’t even know she’s left. Somethin’ aint’ right about that.”

“Look,” I says. “If you tell him, he’ll hate your guts.”

I’m right, aren’t I? You don’t want to be the one to tell your bro his woman’s stepping out on him. It’s like he’ll blame you. Besides, I was tripping balls, dude, things were crazy enough, I can tell you that. Jeez, you shoulda been there.

Then Dave’s off the phone. The guy he was talking to is coming over with three hundred dollars to have a piece blown. So the guy shows up and we all commence to smoking again, Dave matching his Willies with this guy’s Kush. Yes, Hindu Kush, dude, you heard me. He had to have grown it himself. That’s what I figure. His nugs were the size of strawberries--covered with crytals! You can’t buy nugs like that! No I am not lying. One hit, you’re baked. Try it with ‘shrooms, dude! I was torched! My brain was melting!

Speaking of melting, I saw the coolest thing. Dave’s glass is coming alive under the torch. It’s in the flame, and it’s glowing like an aura or a rainbow, and the colors are shifting and changing, shimmering and twirling. What began as a shapeless blob is now plainly going to be a fat pipe with form, design and color. Around the rim of the molten bowl, glass melts and ripples like lava. And Dave’s putting those color-dot-things around the equator of the bowl. You know, those knobby things of color on glass pieces? He did a red one, then a green one, then blue and so on. And each time, he held the color-stick to the side of the bowl, working in the flame–always in the flame– varying its length, temperature and intensity. Then he pulls the color stick out with pliers, but the tip remains trapped in the sticky glass.

“Whoaa,” he starts yelling. “Who’s yo daddy? Who’s yo Daddy!”

I’m tellin’ ya, that guy is a trip.

Now check this out. Dave picks a gold coin up with tongs, straight up twenty-four karat gold, and sticks it in the torch with the pipe. Molten gold flecks drip around the base of the bowl, which he keeps spinning of course. And on top it’s all purple, crimson and ruby-colored. The bomb, dude, the bomb. Time kinda stands still when you’re watching that stuff, know what I mean?

That’s the part where he held the figure still momentarily and pushed the reamer into the glass. Dude, that becomes the bowl. Is that sweet or what? I have never seen anything like that in my life. And then you just poke your little carburetor hole on the side and presto! You got a pipe.

And all the while Dave’s rapping about the trip to Jamaica he and some homies took a few weeks ago, talking about this swimming pool where the chicks went topless, and you jump in it from a ledge and swim over to a big wall of water vines and you climb up them and that’s where the bar is! Would that be sweet or what?

So the guy with the Kush, he knew Tammi somehow, and he says to Dave: “Hey, who’s Tammi’s new boyfriend?” and Dave about came unglued.

“What the fuck are you talking about, crack ho?”

“Nothing … I just saw her having a drink with a guy at a bar last week. Chill, dude.”

“At the Club Fusion, down on 13th?” Dave shot back.

“Yeah, I guess that was it.”

“Her band had a gig there,” Dave said. “The guy you saw her with was probably in the band, that’s all.”

But that did it for Dave. Agitation showed in his frown and furrowed brow, and at the same time he seemed confused. He glanced around the room like seeing it fresh for the first time … like waking up from a dream, you know what I mean? He looked at us and the dog, and we’re all holding our breaths like Hey, What’s up brother? Peace in the hood, right?

And Dave scratches his head. “I’m gonna go show Tammi this piece,” he says, and we’re going “Yeah, good idea, bro, go show Tammi,” trying not to laugh. I mean, it wasn’t funny, but it was funny. Does that make any sense?

So he shuts the torch off and walks out, and Ted and I look at each other and go, “Oh Shit!” and start cracking up big-time--not at Dave--but because the incredible tension was suddenly gone.

And Ted says, “Can you believe it?” and I am shaking my head back-and-forth, rolling my eyes in disbelief, free of a great burden, the weight of the world off our shoulders, brother--the weight of the world.

So what’s up? Hey, I got some of those ‘shrooms. Wanna party?