stoned, something he had never done before, which sort of surprised me and then made me happy.
I had never been officially stoned and I got all excited, which shocked me, when he proposed the idea. The only problem was that he had no idea how to get any weed and he didn’t think I would know either because, just like him, I wasn’t very “connected” at school. But Daniel was happy to learn that I did know where to get some! I told him about my neighbor whom my parents hated. I couldn’t believe I was going to be a part of something so distasteful to my parents. They really had done nothing in my entire eighteen years on this planet to deserve what I was going to do, and I totally know I’ve already caused them plenty of trouble. They deserved a child much better than me. Nonetheless, I still told Daniel exactly where Ken (the corporate exec–looking guy with the twenty-two-year-old woman) lived, and let him figure out how to score; he said he’d do it, no problem. And he did! He wanted to tell me the whole story of how it all went down with Ken, but I started to have an anxiety attack during his retelling so he had to stop.
Friday night I went over to Daniel’s. My parents were so thrilled that I continued to have “positive” social experiences on the weekend. (Little did they know. . . .)
Daniel’s house was empty except for us, and all the baggage we carried that was, for one night, dropped. We unloaded so much on each other in just a few hours. Every conversation seemed pulled from an overstuffed piece of luggage; it took all night to unpack.
Daniel had a guitar in his room, which was just one instrument amid a sea of wires and music gear. Posters of musicians he loved decorated his walls, people like Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan. I didn’t know Daniel was a musician. He said he hadn’t played much lately but thinks he probably should again. He lit the joint as we sat cross-legged on the carpet in his bedroom while he let the guitar lay across his lap. When he was about ten, his real father turned him on to classic rock, and he taught himself the guitar. It was just something innate he could do; it made sense to him. That bewilders me, but he said the language of music is something some people are just born with. He was one of those people. Emily was, too.
After we took our first hit, he started talking about how he got asked to play his guitar and sing a song at his friend’s bar mitzvah. That first hit of pot didn’t seem to do anything to either of us. Daniel kept talking. He said I knew this friend Joel Stein, that he was in our class at Jefferson Middle School—I vaguely remembered the name when he said it, but that memory made me a little queasy, so I didn’t think about it too much.
Joel’s family admired how well he played the guitar and wanted him to pick a special song and sing it for all the guests. Daniel was really excited; he said, at the time, he wasn’t a weirdo or a social outcast, and he loved to perform in front of people. He practiced for months and couldn’t wait for the big day. His mom bought him his first suit.
At the bar mitzvah party, after the ceremony, Joel’s father introduced Daniel, and he got up onstage to play and sing. No one had asked Daniel what he was playing. He said he played a flawless and inspired version of “Peace Train” by Cat Stevens, but before he could finish the song, he came out of his performer’s trance and realized the crowd was not with him, people were uncomfortable and Joel’s father was coming onstage to stop the performance. The song was not acceptable somehow, but Daniel didn’t get it.
Joel’s dad explained to him that Cat Stevens had become a Muslim with a new Muslim name and such songs were not to be played at a bar mitzvah. He still didn’t understand. Jews are Jews and Muslims are Muslims. What did that have to do with the song he was playing for his friend? It was about peace. What’s the big deal? How had he ruined the party? He didn’t know the Jews and the Muslims were at odds so completely.