Tag Archives: drugs

"Drugs," by WithoutFins, via Flickr

Gateway Drug

When the pandemic hit, I started working at a head shop—and started getting into the heads of my customers.

Last March, I was working in Montana as a ski instructor at the Big Sky Resort. When the pandemic reached the United States and stores started shutting down, I remember meeting up with friends for a potluck dinner. We drank Coronas and joked about the toilet paper shortage.

Three days later, the resort closed—an unprecedented six weeks early—and we were all out of jobs. My friends and I threw an impromptu end-of-season party at the local dive bar. There was an edge to that evening, though. It seemed that no one could sit still or hold a calm conversation.

A week after the resort closed, my boyfriend, who lived in Tennessee, called. There were rumors that states were going to shut their borders to keep the virus from spreading. “I don’t want you to be stuck in Montana away from me,” he said.

“What do you think I should do?” I asked.

“I want to come get you and move you back to Tennessee with me.”

I had intended to move in with my boyfriend after the ski season ended, but this would be two months earlier than planned. With some hesitation, I agreed. I didn’t want to leave my friends in Montana, but I didn’t want to have to deal with a pandemic on my own, either.

Once we got back to Tennessee, though, our plans began to unravel. That summer I was supposed to return to my seasonal job as a whitewater kayak instructor on the Ocoee River, but the state lockdown shut down that possibility. Instead, I sat by myself on the couch, day-drinking and watching Netflix. My boyfriend worked alone from morning till dark on various projects around his unfinished house.

At a certain point, I found myself surrounded by beer cans, watching American Hoggers, and realizing that I needed to get off the couch and out of my boyfriend’s house. When a friend called and said their mom needed help at the family store, I jumped at the opportunity—not thinking much about the fact that the “family store” was a head shop, a place that sells paraphernalia for using drugs. I’d worked as a line cook in plenty of restaurants and as a guide at rafting companies, I told myself. What could be so different about working at a head shop?

Continue reading Gateway Drug

Lynn Barlow is a writer based in Asheville, North Carolina. When she’s not writing, she can be found skiing, whitewater kayaking, or playing fetch with her dog Urza. Instagram: @biggitygnar

 

Back to the Wall

Along the US–Mexican border in Arizona, the drug trade persists, but the jobs have long gone. Would building a border wall change anything?

It’s noon during an Arizona July, the temperature upward of 115 degrees, and I’m in the middle of my shift at a neighborhood bar off I-10 in Marana, just north of Tucson. The screen door bangs, startling me. I look up from behind the counter, where I’m putting beers on ice, and see a man wearing cowboy boots, dirt-stained jeans, and a striped blue-and-white dress shirt. “Sorry!” he blurts out in Spanish—he hadn’t known the door would slam so violently behind him. Sweat is pouring down his face, running into his eyes.

Right away I know that he has been crossing the desert. I hand him napkins to wipe away the sweat and motion for him to head over to the bar. He settles onto a stool where he can easily catch the breeze from the fans and swamp cooler. Continue reading Back to the Wall

Anna Chan is a writer based in Florida.

Mazatlán. Eli Duke, via Flickr, edited

Mazatlán

The sun was sinking, the day finally ending. I sat on the beach in Mazatlán, propped against my pack, swim trunks still damp under my jeans. At this hour, the beach was empty.

The night before I’d stopped in Mazatlán, a city on Mexico’s northwestern coast, to break up the long bus trip from Tijuana to Guadalajara. Back in Seattle, the Sunday travel section had made the place sound like paradise. All I’d found was a gloomy hotel room, an ocean too hot for swimming, Gila monsters splashing in an open sewer nearby, and a couple of scrawny teenagers humping alongside a broken concrete path near the beach.

Continue reading Mazatlán

Paul Michelson lives and writes in Davis, California.