The Activists
By Andrew Moravick
They marched proudly united on their way to class, each step in their Birkenstock sandals fell in defiance of their adversary. Their old, tattered antique rock band shirts blazoned across their chests, as ancient warriors wore depictions of heroes and gods upon their breastplates. They were rebels, outlaws, visionaries; voices of their time and generation; walking testaments to the advancement of modern knowledge through the internet. They had broadened their horizons with new, mind expanding substances, and armed themselves with ammunition from the media, and related websites. They were the future. They were also late.
Henry, Thomas, Aaron, and Jeff had allowed their morning, pre-class “wake and bake” ritual to run a bit longer than usual. It was alright though, it had to be done. They were dedicated students. They would be doing themselves a disservice by not attending class high. The whole lesson could not be fully appreciated and understood without their minds being as open as they were on weed. It was also their personal battle against the unfair social constraints that tried to tell them that marijuana was wrong. Every puff, every inhalation of that liberating smoke was a small victory over a government insistent on keeping them down.
“Hey, hey, Henry, check out Professor Parson’s mustache,” whispered Aaron, “Its wriggling around like a centipede.”
Henry choked out a stifled giggle before quieting himself. Henry was the common link between the other three. He had met Jeff on the school’s soccer team freshman year, getting high after practice together in Henry’s dorm. Henry had met Thomas in the library the week before mid-terms, stressing over his studies. Henry helped him unwind with a few hits from his bowl in the bathroom, and they had become the best of friends ever since. Aaron was the last one to be welcomed into Henry’s “Covenant of Cannabis” as he called it. Aaron had been dating a girl who got her weed from Henry. Eventually she introduced Aaron to Henry, and Henry introduced marijuana to Aaron. Aaron eventually dumped the girl, but never left Henry or his hemp. Together they had invested in an eco-friendly house off campus where they could live, study, and smoke all they wanted. Eco-friendly of course, because the government not only wanted to deplete college students of their minds and their happiness, but it also wanted to drain mother earth dry to feed its corrupt hunger.
“Dude, Parson’s voice sounds so funny right now, it’s reverberating like crazy,” Jeff said, inquiring to see if his friends were hearing the same thing.
‘It just makes so much sense,” Henry stated. “His words just flow into my head like running water. I don’t even think I have to be awake right now to learn what he’s saying.”
“Woah, the notes I’m taking don’t even look like real words. It’s like hieroglyphics, or cuneiform, but I still know exactly what I’m writing.” Thomas’s statement was a little loud, and some of the other students chuckled. Even after 3 years of smoking, Thomas still could not fully contain himself while high.
“Shush, control yourself Tom, people will hear you,” Henry commanded.
“Wow, guys look at Brittany, she looks so hot right now, plus she’s like, I dunno, glowing. She’s beautiful don’t you think?”
“Aaron, don’t even bother, she buys weed from me to get high with her huge jock boyfriend. She only talks to us because we supply her,” Henry whispered.
“Quiet down,” boomed Thomas, blushing after realizing how loud he had been, “I’m not getting what Parsons is saying.”
“Calm down Tom, who ever understands what Parsons says, that’s why he’s the head of the philosophy department. The other professors just get confused and assume that everything he says is profound. Just imagine how lost we’d be if we weren’t high?”
“Good point Henry,” Jeff added.
“Wait, why did we waste the weed for this class? Do we really need to know philosophy? We’ve got ecology next, and by then we’ll already be coming down.”
“Aaron, relax, I’ve got some papers and a small stash on me. We can smoke up in the third floor bathroom. No one ever goes in there. Just chill man,” Henry whispered.
The four stopped talking, realizing that silence had taken over the room. Dr Parsons had asked a question and as usual the class would fall silent and unresponsive.
“Anyone, can anyone answer my question? No one? Did any of you even read the last chapter in the book?”
“Dr. Parsons,” Henry interjected, “If you had posted the reading online we would have been glad to read the chapter, but as you know, my friends and I are against the wasteful practices of paper making. Since this is Philosophy and Ethics, I’m sure you can understand how we believe it is unethical to cut down forests when the same material can be read electronically instead of being frivolously printed on hundreds of pieces of paper.”
Acknowledging Henry’s suggestion Dr Parsons replied, “If that’s how you truly feel I will try to post your readings online from now on. However this does bring up an interesting point.” Turning his attention to the class as a whole Dr. Parsons continued, “The ethics of one person may differ from those of another. This means that even the universal theories we discussed earlier may be interpreted differently. Therefore one can’t help but question, is any ethical theory actually universal? If we look into Aristotle’s theory, ‘doing those things that make us better as people’, we see that…”-
“Nice one Henry,” Thomas whispered, “I couldn’t have come up with a better excuse if I had a week to think about it.”
