Chapter 1 from my novel Dungeons and Dispensaries. I discover the joy of smoking cannabis for the first time.

In order to get weed I had to find a new source. I was not even selling weed anymore at this point. I just needed weed to smoke. P.J. and my former crew made that difficult. That summer before Senior year, in order to keep me out of trouble, my dad gave me a job working for him as a house painter. I was only doing entry level tasks like covering floors with paper and tape and cleaning up but I managed to earn a little money. My parents did not want to give me all the money at

I started hanging out regularly at Jason’s house. We converted his garage full of old furniture into our smoking lounge. Over time we started collecting free furniture we saw the neighbors throwing out or someone's family was getting rid of. Our first major addition was a white L shaped couch we found a few blocks away. It took the two of us three trips to carry it all into the garage. Jason thoroughly cleaned it. We each claimed one of the corners as our regular seat. Neithe

Jason had a cousin named Lil Ron. Lil Ron looked the complete opposite of Jason. While Jason was ridiculously tall, Lil Ron was short. He was an ambitious hustler with a bowl cut hybrid hairstyle. His dark hair swept across his forehead. He had a big nose, perfect for snorting as much coke as possible and an overbite optimized for chewing up pills. Jason got majority of his weed from Lil Ron. Since Jason and I started putting our money together I started getting my weed from

In the wake of Lil Ron getting busted Jason had to find a new steady source for weed. Lil Ron left a serious weed shaped hole in the South Bay. There were obviously other dealers, but their prices did not match up to Lil Ron and the weed he got from Hookr. Lil Ron's biggest competitor was Jody Santini. Jody was the guy who rode the motor scooter and sold weed to Doogie. The Santini family supposedly got their weed from Northern California and had a firm grip of the streets of

I was working for my dad painting houses five days a week. It was a steady paycheck, but truth be told I hated it. I saved up enough money to buy a ticket and bring spending money for a trip to New York to visit Jason. We planned my visit right around his next weed harvest. I flew out to New York and my mom arranged for one of her friends who lived there to pick me up from the airport and drop me off at Jason’s house. I remember it being really cold standing outside at the ai