My Dealer

I actually have a crush on my weed dealer. I think we both have crushes on each other. Every time I enter the shop he always helps me. I like his eyes, the way he looks at me while I’m gazing at the canisters of joints. I like the way he talks to me. It isn’t flirtatious. He genuinely seems curious and was even impressed that I took a 6 week break. Whenever I’m in there, I’m usually already stoned and looking for another high.

I only go to one place for weed, and their stuff doesn’t tend to get too heady. It’s a nice gentle high. I remember when I first moved to New York a friend invited me to hang out in McCarren Park. A friend of his brought the weed his dad had been growing in his backyard in California. I remember it was the best weed I have ever smoked, a soft cool high that calmed the day.

I was such a vagrant in my early 20s. After a night of drinking I woke up next to a stack of New Yorkers and it struck me that I should move to the city. A couple days later I started planning my move. I thought it would help me find myself, my Muslim Pakistani upbringing had constricted me to a point beyond recognition. I eventually did liberate myself, but in the most unfun way: I learned to be an adult. I got a job, paid my bills, and kept a Brooklyn roof over my head so I could avoid said Muslim Pakistani family. In my spare time I sutured my wounds and with an excess of tenacity and failure, worked on redirecting my life.

It’s weird to have lived a life that is so wildly unattractive. When I was reading Women Who Run With the Wolves it talked about the desert as a metaphor for the self. The surface seems bare and insignificant, but underneath it is teeming with life, a richness of the being.

2022 seemed to stretch like a never ending tunnel of stress that I was always trying to patiently bear and balance. I managed it through to the end, but coming out the other side I’m hungry for solitude and expression. I came home today, ate a salad, and laid in bed naked while listening to Lana Del Rey. There’s an astrocartography reading at the Away store on Saturday and a Richard Avedon exhibit at the Met. I bought a ticket to see Lost in Translation at Metrograph. I am craving the luxury of being able to forget my own life, to lose myself in the beauty of someone else’s vision.