“Thanks, I try. He really should post this stuff online though. I mean really, I hate how colleges encourage students to buy books full of pages they’re not even going to read. The system really is messed up, but when we get out of here we’ll fix things. Our generation is gonna bring real change.”
The class wore on while the four friends talked amongst themselves. Occasionally one of them would make an unusual observation resulting in a few short stifled giggles. By the time class had come to an end, Henry, Aaron, Jeff, and Thomas had started to come down from their high. As planned they strode up to the third floor bathroom. Their eyes were focused, unreceptive of the looks of disapproval of those who knew exactly what their mission was. The four knew it wasn’t the fault of those people for not understanding the importance of their activities. It was the government, the culture that told those poor souls that marijuana was bad. The horrible misconceptions that were spread about it being a gateway drug, leading to laziness, causing addiction, and doing harm to the users brain, all wrong of course. It was people with poor character to begin with that misused marijuana that gave the drug a bad name.
Henry took the first hit off of the freshly rolled joint. He slowly inhaled, smiled, then passed it around, each one of them taking their turn with a religious level of reverence. When every last puff had been had, Henry flushed the remnants down the toilet and the four floated back down to their next class together.
When class finally ended, Henry led the way back to his pale blue mini van which sat decorated in rust in the student parking lot. Henry drove the short distance back to their house as Jeff rolled another joint to smoke on the way. The van coughed every time Henry pressed down on the accelerator and smoke would pour out of the exhaust pipe. Henry could afford a better car with the money he made selling weed, but he didn’t want to be too obvious. The government hated it when young kids earn themselves nice things. Plus most of his profits had to go into paying off the house, the electric, and the water bills to maintain the lamps and water for the plants he grew in the basement. Henry had hoped to be able to make enough money to start paying off his loans as well, but his parents had been taking care of it so far, and there was no immediate need to worry about that.
As Henry turned down their street Jeff coughed out an alarmed shout, “Holy shit man, someone’s breaking into our house!”
Henry stomped on the gas and the van lurched forward, sputtering in opposition to its driver’s command. Henry pressed harder but the old gas lines could not pump gas fast enough and the engine choked out. They coasted along with some speed as they watched in horror as two men, about their same age, tossed plants into the trunk of their car. The van slowed to a stop and Henry leapt from his seat sprinting down the remainder of the street, closely followed by the other three. The two thieves threw the last plant into their car, and began to back out of the driveway, Henry was closing in, but breathing was becoming difficult. His lungs burned and his head began to spin. Jeff, Aaron, and Tom had already fallen behind him, panting in agony, hoping that Henry would make it even though they couldn’t keep running.
“Call the cops!” Thomas screamed as Henry careened his way in front of their drive way, blocking the path of the thieves’ car. The car did not stop, it just swerved around Henry as he was bent over in exhaustion with one lone outstretched arm uselessly pleading for the perpetrators to stop.
“Thanks for the weed assholes,” yelled one of the two men as they drove off.
“Call the cops man, I saw their license plates, call the cops,” Thomas pleaded.
“Call the cops? Call the cops? And tell them what, our marijuana plants were stolen?” wheezed Henry.
“Well, what can we do?” Jeff asked.
Aaron, paying no more attention to the others interrupted, “I think we should call the fire department guys.”
“Aaron, if the cops aren’t going to do anything what can the fire department do?” Henry retorted.
“Well they can stop the smoke that’s coming from a fire in the basement.”
“What?” Henry and the others turned back to the house to see smoke bellowing out of the basement windows.
“Those fuckers, those mother fucking rat bastards. Those degenerate low life potheads!” screamed Henry. “They must’ve knocked over one of the UV lamps, those fucking pieces of shit! Couldn’t they just grow their own fucking weed? What kind of lazy assholes steal another person’s plants?”
“Henry, calm down, we have to try to put the fire out,” Jeff interrupted.
“Its too late, look, its already burning the upper floor, if we put it out now they’ll be able to tell that it was the lamps that started it, and then they’ll search the rest of the house, and they’ll charge us with possession. We have to let it burn,” Henry sobbed, tears flowing from his eyes.
“But we don’t have any insurance,” Thomas added, “All the money we put into this house will go down the drain.”
“You wanna go to jail? Forget money, I’m not going to prison, not for something that shouldn’t even be illegal,” Henry said.
