The hotel looks empty. While checking in I strike up a conversation with the two ladies running the counter. Perhaps this was unwise because I was feeling loopy? I did it anyway:
“I tried to stay at the nearby campground. It was sold out. But you’ve got lots of rooms. I shoulda’ called you first eh?”
“Oh, we’re almost sold out too. It’s the day.” The lobby manager says.
“Huh?”
“Four twenty.” She says.
“I’m not getting you.”
“The twentieth, of April.”
“So… this has something to do with good Friday? Lotta’ people traveling for Easter?”
She rolled her eyes. Her colleague laughed. “Ha! Easter. That’s awesome!”
I should get used to everything I say making people laugh.
I persist. “Seriously, what’s with the 20th day of the 4th month? I get PI day on March 14th but 420 isn’t even prime…”
Now both women are looking at me like I’m a space alien. At the very least, I suspect they don’t know what “prime” means.
“Four twenty… for weed.” They explain.
Dimly I think maybe I saw that on a T-shirt once. I’d forgotten all about it. I continue. “OK, fine. 420 means dope. Whatever the kids call it these days. I don’t get out much.” I could have stopped there but didn’t. “I know you legalized pot a few years ago. So, everyone gets stoned and hangs out at a State Park on ‘weed day’? Looks like I dodged a bullet.”
“They’re coming here too. After the concert.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s STONERFEST. Around midnight, when the concert’s over, they’ll all show up. This hotel is almost booked up. You’re lucky you got a room.”
Here’s my policy statement on pot: I’m a libertarian through and through and have no issue with people smoking weed. I’m all for the freedom to be stupid, kill brain cells, and, if you really go overboard, fuck up your life. ‘Aint my problem what you do with freewill. I’d love to legalize everything. I would happily allow selling machine guns to naked heroin addicts on rollerskates. I don’t give a shit because stupid people will sort themselves out. However, everyone keep your damn hands off my money or I’ll get medieval on your ass.
Then again, celebrating getting stoned seems odd to me. Is it not… superfluous? It’s like celebrating getting laid. You got laid, isn’t that fun enough in itself?
I don’t think like a joiner. I’m not the type to want to go to a concert and rent a $150 a night room to collectively experience the fact that I’ve temporarily got the mental facilities of a goldfish. I’m the opposite. I drink alone. When I’m perfectly happy being buzzed on bourbon with nobody else in the room they say it’s anti-social, a sign of addiction, and uncommon. They’re wrong! (OK, I might grant the anti-social part.)
Selfishly, I wanted to be somewhere else. I hate stupid people and stoned people are stupid. I dreaded their arrival. They’ll probably make a racket and demand donuts. Crap! How loud would they be?
I’m lost in thought. I realize they’re both starting at me.
“What?”
“You’re not celebrating 4:20?” One asks.
“Not if he doesn’t even know the term.” The other comments, still sizing me up.
It takes a moment for me to catch up. I’m not well versed in slang and I’m not good at reading people. Also, I read more than I speak and that makes my language sound weird. In my defense, you can read a fuckton of books and travel widely and do lots of cool things without picking up 4:20 slang. How does one say such things in polite company? Meanwhile, these two are trying to put my square peg in the round hole of ‘stoner’.
“So,” I say, “you’re talking with a dude who sports a huge beard and looks like he lives in a barn. Thus, you ASSUME I’m a pothead?”
“Yes.” The first one nods.
“Who uses the word ‘pothead’?” The other questions; she’s sagely picking up on the fact that I’m galactically unhip. She correctly deduces I’m too unplugged to be a stoner… or pothead… or whatever the term happens to be this generation.
I’m on a tear now. “OK, fine, if not ‘pothead’ then ‘aficionado of mental masturbation’; that’s your theory isn’t it?” I think ‘aficionado of mental masturbation’ took them back a bit but I was on a roll and kept going. “Let’s unpack things, I look like Willie Nelson’s retarded hillbilly cousin and that means I must be here to toke? What if I play bluegrass banjo? Maybe I’m a cosplay version of Gandalf? Are there no other explanations?”
“You checked in with points… a freebie.” At this, they both nod sagely.
Potheads have hotel loyalty points? Who knew?
