Here lies June 15th, 2004
Woke up, about noon, after sleeping through a blazing morning of graduation rehearsal that the other less fortunate, and more eager to please members of the Piedmont Graduating Class of 2004 spent their first waking hours attending. Flannes comes knock-knocking on the window at 11 in the morning, this slacker apparently has a similar inclination to pass up a fine opportunity brushing up our marching skills and go on the wing to graduation. But what the hell is he up here for, I still need to be passed out for another hour at least, and there’s some shit in my eyes that is like a thick glass window between me and everything I try to look at. Tell Flannes to come back in an hour, so he sets off to Piedmont Ave to hit up the coffee at Gaylord’s. Finally we conglomerate at the Middle School, catch a bunch of underclassmen in the midst of finishing their last day of school, and even this fool lighting up a cigar in the breezeway. Gets a talking to by Latanya the campus security, but doesn’t much take to authority, and continues to drag it as he slowly departs from the campus. Good laugh, now we are rounding up a bunch of graduated seniors and senoras, most of whom are dripping from two hours at the Sun’s mercy. Rockridge Café is the consensual chill spot for those enticing eats like omelettes, curly fries, chocolate shakes, home fries, pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream, more of that caffeine, yeah that’s about what I need. Order up a fucking storm of $160 worth in calories, after which my stomach has apparently been impregnated by various starches. Graduation minus 3 hours, and the sun still blazes (like we will be doing soon), so we pile seven into an SUV piloted by Rachel Tietjen and lumber to Melanie’s house to immerse into a pool that will temporarily distract us from the heat. Chillin’ before graduation in a pool in bathing suits, so we start blasting the Hieroglyphics and roll up a blunt to smoke as the Cali sun looks down approvingly. Burn it to a roach, but oh shit we got 45 minutes to get to the commencement ceremonial bother, so I get some chocolate and water to chase the blunt and jump into that white Buick, Justine driving with Flannes, Moss, and MEssiah bumping up the Hiero again. All of the residences must be stopped at to pick up purple robes that make Mr Casey look like a Supreme Court master. Now we pit stop at my house to get a joint that I rolled a couple days ago but forgot to burn, so we light that up and ride to Witter. Problem en route though, Flannes dropped the joint out the window at 30 miles an hour up Oakland, shit man we need to get that so we pull over and Flannes jumps out, runs down the hill, and scours the ground for a couple minutes. After looking at him follow the ground in circles for awhile, I jump out and start running to a random arbitrary point about 100 feet above where Flannes is conducting his search, and stumble right into the joint, pick it up in stride and jog back into the car, holding up the holy sacrament for Flannes to see that pulling over was not fruitless after all. All that for a few hits, which are duly taken, right in time before the graduation ceremony that we missed the rehearsal for earlier. Good thing though, most of these people are dying of fatigue as well as heat, we are rested and cooled from submersion in water. But first we pull up to Bonfare and buy 2 fat liters of ice cold water to drink and torment others with. Finally arrival land on the ground, greetings all around, most of these people look genuinely happy despite obvious physical discomfort from the weather and polyester robes of purple and white. I mostly anticipate a ceremony that will be mind-numbing, maybe a little less because of the weed, but this is put on for the parents and granddaddies who hail from Iowa. Joe is way ahead of me with a hand armed with 400 pages of science fiction, all I got in my hand is some Zig-Zags. So I get up in line, and put my hat on the wrong way deliberately, because I’m just like that and I feel obligated to break some kind of tradition. Stand up for some awards I wasn’t called for, mostly on dare, and then blow up a beachball till my breath is shorted, and release it along with 50 others simultaneously at the end of Jessica Lam’s valedictorian speech, which was a little bland. Hit Cole on the head, starting a beachball sniper war that persists for the next couple of minutes. Now everyone is marching up to the principal and shaking her hand in exchange for little graduation plaques, so I go up, take it, and then pose for a mandatory photo op while holding the thing sideways (later I got some comments about this, or else I wouldn’t have recalled