Joey is driving out of the city, out of the suburbs, and into the country. He lights up a joint, takes a couple of puffs and hands it to me. While I’m vehemently against smoking and driving, I do have a very good and longstanding relationship with marijuana. While I don’t want to encourage Joey’s reckless behaviour, I can’t really tell him not to smoke, and if I let him smoke the whole joint he’ll be twice as high as he would be if I share it with him.
I take the joint, and say: “when in Rome.”
“Fuck some hot Roman woman!”
I nod, close my eyes, lean my head back, take a large draw of smoke into my mouth, hear the burn of the rolling paper, and take the smoke into my lungs.
Joey looks over at me curiously and says: “I didn’t mean to presume. If you’re a gay, that don’t really matter to me none. I like tits to much to ever be gay, but I would let a good looking suck my dick.”
“I find women attractive.”
I actually find some men attractive too, but I don’t want to say that to Joey, who might be looking for me to smoke his fucking pipe. He’s sort of a weird looking dude, but his big belly is the real turn off. I mean, who wants a fat sweaty belly pressing against your eyes while you trying to pleasure a person?
“That’s good. You’re salt of the earth, boy. Salt of the earth,” he says.
It’s not lost on me that I don’t know Joey, that he could have taken my wallet and phone, that he could have thrown me in that grave. I trust him though. He saved my life, so I trust him.
Joey takes another couple of puffs and hands the joint back to me, saying: “the rest is yours. I need it for the fibromyalgia, but I don’t want to get stoned.”
“I can save the rest for you then.”
“No, no, fuck that. You have it. You’ll need it. I got plenty more,” he says.
Joey pulls over to the side of the road and says: “we’re here.”