The Long Wait: Dealing With the Dealer

Even without the scores of hazy clouds billowing between my present high and those of my days living in Brooklyn a decade hence, the chronological gulf would still yawn impossibly wide. It was just so long ago that I left the east coast for the golden land of California, and no other demarcator of my transplanting sums up the difference better than the Long Wait.

It’s possible that some readers may not even know what I’m referring to – such is the magnitude of the political victory our movement has won over the past two decades. The rest of us, however, know it far too well: the indeterminable gap – one hour? Two? Five? – between beeping your dealer and the prescient knock on the door signaling deliverance from Babylon. It’s a bummer for anyone, but for a medical patient like me, sometimes the wait can be agonizing.

And there’s even more to it than that; it’s a fundamental question of agency. When you’re waiting on your dealer, your schedule belongs to him – whatever plans you may have had for your day are suspended, as by a fickle thread, from the whim of a personality too unreliable to score a career in the straight world.

Don’t get me wrong – I love each and every one of the brave souls who risked imprisonment every week to keep me supplied with the medicine I needed. But when the job description requires you to expend more effort covering your tracks and keeping your profile low than delivering a high level of customer service, we all know the inevitable result.

No matter. As I mentioned, for this happy Californian the Long Wait is already just a Distant Memory, a nostalgic blip on the rear-facing radar. For those poor souls who still must suffer the intolerable delay before their own liberation, then, let this remembrance serve as a beacon of the future: one day soon I’ll pass you a lit joint rolled from top shelf bud purchased from our choice of legal retail stores, we’ll remember the days of the Long Wait, and we’ll laugh. Then we’ll take another hit.