this kind of detail). After all 240 of the children are finished receiving handshakes and pats on the back, we walk split in two lines to the other side of the Witter track, where the class meets up and chucks the hats in another act of newfound camaraderie. Immediately weed smoke wafts through my nostrils, and a sideways glance reveals that Labree has sparked up a blunt among the jubilant but for now oblivious celebrators. That’s what I’m talking about Labree, so I hit that up right as my parents walk by, newly arrived with a crowd of other old people. Eventually the smell spreads, and the word spreads, as these things do, so me and Lucas form a human shield around Labree, who is danger of being pestered by inquiring parents who feel threatened and violated by this intrusion onto their kids’ special day. It’s all good though, Class of 2004 gathers together in a dense ball and the smell of California bud in a blunt is the product. Nothing unusual or new to see here, keep moving along. Everyone’s parents have cameras but mine, whatever I just get taken in hella pictures but I don’t know if I looked at the lens for too many of them. Flannes is located, and we motor it up to Green Acres, for a post-graduation session of bluntage. Only got an hour till we have to be at Grad night, so I skip going home and changing out of my Supreme Court robes. Gaze down at the Bay from Green Acres, white sunlight hitting clouds and making halos around buildings and forming a radius of white in the water under the Sun. Shit it glistening, while we are hitting the blunts with Isaac, Joe, and Adler, damn that’s a pretty view, won’t see it like that again maybe ever. But too bad we’re already late so we mosey down to the Grad Night carpool spot, and what do you know we are on time. Unfortunately, we don’t have the permission slips signed to go, so we find the Queen Lady Mrs Albers, who gives us pen and paper, allowing us to sign away our rights and waive our suing possibilities. Buses are sorted alphabetically, so I am next to Joe, and we spark up a conversation this time, on the topic of Gibson, Stephenson, data cores, and the future of the world economy, while Block is behind us telling Mouna about how he beat the shit out of some guy. 30 minutes later we are passed out, figured we’d save ourselves for the extravaganza that is about to take place from now until 5 in the morning. About an hour and 15 after we got on the bus, we find ourselves at an open field in Fremont. There is a huge building that looks like an IKEA store, and it says City Beach fluorescently above the entryway. I hope it’s not an indoor beach, because that would be some stupid shit. In fact, me and Henry have it figured that they are throwing this party at the cost of $40,000 to Piedmont students and parents. With a quarter of that, we could have bought stacks of alcohol and bushels of marijuana, not to mention smores and some barbecue supplies, and trucked it down to Santa Cruz to chill on a beach for campfire action. Back to the lame reality, we walk into what appears to be a party house for high school graduations, and they hand us shamelessly promotional shirts that say Piedmont High Class of 2004 in small letters where the breastpocket should be, and a huge “City Beach” logo plastered across the back of the shirt. Thanks, damn this will be a relic that I’ll wear with pride in the years to come. 40 grand flashes through my head again, and I know I could have done a way fucking better job if they put me in charge. Lizy tells me that she and Andrea conjured up their own fantasy party, but we defeatedly walk into a room full of pizza, hamburgers, and cokes. A bunch of vegetarians bitch for awhile about there not being a healthy tofu or other alternative, but this does not perturb the blank faces of the employees. Load up my plate with a couple hamburgers, and take a seat while City Beach employee Asian mafia guy explains to us a little bit about this place. Then he says, damn I wish I had some of that shit you were on, I know I would be getting high. California gotta love it, the ganja has pervaded into this culture. This place is like a sports complex, with volleyball and basketball courts, ping pong tables, rock climbing, 10 or so pool tables, and water bottles lining up every room. Oh yeah there is a card table with gambling but I don’t get into that at all tonight. Not so bad facility, so I go for about 3 hours between volleyball, basketball, and ping pong, going through about 7 water bottles, 6 poured in me and one poured on me. Exhausted physically, but mentally still ticking fine, I find Gina dissatisfied and complaining about how she hasn’t had any real conversations with anyone yet, and everyone