Tuffy the Drug Dog

Dude, this is unbelievable, this is incredible, dude, I cannot tell you how insane this is, I cannot believe it myself. After we left Denny's yesterday -- man, that Grand Slam was good, I was full! -- when you went to work, I went home, and I was going to do something, I forgot what, and Weisendorf called and asked if I had any pot. And I did -- those two joints you gave me that I asked you for, 'cause, like, the whole day was ahead of me and I didn't have much to do, so, like I told you, I thought maybe I'd want to smoke some. So Weisendorf asks me to bring 'em over, because his parents were out on a cruise -- they'd won a cruise to Alaska on a game show! -- and he had a bunch of people over, and they'd run out of pot. So I figured what the hell and I went over. Well, when I walked in the door, it was obvious: Weisendorf and his friends, few guys, a few girls, had been sitting in his parents' living room for days, probably, just hittin' the bong. They were practically comatose. So I walk in and Weisendorf has already forgotten that he called me and why he called me, he's just sitting there, him and his friends are looking at each other, kind of, just completely stoned out of their minds. Get this, this is where it gets good: Within a minute of me walking in there, I hardly had time to take in the scene, to put it all together, to say to myself: Check this out, Weisendorf's parents are on an Alaskan cruise, and he's been sitting here for days just gettin' wasted, this is a riot, I was barely formulating that thought, even, when BOOM BOOM BOOM there's this pounding on the door and a big voice says "POLICE OPEN UP!" Well the cops don't wait for anyone to open the door, I hadn't locked it behind me, maybe that's good, otherwise they would've just broken it down, maybe, and these cops just storm the place, you know, like you see in movies some time, five or six cops stomp into Weisendorf's parents place -- and it's pretty nice, have you been there, up at the top of Hatteras, the two-story with the modern architecture? Nice view up there. Anyway, they start shouting at us, "EVERYBODY SIT ON THE FLOOR," so we all sit on the floor and then I see -- they've got a dog. A German shepherd. And not just any German shepherd. Tuffy. The department's new drug dog. See, I had read an article in the newspaper last week about this dog. They trained this dog to sniff pot, heroin and hash and whatever the fuck other drugs they want the dog to find. And the dog, you know, sense of smell, the dog can find drugs hidden anywhere. So I know: I'm going to jail. I've got two joints stuck in my sock. When they let that dog go that dog is going to run straight to me and sniff my sock and the cops are going to pull the joints out of my sock and take me to jail. This is so fucked, I'm saying to myself, while the cops are yelling at everybody: "Whose house is this? Where are your parents? Why aren't you in school?" Weisendorf is trying to answer them, you know, like anybody would, he's telling 'em that he graduated from high school last year and his parents are letting him take a year off to decompress. Pretty cool of them, you know. My parents wouldn't let me do that. I had to sign up for city college. Did I tell you about my report card? "Units Attempted: 1. Units Completed: 0." It's classic. Jenny told me I should have it framed. So Weisendorf is telling the cops that his parents won a cruise on "The Price Is Right" but they're not really listening, which I thought was weird, because, c'mon, somebody wins a cruise on "The Price Is Right," that's funny, y'know? I thought the cops would think that was funny. If I were a cop, I'd think it was funny. You come into this house, a bunch of kids are all stoned out of their gourds, the parents are away on a cruise they won on "The Price Is Right" ... Anyway, the cops are looking around, they're checkin' us out, I don't know why they're there, maybe some neighbor called the police? Maybe they thought there was dealing? Maybe they had the music loud the night before? I'm thinking all this, and also, I have to pee, because I drank a lot of coffee at Denny's and I forgot to pee when I went home, and I'm sitting on Weisendorf's floor and I'm thinking, shit that dog is going to find the joints in my sock and the cops are going to take me to jail. So this is bad. One of the cops points to the bong on the coffee table and says “What’s that?” like he didn’t know. Weisendorf plays along. He says it’s a water pipe, but