Time To Kill

I stood at the bus stop across the street from my Somerville apartment furiously smoking a cigarette and grinding my heels into the cement sidewalk as I counted up minute after minute the 86 was running late. As if the bus-tracking iPhone app had any effect on the actual timeliness of the bus, I pressed ‘refresh’ so hard and so often that I thought my thumb might break on through to the other side. Though stood still on the street, and lacking a pocket watch, I thought myself a White Rabbit of sorts—concerned not at all with the world right in front of me, but more with what lay ahead of me… or behind for that matter.

***

They told me not to smoke—every health class from elementary through high school. But Karen from upstairs smoked, and she was fine, wasn’t she? Uncle Jeff smoked, and, even though mom tried to keep our visits with her side of the family to Christmas and birthdays, I liked him—and he was doing okay, too, right? I guess the real lesson on smoking, then, was to get us thinking about the future. It’s not all about how you’re doing now; it’s about what you’ll get coming to you later down the line. Doesn’t that make the purpose of school as a whole to introduce us as kids to the human condition? Although, it feels like it shouldn’t really make sense. I didn’t understand death when I discovered my brother’s favorite guppy, Bigfin, belly-up during preparations for my seventh birthday party. I thought he’d been playing along with the ‘backwards’ theme. When Jack, our thirteen-year-old cat, developed a tumor on his shoulder and we had to put him to sleep, I still wasn’t really getting it. But in health class, we were forced to consider the reality that smoking (or at very least its effects) kills. And, more importantly, that smoking kills us. Whether it’s from the act itself, or from something else entirely, the underlying notion here is that we can die. Doesn’t that undermine the system’s goal to prevent new generations from smoking? If someone seriously considers the effacing nature of humanity, surely he’ll realize that it really doesn’t matter whether or not he smokes—we’re all going to the same place.

***

From the seat next to me on the train, the sour acridity of urine-soaked vagrancy permeated my nostrils; it was, for many, the defining characteristic of an otherwise invisible individual. The many, myself included, thought to ourselves, I can’t wait to get off this train; we busied ourselves in our devices. Heads to the ground, the train rattled on in silence; within my own: a laundry list of dates piled up on the coming months. Write this, read that, see this, attend that. I took out my notebook and scribbled some forgettable words. The subway stations slurred by through the plastic windows so many nameless artists have scrawled or etched their legacies onto. I drew a cigarette from my pack as the silent subway car clamored into Harvard Station, and tucked it snugly behind my ear. I can’t wait to get off this train.

***

I broke into a jog when I recognized it was Devon and Mike ahead of me. Devon lived up the street from my house, so we would often cross paths on our ways home from Doherty Middle. When I caught up to them, and asked what they were up to, they seemed a little on edge. They must have been off to do something fun, since Mike lived on the other side of town from us. They mumbled to themselves, and I heard Devon tell Mike to just show him. From his front pocket, Mike produced a rolled-up plastic bag. As it unfurled, I saw the small white tube it contained. I’d never seen one in person, but I knew exactly what it was. I started sweating. My heart quickened. That was pot. Dope. Weed. MJ. The funny stuff. Somebody had rolled them a joint. I couldn’t believe it. How could my friends be getting into something as dangerous as that? I tried my best to convince them not to do it, to stay the path of innocence. They assured me was no big deal, but I knew that it was. I learned all about it in health class. If my seventh-grade self understood irony, surely I’d find it in the fact that only four years later I would be asking my brother for it. With the pride only a big brother knows, he gave me what looked like a little packet of tiny, green leaves, the whole thing being no bigger than a penny, zip-sealed along side a pack of rolling papers in a plastic bag, and told me to have a good time. I didn’t get high when I smoked that joint rolled from the crushed, dry leaves of that little, green plant my brother had given me wrapped up with a pack of e-z wider rolling papers in a plastic bag, but I pretended I did. And I did the times after that, and during those times I noticed that the future and the past rarely existed; the only concern was the time at hand (which was, very often, 4:20). The little things became more important than the big things. The most seemingly insignificant details—a heartbeat, a scratching at the wall, even silence—turned into the focal points of the mind. There were no thoughts to the future or to the past, no plans to be made or schedules to consider; all that mattered was already happening. Why didn’t they want us doing this stuff?

