Hello, reader! It’s me again, Josh’s girlfriend. Happy International Women’s Day! Cheers to all the ladies who contributed to this issue of the Mercury. Cheers also to my job at a baller non-profit that has retained enough of a “fuck you” attitude from the ’60s that they close, and give us a paid vacation day, for International Women’s Day. (Were we open on Presidents Day? Yes, reader, we were.)
So, I’ve got the column again, and Josh has the week off again. As longtime readers will guess, that means he is currently stretched out on the couch, wearing his favorite “I have high friends in places” T-shirt, grinding up a new strain (“Babe? This one’s a pure landrace sativa strain, babe. PURE.”), and telling me, earnestly, about why, like, if you think about it, vaporizing is not only better for your health, it’s also really the right way to respect the plant’s many properties AND maximize the experience of the terpenes. Don’t tell my parents, you guys, but my boyfriend is a huge stoner.
Since I don’t go in for weed wonkery quite like Josh does, I don’t have a nuanced opinion on the latest policy change or a thoughtful review of the newest strain or gadget. (Chill, bro, he’ll be back next week, and I promise not to lady-up the column again for a long time.) I am not a stoner, reader, and I didn’t even particularly care for the devil’s jazz tobacco until I took up with Josh. I grew up in the era of full D.A.R.E. fear-mongering—think “weed will make you do meth and your teeth will fall out and everyone will hate you and you will die”—and this was a real conflict with my plan to follow all the rules and become Valedictorian of Everything. I dabbled, but only so I wouldn’t look like a square at parties. (Shockingly, I still looked like a square at parties.) It wasn’t until my senior year of college that my Also Very Well-Behaved friends and I considered that, you know, this was our last chance to be wild crazy college students, and we should really live it up! Or something!