James served ten years in prison. His crucial impasse occurred a week after his life in the clink—under a neon sign that read Green Goddess.
He used to smoke on occasion before doing time. His experiences were hazy clichés grounded in bad comedies and binge eating, laughing, and shoveling cereal into his mouth with his bare hands. People did it in prison (you could, it turned out, get anything illegal in prison) but more often than not it was K2 or some other derivative that had different, sometimes opposite effects, so it was safer to stay away altogether. You couldn’t exactly throw on Harold and Kumar and eat Ruffles off your stomach. Yet his incarceration happened to eclipse one of his state’s most momentous legal achievements of the decade in the legalization of marijuana, and since he first heard the news from the little television in the rec room, he had included it among the things he most wanted to experience when he got out—a symbol of the new world itself. The vision of simply walking into a store, buying a joint, and sparking it up in a park had become a beacon for freedom.
The doors parted automatically like at K-Mart. The signature blast of AC followed. At once it felt as if he stepped from his grimy, familiar street-curb and into the future—if, of course, the future was a slightly nicer RadioShack with just as many screens. Instead of getting the skunk-bath he expected when he walked in, he was greeted with screens everywhere, tablets bolted to marble countertops; kiosks arranged throughout the store with only signs to distinguish them: Edibles or Flower or Concentrates or Topicals or Accessories. James had no idea what half those things entailed. He drew a steadying breath. Just a joint. How hard can it be?
A cheery voice crowbarred into his musings: “Welcome to Green Goddess, sir! Can I please see your ID?”
The woman sounded like his kindergarten teacher. She sat behind a lectern wearing overalls covered with pins depicting symbols and causes he didn’t recognize. He contemplated why he, a middle-aged man with a stone-gray beard and a murder of crow’s feet, was being asked to present his ID, but reasoned the young lady was just doing her job. He handed her his DOCCS ID. Her eyes widened as she scanned the details.
After about ten minutes of her playing on the tablet and examining the document— “I’m sorry, this is really unusual”—she handed it back and gestured that he was allowed onto the premises. The whole store was a blinding white; a lazy depiction of heaven. There were no blacklight posters of cartoon characters smoking bongs like the sketchy headshops of his youth, the potent odor of cheap incense was replaced with a ubiquitous, inoffensive nothing. Looking around, he considered how there wasn’t anything in the store that gave the impression that drugs were bought here. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they sold essential oils.
He was ripped from the throes of internalization by another obnoxious, fluttery voice, this one male: “Ayo, brother, how’s it hangin’? Welcome to GG. I’m Marc, I’ll be your BudGod today.”
James didn’t like thin moustaches. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have trusted someone with that look. “BudGod?”
“Or BudGoddess,” he motioned generally to the store, “depending on who you have. I’m here to help you navigate the store and get home with everything you want.”
“Oh,” James said, trying to forgive the shitty branding. “I’m just looking for a joint today. Something simple.”
“Pre-roll! That’s over here.”
He took James to the Flower section on the far side of the store. As he did, he ran through a quick circuit of small talk about the weather and the local sporting glory and a new restaurant that opened down the corner—mostly topics James lacked the relevant attention to. Back in the day, relationships with his drug dealers were either close or non-existent: hours on the couch together or picking up a sack from a work-boot on the porch because his wife was home. These arrangements relied on all sorts of circumstances beyond control—the schedule of an individual as opposed to the working hours of a business—but James couldn’t help but feel there was an authentic charm to the old ways extinct in this new format. This Marc was paid to treat everyone alike.
“Sir? Sir?”
This Marc was talking.
“Just need to see your ID.”
The question of why they needed it again was hard to ignore. Still, James presented it, Marc looked at it quizzically, before shrugging and activating the screen.
“What’s your fancy?”
The display scrolled through more selections than James knew existed. He didn’t recognize these words— “Runtz” and “Lemon Cherry Gelato” and “Zskittles.” These were candies and sweets and yet the images still said otherwise. They looked identical. He croaked out the one nuance of weed he remembered: “Sativa?”
“Yes!” He clicked around.
“Great. Don’t want to get too zonked.”
Marc hesitated. “The type of strain alone isn’t going to give you that. That’s largely a myth. What you’re really looking for are things like terpene profile, THC percentage, cultivator, how it’s grown.”
James felt an irk of impatience. “So…?”
“I’d suggest a mid-percentage indoor, either hydroponic or living soil. AtomicLabs does a great RS11.”
He looked. It was $25 more. “Fine. I’ll take it.”
Marc transferred James to a third person—a cashier. She confirmed the product that he and Mark had decided and put it into her tablet. Then she asked for and scanned James’s ID. Disappearing into the back, she emerged with the purchase secured in a childproof nylon bag, asking him if he wanted to give his phone number for the rewards program. He said No and swiped his card—only to find they charged $5 more for cashless.
He ran out of that place faster than he had prison. Opening the bag was an impossibility. He shredded it apart with his keys. The joint was boxed to look more like a cosmetics product than a narcotic. He tore through its layers of purple packaging only to battle with the final plastic tube that separated him from his coffin dream. He finally got it open, the pungent stick of feel-good falling into his hand. Desperate, he conjured a flame from his pocket, sucking deep and long and hoping to taste freedom when he exhaled.
Instead, opening his eyes, all he saw in the dissipating cloud was a cop, ticket pad already out, pen gliding across.
“What gives, man? Shit’s legal now.”
The cop scoffed. “That’s true,” he clicked the pen, “but this is a private property. You, my friend, are loitering.”
“ID please?”