just for tobacco. So the cop loses patience, enough of this bullshit, he says, and he tell the cop with the dog to let the dog go. And like I said, I know that dog is going to come right over and sniff at my sock and I’m going to jail. So they took the leash off the dog, and the dog is ready to do his thing, but then … he just looks around. “Go Tuffy Go!” the cop says, all encouraging-like. But Tuffy is just standing there, looking around. He looks confused. Then he walks over to the couch, he sniffs at the couch, he looks at the cop who had him on the leash, like he’s not sure about what’s going on and what he’s supposed to do, then he walks over to a spot on the carpet, he sniffs that, then he walks over to a wall, he sniffs that. I figured out what was happening before the cops did: Weisendorf and his friends had smoked so much pot since his parents went on the “Price Is Right” cruise that everything in the house was covered in smoke residue. It covered the walls, it had soaked into the couch, it got absorbed into the carpet. Tuffy was wagging his tail. He was finding pot everywhere. There was so much pot that got smoked in that house that the smell covered up the two joints I had in my sock. The cops started laughing. “What’s the matter, Tuffy?” one of them said. “Can’t find anything?” They turned to make fun of the guy with the leash. “Wow, Sterling, that dog sure does a great job.” So the cops are wondering what to do next, Wiesendorf and me and his friends are still sitting in a circle on his living room floor, and Tuffy is walking around the house, wagging his tail and barking every now and then. Completely useless. So I take a chance: “Officer, can I go? I just came over on my way to class to borrow a notebook, I gotta go to class, I don’t wanna miss my class.” The cop says sure but as I’m walking out the door he says, “Wait a minute.” Oh shit, I say to myself, the gamble didn’t pay off, he’s going to bust me now. “What about your notebook?” he says. “Oh, that’s cool, I can see it’s a bad time, I’ll just use the ole noggin’.” So then I go. I was going to go home and pee. But, get this, this next part is amazing, too, my day isn’t over: As I’m walking down the sidewalk back to my van, up comes Marshall Cadence. Tall blond guy, nice looking, the girls love him. I tell him, dude, turn around quick, the cops are at Weisendorf’s house with Tuffy the drug dog. So he turns around and walks away with me. “Got any pot?” he asks. So I tell him I’ve got your two joints and he tells me to hop in his car and we’ll go smoke ’em. Fine, I say. Where we going? So he tells me what he wants to do. Check this out. This is what this guy does for fun. He goes down and drives by the transvestite prostitutes on Santa Monica Boulevard. Oh yeah. Just what I wanna do – not. He sees the look on my face and he’s all, “Whoa, I’m not gay, I just like lookin’ at the freaks when I’m stoned.” By now, we’re getting on the freeway, and I’m thinking, fuck, I just missed getting busted by Tuffy the drug dog and now I’m in this car with Marshall, and his idea of fun is checking out tranny hookers. So we get to Santa Monica Boulevard, and like he said, there they are, walking the sidewalk and Marshall’s all “Check ’em out, check ’em out.” And I’m like, whatever man, yeah, cool, now let’s go home. But he’s all, no let’s go talk to one! And that was it. I told him no way, you can get busted for that, and he’s all no, man, no, I’ve done it, it’s fun. And he’s: “I’m not gay,” and then I had enough and said: “Dude, sounds pretty gay to me,” so I make him let me out before he gets us both arrested for soliciting tranny prostitutes on Santa Monica Boulevard and I walk back to Cahuenga and wait at the Greyhound station for an hour -- finally, I use the head and take a pee, I've had to pee all this time, it was getting hard to hold it in at the end -- and catch the bus back to the Valley. Had to have my sister come pick me up at the gas station on Topanga and Ventura and drive me back to the van at Weisendorf’s. Can you believe that? First, I almost get busted by Tuffy the drug dog, then Marshall takes me to Santa Monica Boulevard for the tranny hooker tour and I coulda got busted down there, too, if I’d followed him around doing his stuff, whatever the fuck he does. Let’s go back to Denny’s for breakfast. I’m up for another Grand Slam. Remind me not to drink so much coffee, though. Sorry to wake you, again, man. You got any more pot? I don’t have anything to do today, either.

