Errol & Inka

A brief excerpt from an unfinished (and unfinishable) novel that obliquely addresses my feelings on the recent Supreme Court Medical Marijuana decision. Errol Jordan, a 7-year-old aspiring labor lawyer, has a run-in with drug-using friends of Inka Popinski, a buxom ex-gymnast and comparative literature major at Cornell University.


Left alone with the dry-eyed, but less-than-cheerful child genius of the moment, Inka helped him pull off his tie and waited for him to say something.

"Those guys use drugs," Errol said. "And you're friends with them? Do you use drugs?" That wasn't the question she wanted to hear.

"Listen, why don't you talk to your parents about this. I'm really not the right person to ask."

"I'm not asking them. I'm asking you."

"It's just...it's just that you're really too young for me to answer you honestly. You know, I didn't know drugs from Oscar the Grouch when I was your age, and I was more than happy being young and ignorant. That's the beauty of childhood."

"But I bet you didn't have a functioning knowledge of quantum mechanics and cosmological physics when you were my age, either. And I don't know any Oscar Groucho Marx or anyone. That's a cop-out."

"No, but—"

"But nothing. I'm asking you to look past my age, and just talk to me like another person. Is that so much to ask? Why won't anyone talk to me about the important stuff?"

The image of young Mozart in a sex-Ed class shot into her head with the sudden juxtaposition of an MTV edit.

"O.K. Fine. What do you want to know?"

"Do you take drugs?"

"Listen. Drugs are just chemicals, right? Anything that effects your body chemistry can be considered a drug, right? Medicine is a drug. Certain foods are a drug. Do you agree?"

"Sure. But medicine and food aren't illegal and don't generally kill people."

"Hold on a second. Do you want to talk about politics or realities? Drugs weren't always illegal. Most were here long before there were any laws or anything that might be called civilization. Just because something is illegal doesn't make it evil. Recently, alcohol was illegal for awhile, and that was declared by an amendment to the Constitution. While Congress was waiting to ratify the retraction of that amendment, did alcohol suddenly become less evil? Laws are laws, and some are good and some suck, all are enacted by the most deceitful people on earth, and I'm not really interested in having a political discussion. I'm decidedly apolitical by nature."

"But if you break the law—"

"If you break laws that don't hurt anyone but yourself, are you a criminal Technically anyone who has homosexual sex in some states is committing a crime, but is it a crime against humanity? No. The crime against humanity is the law enacted by the state barring these types of activities that have no victims. But I don't want to talk about politics. Do you know what marijuana is?"

"It is one of several products of the cannabis sativa plant, a narcotic whose active ingredient tetrahydorcannabinol has—"

"Hold on. You said it's a plant, right?"

"Yeah."

"So if it grows on the planet, if it is in fact a weed that would grow wildly if man and his laws didn't intervene, whose to stop me or anyone from drying it and lighting it on fire. If you were to light that clump of grass you're holding, and breathe in the smoke, should I stop you?"

"It might make me sick."

"Ah, but if you smoke some other plant, and it makes you feel pretty damn good, what is the difference. Your happiness?"

"Well, what does it feel like?"

Inka could see herself answering this question for the benefit of the court reporter some day, while the judge cuts her off and lambastes her with a gavel's tone of voice, "You told him WHAT?"

"Now, this is tricky for me to describe because I believe that it is impossible to speak as an authority on any topic without direct personal experience with what you're talking about. Who is the Pope to be talking about sex? And that's particularly true when you talk about physical states and emotions. And I would not recommend you trying anything, because like we've already established, you're too young, and certain people aren't ready for certain experiences. My mother is fifty-two years-old and if she got high, I suppose she'd flip out a little. Not because of the weed, mind you, but because of her personal reaction to it. No substance is truly evil. It's just some stuff on this planet. Some stuff can kill you, some can make you sick, some can make you feel O.K., and some great. I wouldn't eat a spare tire or smoke tuna fish, but if I did, I could only blame myself and not the tire. O.K.?"

"But what does it feel like?"

Persistent little bugger, she thought.

"O.K. Did you ever spin around in circles in a big open space like your backyard and stare at the sky and then stop suddenly and feel all dizzy and giddy and maybe a little sick?"

"I can't tell you if I've participated in this specific activity, but the sensation seems familiar. Perhaps I have."

"Well, it's kinda like that although different. You know, there just might be a natural human tendency to experience different states of mind. I can remember spinning all over the place when I was a little girl, and I never equated it with being high. Go figure."

"Do you get high often?"

The kid, obviously, was not programmed to ever give in.

"In college, we have the luxury of time to both accomplish, explore, and languish in states of altered consciousness. You know, I'd like to continue this conversation, but I'm late for a class. If you got some time, you can come along and sit in. I think you'll find the lecture strangely appropriate, and certainly eye-opening. What do you say?"

An extended hand was all the leverage Errol needed, and he removed a clump of hair that was sticking to his forehead with a concentrated upward blow.