Edibles: A Primer

i. On Acuity

I could spend my first time in a gondola, at the Van Gogh museum, or on cobblestone streets, but I love nothing more than privacy and I choose the hotel room. I share a bed and a brownie packed with THC with a girl I barely know. A waif with graham-cracker hair. There’s a movie on TV—Brad Pitt as Death personified. It takes a long time, but when it hits, there’s no mistaking it. Each second stretches. Every muscle makes itself known. The night has a strawberry glow. Death, his girlfriend, and her father are still on the screen, but I’m confused. It’s their prosody. I ask, Are they all slam poets? Her eyes, swollen shut, overflow at an equator. As she laughs, the box spring creaks.

ii. On Measuring

I’m curled up in a ball on my foam Ikea mattress. There’s a zipper along the side. Sometimes I stroke it when I’m feeling anxious, but not right now. Right now there’s a war on U.S. soil. I don’t know the particulars, and there’s no room for them anyway. My body lurches in that way it does before I vomit, but there is no such relief. It stays hypertonic. They’re gonna kill us all. My boyfriend climbs the ladder to my lofted bedroom, a plywood structure that can’t be trusted with stacks of books, and puts his hands firmly on my face. We’re in your apartment on Eldert Street, he says, to orient me. Brooklyn. Everyone is okay. He tells me what happened. We poured cannabutter oil on my mock chicken. There’s a party on the roof above us. Hundreds of people are up there, walking, dancing, drunkenly stumbling, and every few seconds new fireworks burst. I convulse and he grips my arms. It’s not a war, he repeats. It’s the Fourth of July. We poured the oil freely, to make sure it would work.

iii. On The Buddy System

The tall one won’t stop staring. He’s trying to read my expression. The shorter one is inching closer. I’m in Jersey City with friends of friends, mostly programmers. Around my age. Everyone is telling diving board stories. The shorter one puts his hand on my leg. The hairs on his lip are wet. How about you? the tall one asks me, but I can’t answer. I don’t know how to talk. The movements are too complex and foreign. I realize that I’m not in a group anymore; I’m in a corner with two men. I bet you understand everything we’re saying, huh? the tall one says. I try to move my head a little. They look at each other. I see my phone. I try to text help.

iv. On Assertion

My neighbor is hosting a party. He divvies up the responsibilities. I’m on haunted house supplies, minus the worms. Park Slope’s pet stores are all sold out. My boyfriend bikes around Brooklyn looking for dry ice. A friend makes popcorn balls, each kernel stuck to another by weed-infused caramel. Someone comes through with the worms last minute. All the ingredients for a perfect night. I practice sign language with my boyfriend, for when hands work better than vocal cords. I close all the fingertips of my right hand together, the way my family does to prove a point, and move my hand from chin to cheek. This means home. He mimics the gesture. When I do this, you walk me back.

v. On Communion

Alone, his hands are ocean. Us and a song, twenty-five minutes long. Don’t be distracted. Two people can balloon. Can rise. Can spill like paint, thick, indiscriminate. Console crannies. It’s not so impossible.

vi. On Depersonalization

I’m in a kitchen. As I look at the person across the table, the room keeps shifting. Danielle. Some new reality is created every second, and the scene falls like a set of Polaroids. Danielle. The man puts water in front of me. I ask him if my face is moving. I think of asking: Is this body mine? Who am I? He looks concerned. My boyfriend comes. I move my hand from chin to cheek.

vii. On Permeability

Everyone is really friendly and I feel confident. A recording plays in the background. It’s someone’s voice. I’m so free today I could probably do a dance recital and not fuck it up. The voice continues, and I realize it’s me. I don’t know what I’m saying. Like with stroke survivors, some things are automatic. The alphabet, for example. I examine the faces looking back attentively. I try to figure out if I’ve told any secrets, if they can hear what I’m thinking—they nod their heads enthusiastically—who, if anyone, I’ve insulted—their skin is smoother than I thought—and whether or not they’ve earned my intimacy. The voice sounds happy.

viii. On Amplification

It starts in an ovary, or maybe both. There are strains for pain. Clearly this isn’t one of them. It travels around my hips towards my coccyx; down my thighs, spear-tipped. Loud. A hangman stick figure, stiff, I worship the moments between memory.

ix. On Reframing

I scarf down a summer supper. Watermelon, falafel, grainy garden burgers. I eat a cookie someone baked that morning. Hours go by. A bust. I try another. Flooded, I hit capacity. Skin, sounds, whirl, shut down. This time I know what to do. These are the words: I need to sleep. I find the girl I want to hear them. She walks me to her room and I lock the door. I lie awake but breathe easy alone. I don’t know who I am, and who cares? Electrical impulses are firing everywhere, my body the carnival grounds. I grin under the covers and let my limbs jump.

x. On Knowing What You’re Getting

Driving back from Seattle’s first dispensary, New Year’s Eve, I suck on skunky cinnamon candy. Five milligrams, sativa. The buzz is playground gentle, spinning in circles. Two hours turn it into a body high. My shoulders drop. My boyfriend fries spinach while his dad tries a hybrid. He shows me old pictures (cheeks low and pale beneath a bowl cut), swivels slightly in a computer chair. The family mills around. I take a shower with lemon shampoo. Yellow fills the room.

[Image via Flickr]

Tags: danielle zaccagnino, the butter