The Last Time

I dreamed I was in room and the room was in a house and I climbed through the window of the room but I wasn’t outside, I was in another house, because the first house was inside another house, and then I woke up and I was in a room but in another house, and on the wall of the room there was a painting, and the painting was of a horse, and the horse was in a field and on the horizon there was a house and I looked closer and closer and the house got bigger and bigger and then I climbed through the window of that house, the house that was in the painting, way out in the distance, and I was inside that house and then I woke up and I was inside a different house, but this one was upside down so I was standing on the ceiling and there was a skylight and I broke the skylight with a rock that was suddenly in my hand, then I jumped down through the skylight and I was in another house, but this house was moving, it was on the back of a truck and the truck was carrying it across a country road in Italy, I could see the farms on the hills through a window, then the truck stopped and I climbed out the window and I walked across a field and there was a house on the horizon like the one that was in the painting and I walked to that house and I knocked on the door and then I woke up and I was on a boat and the boat was sailing to Catalina, I could see Catalina in the distance, and there were dolphins swimming alongside the boat, arching their dorsals out of the water the way dolphins do when they swim, and then I woke up again and I was in another dream and the other dream was on a stage and I was playing piano – Debussy’s “First Arabesque” – and I woke up again and I was in another house in another dream and there was a beautiful woman with me in bed, she had long, wavy blond hair and she was looking up at me lovingly and I kissed her and she kissed me back and I undressed her and I climbed on top of her and I was about to penetrate her when I woke up and I was at work and I was typing this and I closed my eyes to go back to sleep so I could make love to that woman but when I fell back to sleep I was in a house, and I went from room to room looking for her but she wasn’t there so I climbed out of a window and I was in another house, a house that contained the one I had just left, a house that held another house like the other one I had dreamt, and I went from room to room again looking for her but she wasn’t there again and I would’ve called out her name but I didn’t know her name and then I woke up again and I was in my bathroom and I was on the scale and I was weighing myself and I saw that I had lost 10 pounds and I told myself that I lost that weight because I was eating less and that thought made me hungry so I went downstairs to see what was in the fridge and that’s when the earthquake hit and I saw my living room chandelier sway and I lost my balance and everything in my kitchen crashed down from all the cabinets and I thought “oh no this is going to take HOURS to clean up” but I didn’t have to because I woke up again and I was in another dream in another house and this one was empty and I went from room to room looking for that woman again but she wasn’t there and as I turned a corner I put my hand on a wall and small furry animal bit my hand and held on and it hurt and I tried to shake my hand so the animal would let go but it wouldn’t and it didn’t and I woke up again and I was in another house within a house and a dream within a dream and the telephone was ringing but I couldn’t find and the answering machine picked up but it wasn’t my answering machine and the greeting wasn’t in English or French or German or any other language that I recognized and then I walked out the door and onto a patio and I saw that the garden hose was leaking from its nozzle and I thought I should fix it and I tried to find where it screwed into the spigot so I followed the hose around the corner and then around another corner and then another corner and the hose kept leading me around corners, three, four, five, six, seven corners, then it led me into another house where it disappeared under a crowd of people and the people were dancing, it was a party, but then it wasn’t a house, it was a strip club, and there was a girl in black bra and panties and high heels and she had a nose ring and a tattoo on her back, she was dancing on the stage, the way strippers dance when they dance, she was twirling around a pole, and I tried to see what the tattoo was but I couldn’t get close enough and she was twirling faster and faster and then I woke up again but I wasn’t me, I was you and you were reading this and then I woke up and I walked away from my computer and I looked out my window and the sky was blue with white wispy clouds and I was awake and I thought I wasn’t dreaming but I was, because I woke up again and I was in a different house and there was a mirror on the wall and I could see myself and I looked older and my hair was thinner and I could see my blue, blue eyes staring back from the mirror and I woke up again, but I was asleep, and I knew I was asleep because I was floating above myself and I was watching myself asleep on my bed and it was raining outside and then I woke up again and I was in bed and I saw myself floating above me and then it was raining inside and each raindrop was a mirror and I could see my face reflected in each raindrop, older, with thinner hair, and the rain started falling harder and harder and each raindrop showed my face, hundreds, thousands, millions of raindrops were falling, each one reflecting my face, and the water was rising in my room and I saw that I was still floating overheard and the water kept rising so I got out of bed and slid open the glass door and the water gushed out and I rode down with it the way a kayaker rides down rapids, twirling the way a stripper twirls on a dance pole, arching my back as I jumped out of and back into the water the way a dolphin swims alongside a boat, and I rode the flood down a flood channel, and the waters of the flood channel were churning more and more fiercely, and I woke up and I was in a room and there was a painting in a room and the painting showed a clipper ship on the ocean against a dark sky and the ship was being tossed high up on a wave and the painting came to life, the way a movie does, and I woke up again and I was young and I was back in the house where I grew up and my dad was there and my mom was there and it was daytime but the sky was black and I went to ask my dad something but he was gone and then I went to ask my mom something and she gone, too, and I went downstairs and I heard a knock on the door and it was you, and you were looking for me just like you told me you knew you’d be looking for me one day, and that you knew that one day when you were looking for me I wouldn’t be there for you and I didn’t answer the door and you kept knocking and I didn’t answer and I thought I was going to wake up but I didn’t wake up, and you kept knocking and I didn’t answer, and you kept knocking and knocking and knocking and I kept thinking I was going to wake up but I didn’t wake up because it wasn’t a dream anymore and then finally you stopped knocking and walked away and I still didn’t wake up and I’m still awake and that was the last time.