Before the Time Stan Got Ball Cancer

Before the time that Stan got ball cancer, and Gerald, his long time friend was drinking his life away they were both going to the same school together, and used to smoke pot outside behind the pine trees during lunch, go camping, fishing, and driving way out into the middle of nowhere, turn the music off and listen to the sounds of nature. One time during their senior year, Stan turned to Gerald after they had reached their final destination at the Full Moon Spot, their camping site of the summer, and said, “Hey, why don’t you try some of this shit? I got it from Jerome, it is called crystal methamphetamine.”
Gerald pondered the thought, staring at the bag of white powder, “I dunno man, that sounds rather risky. I heard that shit’ll kill your heart and your mind. Don’t we both want to go to college? Party and shit? Drink beer and screw chicks like you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe?”
“Yeah, man, but what do you really have to lose now? Your girlfriend dumped you the other day—outside of Dean’s old place, where Dean and I had robotussin bottles in our hands, and were throwing them into them into the fire we had set with the gasoline. Oh, you probably don’t remember what we were doing, cause you were too busy crying your ass off like a little baby.”
Gerald punched Stan’s shoulder, “The bitch dumped me, not you. You don’t know how it feels, although you did have that number with that Christine Young girl from the Grove. I remember the time when she “dumped” you, or to be more exact, chose to screw someone else other than your scrawny ass.”
“Don’t remind me,” Stan said.
Gerald smiled nullified, “You said it first, dickhead.”
The birds were chirping away, seemingly in tune with their argument, or what to outsiders would seem to be an argument, but in those days, they both used to call each other nice names like, “asshole” and “mother-fucker”. All in play, but convincing enough to give other kids the impression that they hated one another.
“Naw, man, just let me pack this pipe up and we’ll smoke it. I’ve been smoking it for the past week, have I been acting any differently?”
“Honestly,” Gerald said, “yeah you have been, you’ve talking really fast In class all smart and shit, like you actually were smart or somethin. And you’ve been doin your homework too.”
Stan smiled, “Yeah, that’s because I’m always high on this shit. It’ll do wonders for your self-esteem as well. You know what they say don’t you?”
“No,” Gerald said, curiously.
“Well, I don’t either, but Honku, why don’t you enlighten us!”
They both laughed and laughed at the inside joke. Had to do with the time last month when they were in Dr. Arnold’s science class and Stan was drawing pictures of fish on his notebook and showing them to Gerald; they both wanted to get the hell out of there and go fishin’. School sucked in the late spring. All you did was feel your bones aching for freedom. Advanced Oceanography probably wasn’t the class for either of them, a little too above their IQ range, although recently Stan was doing a good job with the topography maps of the ocean floor, you wonder why. But, that day, when Dr. Arnold asked Stan where the Mariana Trench was located, in the Pacific or the Atlantic, Stan said, “I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t, fuzz brain. Enlighten us Honku.” Honku was an Islamic smart kid, who knew everything that had to do with anything, well, academic. Gerald and Stan were pretty sure that he knew nothing about how to down a bottle of Robo without puking by turning on the faucet, holding your nostrils and thinking of the ocean.
“The Pacific!” Honku proclaimed, as though he had just found Dr. Arnold’s G-spot deep within his anus as he screwed him in ass.
“Right you are, Honku
As Stan sat their next to Gerald, he started to imagine he was peeking out of a periscope in their little submarine of seclusion, when he turned to Gerald, pulled out his glass pipe, packed it full of white shit, and handed him the piece. “Here you go Honku, why don’t you en “lighten” us.”
“Yeah, I think ski season is finally here, call that dude,” pointing at Stan, “for your lift tickets.” He said as he lit the pipe after two attempts at flicking his bic.
It tasted kind of like gasoline mixed with rotten eggs. Not entirely a bad taste, in comparison to the crystal Tussin they had bought the other day at CVS thinking that it would taste better than the cherry flavored.

And if you don’t know what I am referring to when I say ‘tussin’. I am speaking of the generic Robotussin, which contains, no kiddies, not alcohol to get you drunk like most moronic straight-edged assholes think, but dextromethorphan, a dissociative that made you feel high, but not high, drunk but not drunk, but a completely new and distinctive feeling, and it made you hallucinate like a madman.

As Gerald took the first hit, he could feel his heart go TICK! DUM! TICK! DUM!, feeling though as it were about to burst through his chest cavity and stick to the plush ceiling of the car. But, it felt gooooooooooooooooood! Too. Oh, yeah, did this shit feel good. He first felt that everything was clear. “Hey, let’s play chess or somethin’!” he said at first, thinking that he would certainly play like Bobby Fischer. And Gerald was a bit smarter than Stan, so who knows, maybe he would kick the shit out of him. That would be fun, since Stan always beat him in Basketball and caught more fish. “I’ve got a chessboard.”
“Let me hit this pipe first, then you hit it, then I hit it again, calm the fuck down dude!”
Gerald grinned a gleaming white grin, having not had the luxury of tobacco stains to scare away the girls on his incisors yet. “Alright then, take your hit.”
Stan did so, and when he let our the smoke he exhaled through his nostrils. “OH, yeah, baby!” Gerald said, “You look like a fuckin’ dragon. No, you really do! Hey, how much did this shit cost you?” Gerald asked, as he could feel his head tingling like there were tiny acupuncture needles pricking his scalp, but it felt good. Ever so good.
“Well, Chef, we call him, Jerome that is, cooks the shit himself. It takes allot of work, I guess, although I have no idea how it is done, but he sells it to me pretty cheap; like fifty for half a gram.”
“That’s not bad, how much do you have with you now?”
“Got an eight ball. Stole some money from my paps.”
“Ah, good job, cause we gonna need all of this shit as possible. I want to go hike down to the stream. Hey, got your cell, let’s call up some of the gang. Karen, and Donnie. Let’s get them up here for a good campout. That would be fun as shit, eh?”
Stan laughed, “Yeah, just take it easy, I’ll think of something to do, just give me a chance. Pass me the pipe, you’ve hit it twice in a row now.”
“Here,”
“Thanks,”
Gerome then got out of the car, and shouted, “I am God!”
“There you go kid, there you go.”

Slowly the camera moves away, and points into the sky, directly at the sun as it shines its waves upon the dry Earth below. This would be the first of a long stretch of days for these two Gents, that is, twirling their fingers around and spitting out Copenhagen in my fiction stories.