pit bulls on pot

Two 50-something men sit side by side on an upholstered bench in front of a picture window of a house overlooking San Francisco and the Bay, a panorama that stretches from the Port of Oakland where giant cranes advance against the horizon like mega-mantis-robots (don’t know exactly what that is, but it looks mean), Bay Bridge, City with lights beginning to sparkle as the last of the sunset fades, Golden Gate Bridge, Angel Island’s dark mass. Dreamy, evocative jazz – Monk & Coltrane at Carnegie Hall working modernist pianosax alchemy – unspools in the background as the two old friends enjoy each other’s company, reliving their college days. Night rises at the end of a glorious day as the last little bit of the sun’s disk disappears behind the Marin Headlands. They pass a fat joint back and forth, inhaling deeply and blowing huge clouds of fragrant smoke into the air around their heads, sniffing the wisps as they rise and dissipate.






STEVE: It ain’t coming back.

DOUG: I remember that. We were tripping, out in the country, a day trip, wound up sitting on a hillside watching the sun go down. It felt as if the sun was pulling my heart with it, heart-wrenching, heart-tugging, but with sweet overtones, I couldn’t believe it was gone...

STEVE: You kept watching the spot where the sun went down, like a kid watching somebody else eating the last piece of pie.

DOUG: ...and you said, “It ain’t coming back.” I’ve remembered it since as an excellent observation and cue to let go and move on to the next thing.

STEVE: Haven’t we become philosophical in our old age.

DOUG: No shit. Hey, man....God, I knew we’d get together and get loaded and start sounding like Cheech & Chong.

STEVE: Not forgetting that I turned you on to them in the first place.

DOUG: Dude, that’s what I was just getting ready to say. That night, the year after I left college, as I recall it, when I drove up from Louisiana to spend my seven days off from that job I had out in the Gulf, parked the car in front of that apartment where you were living off-campus, and you jumped out of the tree in front of the car.

STEVE: Scared the shit out of you!

DOUG: And when I came in you slapped the headphones on me, stuck a joint in my mouth, and said, “You’ve got to listen to this.”

STEVE: Laughed your ass off, too, didn’t you.

DOUG: Fuck an A. (PAUSE) Was that the same trip where we wound up on the Road to Nowhere, which lead to the horror movie courthouse...

STEVE: Where the trees were packed with a huge flock of ravens, dead birds littering the town square....

They sit in silence for a moment. Each of the men takes a final toke, then Steve stubs the roach out in an ashtray.

STEVE: You going to thank me again for taking the time, making the effort, to look you up and get in touch.…

DOUG: Don’t push it, amigo. (CHUCKLES) Forever in your debt, good buddy.


Montage of images from STEVE & DOUG’s freshman year at TCU: New Hall intruding on Greek Hill, dorm life, student hijinx, billiard table with balls colliding and bouncing off the walls, etc. Wisps of marijuana smoke curl and twist in among the images.

DOUG (narration over montage): At a certain level, the 50,000-foot level attainable only in certain grace-filled moments or with the application of otherwise harmless vegetable substances, I look back and see myself, newly arrived at TCU, as a billiard ball among others on a brand-new pool table - to use a metaphor that's been nagging at me all morning, and which may or may not be interesting, beautiful, appropriate, or effective. The billiard table is solidly constructed, with precisely defined dimensions, where movement occurs as described by mathematical and physical laws, predictable, controlled...until a ball leaps off the table, adding a new dimension to the game, new possibilities for motion, response, new trajectories.

I try to look beneath the hard, shining surface of the billiard ball that represents me, but the center is not visible to me. I see only a hard, shining sphere that responds to the shocks inflicted by others, up to the moment when it flies off the table. I now know that I held a lot of anger and fear wrapped up in the center, which managed to break free, changing the game radically once again, in the years after I left TCU.

That's where the metaphor dissipates. A billiard ball rolls until it stops, sits until somebody picks it up and whacks it again. That's not me, since leaving TCU, although God knows I've received my share of whacks along the way. I'm a billiard ball that grew legs, able to try to scramble out of the way of collisions mapped with mathematical certainty; rarely have I succeeded in avoiding a collision.

STEVE: The billiard ball metaphor is appropriate and it reminded me of a scene that went down shortly after I arrived at TCU. I was a lonely dude, man, no friends, no connections, no nothing, down in the dumps, depressed, surrounded by squares, unable to score, nada. I walked over to the student center and was shooting a game of pool when some upper classman introduced himself and asked me if I wanted to play. I said sure. Somewhere in the middle of this friendly game of pool he started hitting me up to join his fraternity, but I told him, not in an unfriendly way, that I had no plans to join any frat house. Well, that's when the motherfucker proceeded to run the table on me and walk off without even a see you later, asshole. Cocksucker.

You see, our trajectories were bound to fly off of that table, that plane, so to speak, because, yes, it was of solid construction and predictable carom, but, you know, I don't think the fucker was level or the roll was true...so we just jumped off.

Regrets? Who doesn't have regrets, but still, we did what we felt had to be done. I still remember Bruce's cryptic description of TCU as a high school with ashtrays, and that damn Living/Learning program was so bogus that we had to rebel. Remember Uncle Ted, the top dog of that insipid creation? We used to trade fantasies about burying him and his whole miserable family in the pillars of the dorm with no name. We were removed from the main campus, stuck on Greek Hill, mired the most unbelievingly boring and mediocre curriculum, and a few of us realized it for what it was and said fuck it, I'm off. Whack! And it was quite a ride, buddy, quite a ride. So, let's put some thought into this and try to come up with a central theme, plotline, etc. and see about putting some shape to this thing. One thing's for certain: if it ever hits the silver screen it'll have a killer soundtrack.


[click for next page]