"Napoleon Dynamite Made Me Cry" by Aleena H

 

Cannabis doesn’t stain your walls.

Nicotine takes nearly the same amount of time to dissipate, and both are pervasive but because nicotine is usually mixed with tar the smoke leaves a layer of residue behind. So the stains on your walls are probably from nicotine, not cannabis, especially not when smoked in moderation.

Two summers ago, my friend Tehema invited me and some other friends to her apartment, which she shared with her boyfriend Laurie. Laurie was drunk on life, he was such an unproblematic person; polite, well-humored, and you could tell he was really loving whenever he was with Tehema. He had a really hard childhood but he embraced it, and the way things were going for him made him inspirational to all of us. In a way he seemed untouchable and I think that thinking was what messed me up.

When Tehema asked me to get him for dinner I finally found him outside sitting on a fence of breezeblocks. He was holding a blunt, and the whole thing looked like a fresco. I already knew he smoked but I never saw it first-hand. I almost didn’t want to interrupt, and when I did he had this guilty look on his face. But the rest of the night went on like normal, we watched Jaws and played monopoly. When everyone left and we were cleaning up, Laurie actually came up to me and apologized.

I thought it was excessive, I’d grown up with people around me smoking so a small blunt like that was nothing in my eyes for someone his age. I told him not to worry about it, I hadn’t inhaled any of it. He took it as an opportunity to go into detail on how the drug worked, how it played around with your dopamine, and that made Tehema laugh. She asked that if he knew so much about it and how bad it was, why was he still smoking?

He said in his defense that it’d been his first blunt of the whole year, that he was working on quitting and even then it was okay because it was his ‘only wrong’ in life.

We enjoyed the rest of the evening together, moving the party outdoors. The three of us made good conversation, and before I left we promised we’d watch Napoleon Dynamite next time.

That was two summers ago.

It wasn't until that night that I really analyzed Laurie's relationship with smoking. I didn’t like that he did it but it wasn’t something I really thought about. I wasn't disappointed or upset about it, if anything it was humbling. It broke the image I had of him, not because I thought it made him lesser but because I realized he still had troubles he didn’t know how to confront. His words didn't feel assuring and since that night I never really stopped worrying about it. I paid closer attention to him, trying to figure out if he was doing better or worse, but never actually asking outright. I don't know why I didn't.

Then I got a call early April from a mutual friend of ours. I was annoyed, I don't like taking calls and he knew that, but since it was really late at night finding privacy wouldn't be an issue. When I picked up the phone, he told me that Laurie had died in a car-wreck out of state and that Tehama was devastated. They were leaving for the airport to confirm the body.

I don’t remember sleeping that night, only waking up. I didn’t go to school the next day. I didn’t go to the funeral days later. I didn’t tell anyone about it, I didn’t have anyone to tell. I exchanged words with Tehema and then tried forgetting about it. School and exams kept me busy and then they didn’t.

So when I finally visited again this summer, I didn’t believe it. I had hoped to find the apartment as I had left it, with him perched on the fence of breezeblocks. But the house looked all wrong, Tehema had switched to another unit and everything was now barren. The wallpaper had been stripped so you could see the surface behind and it was stained.

But cannabis doesn’t stain.

And if his 'only wrong' didn’t even leave a stain then was all that worry even worth anything?

. . ...I think about my own death often, I feel close to it in a way that I don’t understand. I wouldn’t call myself suicidal but I would say with confidence I'm impatient, to finish living. And I finally think that when I do die, young or old, I’d like it to be quiet; without fuss of any kind, so that when the people in my life come looking for a trace of me, they don’t find any stains. And that pain I leave them in, I I want that to be my only wrong, because then it'll mean I meant something to them. And I don’t feel guilty for wanting this because I believe that, even if people are troubling, loving another person can never be a waste.