“All our stuff is in there, they only stole our plants, everything else that we own is still in there,” Aaron pleaded.
“What, you’re going to run in there and risk being burned alive for a lousy laptop, or pictures of your girlfriend, none of us had anything of real value in there besides those plants. Why do you think that’s all they took?”
“Henry, please, we can still save the house. Where are we going to live if we let it burn anyway? We have to do something,” Thomas pleaded.
“Oh, fuck you Henry,” Jeff muttered, as he Aaron and Tom ran to the house, grabbing a garden hose that had been sitting in front of the house ever since they bought it, and turned on the water. Little pin holes of water shot from breaks in the old, unused hose, and the stream coming out of the end was weak. Jeff kicked in the basement window, spraying what water he could into the basement as smoke spewed out.
Henry just stood there speechless, watching as everything he had made for himself was being devoured by flames. He watched as his friends fought in vain to stop the rise of the fire. Henry couldn’t take it anymore, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, grimly dialing 911.
The fire trucks came in no time at all, and they quickly extinguished the fire. Soon after the police arrived and began questioning the four friends.
“Boys, do any of you know how the fire was started?” asked on of the officers.
“Well, uhm, you see sir, I must have left the oven on, and uhm…”-
“Tom, there’s no point in lying now,” Henry interrupted, “Sir, we had been growing marijuana in our basement, and some kids broke into our house and stole all our plants, and knocked over one of the UV lamps which started the fire. I was the one growing it, the other guys had no part in it, you can arrest me for possession.”
“Son, as far as we’re concerned, there was no marijuana present, you seemed to be an avid botanist, and anything further we don’t want to know about. However those fellows who supposedly robbed you, they were caught just up the road from here. Your neighbor across the street just so happens to be the mayor of our nice little town, he was home having lunch with his wife when he saw the two suspects break in. We arrested them just up the street from here and confiscated all the contraband plants they had in their car. As far as we’re concerned they broke into your house on their way back from scoring some plants, and finding nothing of value they left, knocking over one of your lamps and starting the fire.”
“Sir, why are you being so nice, I admitted I had had marijuana and was growing it in my basement?”
“Son, I wasn’t always an old man in a blue uniform. When I was your age it was the 60’s, you think what you had was bad, in my day people had fields of the stuff. I know it seems like the laws are against you, but really we don’t care about a little weed here or there. What do you think we do with the stuff we confiscate? The government really isn’t as against marijuana as you think, I mean look at our past couple of Presidents. We’re all just doing the best we can, and what we really want is just to make sure your generation doesn’t make the same mistakes as ours did. We’re not completely insensitive you know. Your house was broken into and almost burned to the ground, that’s a pretty scary thing to have to deal with, the last thing you need right now is some big scary police officer yelling down your throat.”
“So you’re not going to charge us with possession?” Henry asked in astonishment.
“Possession of what, cheap old clothing, and some psychedelic posters, cause that’s pretty much all you had in there? Son, I said, don’t worry about it. If we wanted to take you down for it we would have a while ago. Everyone knew what you were doing, but for the most part you guys were harmless about it, your neighbors never complained so there was no real problem.”
“Dude, I am freaking out, the cop is acting nice right now, I think I’m going crazy,” Tom whispered to Henry.
“Its ok, he is being nice, we got lucky I guess,” Henry replied.
“Alright boys, I believe we have enough for our report, you take care now, and if you need any help fixing the place up just give me a call down at the station. Me and the guys do odd jobs on the side just to make a few extra bucks, but we’d be glad to help you guys get your place back together.”
With the fire out, and the reports finished, the fire department, and police left, declaring the house still habitable. The four walked inside and sat down in their living room, which had a few scorch marks, but otherwise was left undamaged.
“I can’t believe all that just happened, I really need to get high right now,” Jeff said sinking into an ash covered chair.
“I don’t think you do Jeff, I don’t think any of us do, I mean what’s the point?”
“Henry, it feels good, it relaxes us, if we need anything right now, we need to relax,” Jeff replied.
Henry sat in confusion. All he had believed to be true was crumbling beneath him. The great evil he perceived to be the government wasn’t all that evil after all. All his efforts against his adversary were meaningless. He had achieved no greater good; he had just been shadow boxing an imaginary foe for the last few years of his life.
Jeff rolled another joint, and they sat, smoking, taking in their chemical escape, while their bodies sat confined to their chairs as the cycle was repeated until the last hit had been taken. They sat, waiting for all the stress to go away, but still there it sat with them. All they could feel was nothing, all that they were was nothing.