“I got points from a friggin’ gold club loyalty account.” I argue. “For all you know I’m a wayward college professor.”
This got their attention. “Are you?”
Inward, I shiver at the idea. Hell no! Imagining toadying to make tenure makes me break out in hives…. Or flee. Which I did. “No, I’m not a professor. Kissing ass for tenure sounds like hell on earth.”
They’re waiting for more. Like that didn’t explain it. I thought I’d been clear? Oh well. Time to have some fun.
I make a little pirouette and ham it up: “Check it out ladies, a genuine example of Gone Galt.”
“Who is Galt?”
OMG! They said it! My life is complete!
“Ha ha ha!” I burst out laughing. This is the best thing to happen in the history of ever. I want this moment recorded form remembrance in annual celebrations; possibly by stoners and hotel lobby managers. I made them say it!
“Seriously. What are you talking about? Where’s Galt?” One asks.
I’m delighted! These two probably haven’t read a book since sixth grade and I’m making them ask about John Galt. For the moment, the world is a puppet and I pull the strings. I’m enormously pleased with myself. Ayn Rand, that heartless beast, wouldn’t appreciate the joke… but I do!
“Galt lives in a Gulch. But you’re not invited. Neither am I. He stopped the motor of the world and all I did was fuck up my tractor. Read a book!” I’m making no sense (to them) but I’m massively enjoying the moment, I grab my keys. One hands me a cookie; hoping for a better explanation. I thank her and make to scamper off like a lunatic.
“You gotta’ tell us what that meant. We told you 4:20.” The second lady complains. The first is already tapping into their hive mind; a smartphone. She pulls up a Wikipedia entry. They forget me and start skimming the page. I see Ayn Rand’s dour puss and lots of text. That’ll keep ‘em busy for a while.
Smiling, I saunter off to my free room in the land of communalist potheads who have smartphones with which to reserve a whole State Park AND money to rent most of the rooms in the hotel.
Rich. Potheads. Who make reservations in advance? What an interesting world in which to live.
Also, the two ladies at the counter will be wondering half the night if I was baked or just read too much. Good luck sorting out that one.
It was a good cookie.
You, sir, are an evil, evil man. It is not nice to use literary reference on the newly plugged in and woke. They have not exercised the proper brain cells to interpret the sounds coming out of your mouth. Comprehension is slow and narrow. The written word (unless it’s 140 characters or less) is quickly going the way of Betamax and 8 track tapes. Soon, we will have gone full circle from hieroglyphs to emojis. Where complex ideas and intricate processes will be indicated by a tiny picture of a steaming pile of poo and a happy face. We dinosaurs will just have to face the music knowing that our time on this earth is quickly coming to an end.
OMG, I’m old and un-hip and evidently not very well-read.
Had a former drug dealer explain 420 to me. I still don’t get it.
Am unfamilar with Mz. Rand’s writings.
I read gunny-ish blogs and can’t follow the comment flame wars ’cause I don’t know who the hell John Galt is/was/symbolizes.
I was surprizingly entertained by 2 of the 3 John Wick flicks…
John Wick! Coincidentally, John Wick plays a role in a future post about insurance and GPS receivers.
Oh, good! Something to look forward to in my otherwise drab, empty life. Yes, it is tequila, why do you ask? 🙂
The cookie was a test. A stoned out hipster with the munchies can’t say no to a cookie.
I never turn down any free food. It was delicious.
You’re always baked and one can never read too much; unless there is a naked woman in front of oneself…then it’s time to put the book and ‘git it on!’
Oh dear, why do I get the vine of Doogie and the squirrel story here?! Seems to be an undercurrent of society where you are located, and who the heck has ever heard of pelicans inland in the mid west? Carry on, or more apropos, haul onward..
No Swedish disco on this trip but I always pay attention to critters. I can assure you that pelicans have a habit of turning up everywhere they’re not expected. Keep an eye out for ’em sometime. They’ll appear unexpectedly in a bodies of water a million miles from the ocean. Incidentally, in my walkabout I looked for Sandhill Cranes in the Sandhills; which seems obvious. I saw none. Instead I found huge group of them (flock?) in an agricultural field nowhere near the Sandhills. Birds; go figure!