It was my inability to decide between two suits that had kept me at the flea market for way too long. It was in the midst of this intense internal conversation that a man came up to me and in a quiet voice asked me if I wanted help. I said, “Oh yes! Which one looks better on me, red or blue?” He frowned and his mouth searched for words before he finally stammered, “Red.” I said, “Thank you” as he walked away from me looking completely confused. I paid for the red suit and as I walked away, the brief interaction came back to me. I realized that there was something strange about the way that the man came up to me. He came up to me as if he was holding a secret and hiding his voice in hushed tones as he leaned in to make sure that only my ears heard his question. I realized that he had not asked if I wanted help, he had asked if I wanted hemp! I bent over laughing uncontrollably! Upon review, I realized that my internal dialogue had shifted his offer of hemp into help, but maybe in his mind it was one and the same.

Yet, it was not the first time that my naivete had been confronted in the context of California drug culture. I could not understand why the coffee shop that I frequented was always packed with people when I went in there, but I was often the only one emerging with coffee. How did they pay rent, selling cookies and coffee? After a month, I realized that the coffee shop was a front for a medical marijuana establishment.

It is funny how you can find yourself in places that you never, expect. I remember going to a concert with a friend in New York City and she told me that she needed to stop and pick up a package before we went to party. I had no hesitance, because she was my friend and I trusted her to take care of me in big, scary New York City. We walked into a miscellaneous building, climbed a few stairs and knocked on a miscellaneous apartment.

This white boy answered the door who looked like he had been to one too many Grateful Dead concerts. We sat in a circle and talked about his latest light show that he was working for. It was in the middle of this non-suspect conversation that he began to light up and as the cigarette got past around the circle, I got nervous and began kicking my foot which quickly hit something under the table. As I looked, I realized there were two bails of marijuna-wrapped in string like bails of hay-under the table. Now, I am scared as hell falling into paranoia that the police were going to especially come in at that moment, because I was there and really what would I have to say in that moment? I thought my friend was coming to pick up mail?  How could I defend myself? As I bypassed the cigarette and passed it on, the Dead man raised his eyebrow until my friend stepped in and said, "She's cool." I didn't have a voice then and thank God the conversation wrapped up quickly and I waited outside as the door closed slightly behind me, but remained open enough for me to see my friend change money for her package. In a quiet voice, I asked her to never bring me back there again. She told me she would not and we never talked about it again.

My mother's strict fundamentalist conditioning drilled in my psyche pretty early on that marijuana was a drug and that all drugs were bad. My friends viewed the stoners as bad people in high school, losers who were frying their brains. I realize that my mother was trying to protect me with such an extreme view and that I can grow in my understanding of how people choose to connect or not connect with it. I confront my conditioning all the time in California with long windy conversations about the healing power of hemp and mother earth providing herb to her children to ease tension, fear and pain. Maybe it is because I feel organically on a cloud most of the time that introducing an external relaxant in my body doesn't seem necessary. As one homeless man said to me one day, "You walk like there is no tomorrow."  Yeah, all I got is right now.