dullboyblog goes live!!

So, Welcome, the time has come for us to move on from “The prelude to the story...”

I’m hoping most of you will have read it before ending up here as it kind of sets the scene for what is to come.  If not lay your eyeballs on it here.

So....to recap... I’m now a confused and typically frustrated teenager with a loving mum and two missing fathers.

What can I do to express my individualism?  How can I impress my peers and prove to myself that the family breakdowns have not scarred me for life? 

I know.... I’ll focus my anger and confusion into something positive .....art?, sport?....maybe I’ll practice day and night in order to excel at something and everyone will swoon at my greatness!!!....hmmm......or maybe I’ll just rebel a bit and spend several years taking a variety of drugs to numb my childhood woes.....

Just to be clear...this is not now and will not turn into a blog about drugs. 

My experiences associated with drugs have shaped my being and some events caused by or related to drugs make for a great read so my story must continue from here....

I first smoked weed when I was 13 years old
(interesting fact...the drug has accounted for nearly 3/4M arrests per annum in the US alone every year since the mid 80’s). 

A slightly older family friend, who’s mum was a white haired hippie, had promised me the opportunity to get stoned for the first time at his place.  I arrived on a Sunday morning to find my friend was still researching the inside of his eyelids
(I still today haven’t figured out why Sunday morning seemed to me as an appropriate time and day). 

 

His hippie mum let me in, I bumbled into his bedroom, woke him and reminded him of our deal, he grunted and rubbed at bleary eyeballs before stuffing a small bong with the sickly sweet green weed that was to become my companion for several years to come.

At 13 I had already smoked cigarettes and thought I was prepared for the inhalation...I was not and coughed heartily while my still bed bound and rather more experienced friend chuffed away as if he were Howard Marks himself.

The effects were not quite immediate and I must admit were minimal, my first taste was pleasant enough with no ill effects.  I had a long walk home which felt surprisingly interesting and somewhat longer than my journey there.  The Sunday roast my mother cooked a few hours later was legendary....at least I thought it was.

I soon became absorbed in the world of weed and its fascinating complexity, not only the array of “flavours” available, the variety of methods for getting high but also its history and ubiquitous glamorisation in the media.  My growing interest, and connection to my older friend, meant the local weed smoking fraternity soon welcomed me with open arms; the unspoken camaraderie and general friendliness of those who partook in such an activity surprised me and warmed me.  

Every new face and acquaintance was interesting, often no introductions were needed, and the everlasting symbolic gesture of simply passing and receiving a joint was all it took to avoid the inaugural sentences awkwardly spewed in an attempt to make friends.  These were my kind of people...I was hooked. 

 

I continued to smoke as often as possible, almost every day, and as the number of acquaintances within this new “underworld” increased, possibilities opened up and I soon started to supply small quantities to my group of curious “non underworld” friends, never making any money but instead getting my own weed for free out of the deal.  

Over a relatively short period of time the quality of what we smoked improved as did the strength and the volume.

 

It wasn’t long before my teenage blasé attitude meant I was caught red handed by my mother at a local fairground.

She glided like a ninja across the field on her Shopper bicycle, before I knew it she was in my face....as was a massive joint.

I received the “look of death”, that only a mother knows how to administer, but for unknown reasons she decided not to publicly chastise and embarrass me.  I stayed at a friends house that night and proceeded to get really stoned in an attempt to wash away the underlying fear of gawking up into my mother’s fierce eyes the next day (she wasn’t that fierce to be fair.....however in comparison to my rather blood shot and droopy eyes she may as well have ripped herself a new pair from an angry tiger and shoved them in her own face just for effect)

Angry tiger, shopper riding, ninja mummy

After returning from my smoky sleepover (in a tent in a friends garden) my mother looked me in the eyes and asked me straight “were you smoking ma-reee-juanaaaa?” ...stifling back the giggle her pronunciation caused I found I couldn’t lie to her, I admitted unreservedly to what I had been doing. 

My punishment......the 6 week school holidays that year were spent at my Aunts (the mental one from “The prelude to the story...”) This was an attempt to keep me away from all those awful friends who were nothing but a bad influence on poor little dullboy.

he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!

I spent most of the school holidays getting drunk on cider with my cousin and managed to pull two girls in the same evening....where’s the karma in that huh!?

As you can imagine being caught and subjected to such punishment did very little to affect my feelings about smoking weed.  

I returned to my home town a hero amongst friends and slipped straight back into my old ways.  Before long smoking became a bit of an obsession for my friends and I, we would always devise exciting new ways to smoke weed....bongs, shotties, pipes, bag-bottles, buckets and other wonderfully intricate and “steampunk-esque” contraptions.
 

ok, so maybe not quite this intricate but you get the idea

For those who don’t know what “steampunk” is think the bastard child of Mad Max and Phileas Fogg...or take a look here.

Want to know about these contraptions? Take a look at the dullboyblog - substories site

I now had a group of, previously only curious, close mates and a group of “underworld” acquaintances all of whom were smoking as much weed as we could burn and force into our blackened lungs.

Supply was never an issue and our little town was literally brimming with the stuff.  In a few years I would take advantage of this fact...

Next instalment coming soon...