I'm smoking pot again.  It's kinda weird watching the blue smoke curl up from the pipe toward the ceiling.  It catches a foot above my head, swirls in on itself, then just hangs like an ominous cloud.  I always watch the first puff of smoke.  If you know it's going to happen, you can feel your body slow down.  When the cloud hangs, you slow down.  To nothing.  You can sense thoughts disconnecting.  It's worth it.  To take the first puff.  And wait.

Okay, that's not the weird part.  The weird part is this:  The girl sitting on the couch across from me decided to take off her clothes.  I don't know her.  Well.  I don't know her well.  And it's not like I'm some fucked-up voyeur.  Not that I think voyeurs are fucked up.  It's the drugs and all.  You know.

But, it's kinda weird.  She only takes off her pants.  Leaves her panties on, takes off her pants.  Oh, and her socks.  Nice ones like poly-something.  Ask her, I want to.  Instead, I smile coyly.  --I'm fucked up.  My usual bland comment, but I hear my voice say it.  Anyway.  I say it anyway.  Thoughts drifting by, and I want to ask her why.  Why did you take your pants off, butterfly?

No, sexist.  The butterfly part.  It sounds too sexist.  I need to be suave.  Act like it's not happening.  This is not happening.  She's still sitting there.  Pants off.  Panties on.  Socks off.  Do you think the Cubbies have a chance?

No, obvious.  I'm a writer.  That question gives me away for the fake I am.  Am I a writer.  I am not a writer.  I am a typer, with a rapist wit.  And a good editor.  Can she see my editing?  No.  Maybe.  Maybe she can see me editing.  Right now, I'm editing.  Each line, fucked up, cut, edited to a fine edge.  In my head, there will be one.  One line worth saving.

She's looking at me.  Still, as long as her top stays on.  I will remain still.  When that baby comes off, I'm going to say something.  And it might not be pretty.  Worse yet, it might not be writerly.  I will let them all down.  The whole Romantic movement.  Ham-hocked by me.

Ah jesus, Billy's still sitting next to me.  I thought he'd left.  Anti-drugs and all.  Gotta job, or something.  Who knows.  I look at him, raise my left eyebrow.  The one nearest him.  The one away from the girl.  The brow says, do you see that?  His mouth curls down at the edge.  A suppressed smile.  I lick my lips.  --Want some, I hear myself ask.  He does a wild eye and looks around.  --The pipe, want some, I gesture shoving the bowl under his nose.

--Oh, he says.  Contact high.  I can spot it a mile away.  He's fried.  --Yeigh or neigh, brother Bill, I ask.  Neigh.  His loss, our gain.

I steel myself for the body.  Her body.  Those skinny legs.  Bike scrape on the left knee.  Pubic puff under mashed down . . . I look away.  Begin to take another puff.  --Hey, hold on, she says.  Now, I have to look at her.  I plant my focus between her eyebrows.  --Oh, sorry, I stammer.  --You're to the right, I say.  Bad omens and all if I pass to her.  Like closing a knife blade someone else opened.  Bad news.  Karma.

And why the fuck is she sitting there with her pants off?  I want to ask her, what the fuck?  But, it's too pleasant.  This way is much better.  Really odd, though.

I hand the bowl to Billy.  --Pass it to her, I say.  --Can't you see the lady needs a hit?  Score for me!  I can tell she's impressed.  We lock eyes again.  Okay, she locks eyes; I lock eyebrows.

She breaks the gaze, soft finger scratching flint, fire over the bowl, crackling green.  She steals a deep lungful. Like she's been on hunger strike for years, drinking her own piss like Ghandi.  Man, she really stokes it up.  Curly-Q's of smoke wrap round the lighter above the bowl.

She's what we call a mari-vac:  drops by unannounced; sits around until the bowl is stuffed; swoops her chopper down in the smoke; gets her man; and disappears.  All of them -- phantoms.  Whisked away to exotic places where the high won't be wasted on us jungle junkies.  But.  No mari-vac has ever taken off her pants before.  What a strange turn of events!

Now I remember.  God, how the memory goes once your on the pot!  Billy, when he was still smoking, put the word out that mari-vacs were not welcome to attend our gatherings.  To enforce the policy, he recently enacted a "pants clause."  It says it right there on the door.  Big Bold Letters:  If you plan on smoking yours, offer some.  If you plan on smoking ours, take off your pants.

Not a brilliant slogan but it gets the job done.  Obviously.  When she walked in, Billy must have pointed out the sign.  He's a detriment to casual relations with the opposite sex.  A cock-blocker if ever there was one.  Sometimes, though, he's a fucking shining star.  Like now, when we're both enjoying a nice little chat-up with . . . Cat.  That's her name.  It's all coming back now.

The initial hit is over, let me put some lines together.  Kat, what are you doing tonight?  No, I don't need her mari-vac story about how she's jetting over to some friend's apartment, getting dolled up for some major drinking at some trendy new place.  Maybe I'll see you there, she would end it.  Complete bullshit.  That whole line of inquiry: complete bullshit.  A crumbly facade.  A parade we both march in, acting like we hang together -- with our pants off, no doubt -- outside . . . .  Fuck those lines.

I've been in some sort of temporal-lobe fugue.  That's what Johnson, my psychology professor, says when people forget what they've been doing for a time.  Luckily, I haven't missed a beat.  Cat's still sitting across from me.  Pants on, top on, socks on, shoes off.  Maybe she'll stay awhile, and we can talk.

How do you perceive yourself, I want to ask.  You can learn a lot from someone when they tell you how they see themselves.  As if figuring out our own persona wasn't hard enough, we have to go and figure out other people, too.  I think it's just easier to ask.  Of course, it's kind of a turn-off to some women.  They take it for some nerdy, intellectual come-on line.

So, I play the body lingo edge and offer the bowl to her.

Cashed.  The bowl is cashed out, and the weed dwindles down to nothing.  Billy is gone, and in his wake the room has become silent except for the deep breaths and long stares.  When he was here, his banter kept Cat entertained.  Now, there is nothing.  I pack the bowl again and pull a massive, jarring hit that stretches the back of my neck and spins my head like vertigo.  But I am not lost.  The fugue has passed, and Cat is still here.  And that means something.  It's like what my dad used to say about discretion being the better part of valor.  I eventually figured out what he meant by that, and maybe that is the only line worth saving.