Things You Have to Work On

"OK," I said, "but just so you know this now, I'm already hungry." He laughed and passed me the bowl. It was a small thing, and shaped like a penguin.

I put the pipe up to my mouth and put my thumb over the little hole. "How long do I inhale?" I asked.

"Just a couple seconds, then hold it as long as you can, then exhale." He handed me the lighter. "You'll, uh, need this." Black and white with dice on it. Everything was black and white.

I brought the lighter up, held it sideways, tried to light the thing but burned my finger. I did it over and over again. How are you supposed to not burn yourself with a sideways flame? He had to do it for me, like a daddy helping his son with his first fire.

I held it as long as I could and started coughing. It felt like death, it felt like shredding, it felt like unpleasantness. And it struck me that most things like this, the drugs and alcohol and cigarettes, that none of them are very nice the first time around. They're things you have to work on, they don't come naturally to a lot of people. But there's enough people who've worked on them enough to make other people want to work on them. And so this was my moment. Was I going to put in the work?

"You want some water?" he asked.

"Nah," I said. "But you can pass those chips."