is not talking to people outside their cliques and some people are inconsiderately playing sports while less confident individuals sit on the sidelines and watch. So I try to have a conversation with her, firing up a clove. By now so many people are smoking cigarettes that the chaperones have given up trying to enforce the no-smoking policy of the City Beach private property. This clove smells good, and strong, and Lucas blazes up a blunt that goes around a couple times until the chaperones make themselves annoying again, with stupid remarks like, I smell dope, or, Put that out boys. Fuck that, it’s a clove look, I tell them. They gather in a team of four about 10 feet away, so we finish up the blunt and disperse before they get their act together. Gina looks a bit more animated now as she is talking to Tim, so my work being done, I go in to start running the pool tables. Even though I’ve never played before and I’m high, it’s pretty easy to put balls in holes so the schooling begins. Isaac goes down a few times, so I start shooting against Cathy, who is pretty good if she may say so. But before we can even finish a game, City Beach employee generic comes in and tells us that our game is over and we must move to the other room to watch a hypnotist perform his act. It’s like a jail, we don’t even have freedom to choose, that’s kind of bullshit but we go over to watch a pop hypnotist do tricks on high school students. After giving us a lesson preparing us for life by telling us about how all stress can be relieved by some morning meditation and you don’t need any of them prescription pills, he selects a few people, who run to the musical chairs because it’s first come first served, and the hypnosis gets under way. Kristen Johnson and Austin Paris go wacko and act out their fantasies while sleeping, the hypnotist is telling them about what is happening and they are responding as if the bombs are actually exploding in their face. This goes on for awhile, and I pass out sometime between 2 and 4 on the ground, don’t really remember how I got there, but I wake up at some point right when everyone is leaving, and get onto a bus quickly, they are mostly full so I gotta look at 3 different buses for a seat. There is an empty one next to Adler so I jump on, kind of sleepy but no problem paying attention, so we converse with Tim and Jordan about something that I can’t remember at this point, it could have related to summer Europe trips and weed was almost certainly a topic of discussion. By the time we get off the bus and back to Piedmont it’s 4:45 am and dark. Everyone leaves hella fast, but I see Flannes and Teddy so we convene and conjure up the idea that it’s joint time. So we take a cold walk down to Teddy’s house on San Carlos from the school and sneak into his room to roll them up. Or try to sneak in, but his mom is fucking awake at 5 in the morning and asks Teddy how was the party. Teddy grunts and we go into his room. Each of us rolls up a doobie, and we take our creations outside to smoke in the light of dawn, which has lifted the cover of darkness that is shortly to be replaced by a cover of haziness. There are some nice stairs to rest on, so we spark up in the morning dew and pass joints around. Minds cleared and consciousnesses at peace, we part our separate ways and I walk on home through the tranquility of this little suburban hamlet, only disturbed by a few cacophonic bird symphonies and single white males in ties whizzing off to the workplace in their BMW’s and Buicks. Walk through the kitchen door and my parents are insomniacs too, my dad talks to me for like 5 minutes about random shit before I boycott the conversation and go downstairs to toast up some bagels with cream cheese. Afterwards I get downstairs to type up this history on the computer (today is 20 June, 3:45 am), but I get sidetracked after I put on the 3am Mix and start reading the news or a book or something else. I feel less tired now, I guess the sun coming up gives me a second wave, and I have a feeling that I could easily go the next day without sleep, but there will probably be some consequences in the end so I try to force myself to slumber around 6:30. But it’s light and the sun is warm and making my eyes see red instead of black darkness, so this tormented state of limbo lasts for 30 minutes until my body gets the point and does some automatic shut down procedure that lasts until 4 in the afternoon. That was a long day, had its moments though, and the most bizarre part is that I actually remember so many details. I haven’t been able to recount a full day like this before in this fashion, so I guess it was special in some way. Isn’t that fitting, a conclusion-type thing.