Will I Visit Mary Jane This Summer? (Massachusetts Marijuana Laws Contemplated)

On a hot, summer day this coming July at my family lake cabin, you might find me taking a hit of a joint, back firmly placed against the peeling wood of a floating dock, eyes closed, knees slightly bent, a contented smile hard to hide, the sun caressing my half-naked body as it welcomes the slight sunburn it knows it will garner, having been covered in layers of wool and cotton for too many New England months. Pink is such a pretty color. Perhaps I’ll roll over onto my tummy, hold my chin in the fists of my hands, elbows firmly placed on the wood to get comfortable. My legs might even cross behind me at the ankles to sway, and you might even hear me hum a tune, something like Weezer’s, “And it feels like summer,” as I take long, slow inhales and exhales, watching the smoke disappear up into the clouds like my stress. (‘course, I romanticize. You realize there is no way to get a joint out to a dock without, most likely, ruining it. 😉).

​Funny I’m thinking about this, isn’t it, with so much snow on the ground and sticking to all the trees this morning? It’s beautiful really. The snow is still even coming down ever-so ethereally, so lightly, and the trees, the huge pine trees, are weighed down by the wet, white wonder. It makes me wish I could paint. But not all the trees look so lucky. Some are bare but for the snow that sticks to them. And even that pretty white color can’t hide its pain. I almost feel bad for them. They look cold. Old. The one I look at right now as I write this has what appears to be a wound. I see the chipped wood of its protective outer layer gone, exposing what could almost be described as a slice in its soul, the bark, red, visible, even as I know summer will do its repair. But not all its broken branches will find their way back to rebirth.

Even with all this romantic beauty around me, the picture only artists can do justice to or famous photographers, like Ansel Adams, and even with my fortunate life that allows a safe distance of warmth as I sip my coffee to marvel at it through my window, I’m beginning to feel cold myself. Winter out-welcomes her stay, and so, my mind drifts to that special summer place, where anything has always been possible. It’s where I wrote my first love letter, where, for one summer, innocence got gladly lost under a crescent moon, where, if you’ve read Ruin My Lipstick, I sometimes dared to swim to the deep part of the lake, where teenage girls shared one joint between eight lips and dared to tell our secrets.

This summer, a new law will be in effect. I will be able to walk into, I’m assuming, a smoke shop in my cut-off, jean shorts, sun-kissed, messy hair, skin still damp, and buy a joint or a bud, or what will it be? I’ve never actually bought the stuff. It’s hard to fathom. Smoking weed has been such a taboo, secretive act for so long, to think about doing such a thing in the open air, makes me feel like that teenager who is finally able to drive for the first time alone. It’s a bit like masturbation. You’ve kept it hidden for so long, to share it freely, it just seems…well…odd or out of place, not something we brag about or share. That stuff is private.

The funny thing is that I don’t smoke marijuana. Of course I have. I don’t mean that. I even inhaled it. ;) But I never really liked it. Not my bag. Anymore than a puff or two and I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Felt a bit out of control. Paranoid. I wonder if it’s because I was so self-conscious back then, worrying about EVERYTHING, if my legs were long enough, if my shifting eye color was too weird, if I was smart enough or good enough to get into the college I dreamed of. I wonder if I just wasn’t confident enough in who I was to alter my psyche, but instead it just highlighted my perceived flaws.
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I really don’t know. But this summer, I may, on a warm, July day, lie alone, in a newly-purchased bikini, much more comfortable in my own skin than all those years ago, and contemplate all the things I wish I’d done but didn't, and perhaps, too, blow a bit of the past in rings of smoke and see what words it writes across the limitless, night sky in front of me. Or perhaps, still, all these years later, I won’t have the urge to alter my state of being at all under a night sky, and instead, safely smile in the daylight of the blazing sun. Yes, perhaps, that will be quite enough.

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~Ruin My Lipstick