***

Atop the steps of Harvard Station’s Church Street exit, I lit my cigarette. I walked under the brick-and-wrought-iron gates of Harvard Yard to where I’d parked my bike earlier that morning, unlocked it, and pedaled my way toward home. The world flew by me—cars and shops and buildings and people, students and professors and vendors and professionals—and suddenly I got scared. I was about to finish college, about to finish eighteen-and-a-half consecutive years of studentship. In Kindergarten, Mrs. Nichols taught us how to count, and about the magical, wish-granting powers of the green M&Ms I’ve been wishing on ever since; I met my best friend to this day reading Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in Mrs. Saurman’s second grade class when he tried to give me his golden ticket so I could have a piece of chocolate, too; in fourth grade, before Mrs. Wu’s daughter was diagnosed with cancer, and our long-term substitute lost her brother in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, we learned how to count to ten in Chinese; in sixth grade I fell in love; in seventh grade I fell out of love; in eight grade I fell back in love—middle school was confusing; I coasted through high school, neither trying too hard nor slacking to the point of failure; after a year-and-a-half I’d gotten myself withdrawn from my first stint in college; I took a year at community college; and now, after a final two-and-a-half year push, I would be graduating. Soon enough, even more of this world will have passed me by. I slammed my brakes at a red light.

***

I woke up, my head groggy and throbbing, on a brisk morning in late-March. I had walked home from the bar the night before, and thought I should go get my mom’s car before she had to go to work. Thinking some exposure to the wind might wake me up I hopped on my brother’s skateboard, and rode it the few blocks into town. I gained speed as I tore down the hill toward where the car was parked. I attempted to slow myself by gingerly pressing my back toe against the pavement. The next thing I knew, I was pressing my hand to the back of my head, checking for blood as I sat in the middle of the street; there was quite a bit of it. Not long after driving home, the whole family was abuzz with excitement. My sister, Emma, had fallen unconscious twice at the sight of my bloody head, proving the ability of my mother, honed over two decades of raising rowdy boys, to calmly deal with any number of outrageous calamities that she’s presented with. The ER staff concluded that I’d sustained a moderate concussion, and sealed my scalp with a couple of staples. The doctor prescribed a regiment of rest and quiet, abstaining from drugs and alcohol, and I should be better in no time. That was a problem: I had tickets to two concerts over the next week. I couldn’t miss them. And I didn’t. I saw the Local Natives play, armed with earplugs and a hard skepticism of the doctor’s expertise, drank beers, sang songs, and had a great time with my brother on his birthday, with only a minor headache to boot. Three days later, I was back at the House of Blues, feet away from the stage Frightened Rabbit was playing on. Having eaten a special banana-nut muffin prior to the show, my eyes were glued to the stage, stuck in the moment. The crowd swayed with the rhythm, felt with the music Scott and the band played. With such beautiful music—such beautiful people there at that moment—there was no time to think about the consequences that could follow.

***

I stood outside the throng of students crowding into the shuttle bus in front of the UMass Boston campus center, smoking a cigarette. How many of these students were in my shoes, struggling to complete their final semesters of undergraduate studies? How many of them had begun as I had in public schools? How many of them had been taught that smoking kills? I thought about my old health classes, my introductory lessons on the human condition. I thought about Karen Shepard, and whether the lines under her eyes had grown from her wide, contagious smile, or if years of smoking cigarettes had singed her vitality. I thought about Uncle Jeff, his beer-belly and booming laugh that filled any room, and I wondered if he might not get to see his own grandchildren born. It suddenly seemed as if, at once, all of time had collided in this one specific spot outside the campus center. One cigarette, presently being smoked by myself, contained my past and my future. The past has ended, it does not exist; the future is uncertain and infinite, neither does it exist; the present rockets forward at unimaginable speeds, forever locked between the past happenings and the future becomings. I stomped out my cigarette, and boarded the last shuttle bus I would ever take from UMass pulling out today’s crossword section to kill time on my commute.