Escape from Coolville. Sherman Sutherland

on the couch in the living room, Dad standing in front of me giving me the disappointed look, while Mom’s pacing back and forth behind him, every once in a while saying, “And premarital sex is bad, too,” or asking, “Are you on drugs?”

      Since I got out of Mom and Dad’s house a lot sooner than I expected, I decided to stop by Fitzgerald’s for a beer. I just wanted to kind of chill out before I drove back to Athens and, I don’t know, think about my life or something now that it was definite that I won’t be at OU next year.

      Pretty much as soon as I sat down, though, Ernie Ameedo comes up and starts yapping yapping yapping away.

      “Lucas Davenport! What brings you here?”

      He asks about Keith and Mom and Dad and what I’m up to and he’s telling the bartender all about the time I broke my leg when I was five, and about all the crazy stuff he and Keith did in high school. Pretty soon, though, it becomes obvious that what he really wants to talk about is the Grab Bag.

      I mean, I understand that he owns the bar now, but that doesn’t mean that he needs to be talking weed talk loud enough for pretty much everyone to hear.

      He said to the bartender, “Lucas’ brother and me had this friend, Charlie, who had an uncle who collected weed. Some people collect stamps, he collected weed. Whenever he got a hold of some primo kind buds, he’d set aside about an eighth of an ounce and keep it in this Crown Royal bag he had. Twenty years worth of the best, red-haired, sticky stuff you ever smoked in your life. He gave it all to Charlie on his eighteenth birthday. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to buy it. I offered him three grand, and he still wouldn’t sell it. So imagine my surprise when I hear that Charlie’s moved out west and sold his Grab Bag to Keith’s little brother here.”

      Then he says to me, “How much did you pay him for it? I’ll give you two grand for it right now. Cash. It’s in the back.”

      I don’t know if he thinks I carry a big ginormous Crown Royal bag full of weed around with me all the time or what, but he acted totally shocked when I told him I didn’t have it.

      “You don’t have it with you now, or you don’t have it at all?”

      “I don’t have it now.”

      He kept going on and on to the bartender about how the Grab Bag is “Hall of Fame of Weed,” so I didn’t want to tell him that I lost it when I moved. I’d just avoided a lecture about responsibility from Mom and Dad; I didn’t want to replace it with one from Keith’s high school buddy. So I lied.

      “Bring it by when you’re ready to sell it,” he said. “I’ll make sure we’re both happy.”

      Okay.

      Then he starts arguing with the bartender because the bartender thought weed was more potent now than it used to be.

      Ernie was like, “That’s what the cops want you to think so they can buy all their expensive cop crap. Have you seen that tank the police have now? A fucking tank. Why the hell do the police need a fucking tank? They don’t. But if they scare enough people, they can convince somebody to buy them one.”

      I sneaked out of there pretty soon after that. Now I’m home.

      And bored.

      And sober.

      One nice thing about the night, though, was that I finally talked to somebody who knows the Grab Bag is real. Every time I try to tell the guys at work about it, they’re all like, “Oh, yeah, L.J.’s got this magical bag of weed that’s better than anything anybody’s ever smoked.”

      Then I’d say something like, “It’s not better than anything ever smoked, because it’s been smoked—that’s the whole point.”

      But they’d always be like I totally made it up. Seeing Ernie tonight reminded me that it’s real, even though it’s lost now.

      June 12

      I did it. I have officially seen all of the internet. Every stupid joke. Every naked woman. Every episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

      I don’t know which hurts worse—my eyes, my ass or my wrist from clicking the mouse all day. My eyes hurt so bad they’re sore all the way up inside my head. So probably my eyes.

      * * *

      On days like today, I wish I was in a coma so I’d have an excuse for not accomplishing anything.

      * * *

      I saw this thing online called “Cubicles Suck” or something and so I thought, Hey, I should check this out. On his webpage, the guy is sitting there whining about working in his cubicle, but then he’s got pictures and it’s like this ginormous Taj Mahal of cubicles.

      I always thought cubicles, by definition, were the tiny little three-sided boxes that we have at work with not even enough room to turn to the side without conking our knees—two feet wide and two feet deep. This guy online had shelves and filing cabinets and a whole bunch of other crap in there. He even took pictures of himself all stretched out, sleeping on his cubicle desk.

      We can’t even put our feet up without getting PINed. If I could ever contort myself enough to lie down at work, they’d boot me out of there so fast I’d leave a vapor trail.

      I feel totally cheated.

      * * *

      I also saw this thing about this Heaven’s Gate cult from however many years ago. Those people were freaks. Cutting off their junk and wrapping plastic bags around their heads so they could hitch a ride to heaven on some comet. That’s hardcore insane.

      The thing is, though, I think I’m actually kind of jealous of them. I would love to believe in something—anything—so much that I’d happily cut off Sir Lancelot for it. Even if it is something totally batshit crazy like that. I mean, if you believe in something enough to chop your own balls off, you have to really believe in it. And I think that would be awesome. It just seems like life would be so much easier and making decisions would be so much easier and everything would be so much easier if you really really believed in something.

      Instead of being constantly worried about money and worried about getting fired and wondering if I’ll ever get laid ever again, all I’d have to do is whatever the Great Comet wanted me to do. Every decision I make would be like, Is this what I should do, knowing that the earth is about to be recycled or whatever? And I’d actually have the willpower to follow through on it—that’d be awesome, too.

      Still, I hope that whatever or whoever I believe in never wants me to chop off my junk. That would suck.

      June 13

      Resin:

      The buzz is good.

      The buzz is nice.

      The buzz is great

      at this low price.

      * * *

      All that talk the other day about the Grab Bag made me totally determined to find it, once and for all, or at least know for sure if some cockmunch actually did steal it.

      I still can’t believe that somebody could’ve stolen it even if they wanted to, because I’m sure I would’ve hidden it someplace where it’d be almost impossible to find. But I can’t find it.

      I remember one time I hid it in my box of books because I knew nobody would look in there. But it’s not in there. I kind of sort of remember hiding it someplace else, but I don’t remember where and I’ve looked everywhere and it’s not anywhere, so maybe some shit brained assface did steal it.

      When I couldn’t find it, that just bummed me out and made me need to get stoned way more than I needed to before