Al Steiner: Doing It All Over

"Man, I hate doing this shit." Lonnie whined. "Why don't we just use a toilet paper roll or somethin'?"

"Do I look like a fuckin' barbarian?" Raisin enquired. "I refuse to smoke out of something that used to hold paper that I use to wipe my ass with. Just get the fuckin' papers."

Lonnie exited the vehicle, still whining, and I exited with him.

"Why don't we just buy the papers?" I asked, following behind him.

"Cause," He explained, as if I was an idiot. "They won't sell 'em to kids."

"As far as I know it's not against the law to buy papers." I opined. "Let me handle this."

Lonnie was doubtful but obviously agreeable to anything that didn't put him in harm's way. I pushed through the door of the store, making a little bell chime. The clerk was smoking a cigarette and watching a small television set. He was about twenty or so and looked as if he'd been rolling up some herb himself. He eyed us suspiciously as we entered.

I pulled out my money and then pulled a pack of zig-zags from the display and put them down on the counter. The clerk looked at them for a minute and then looked at me.

"How old are you kid?" He asked, taking a puff off of his smoke.

"Fifteen." I said.

"Uh huh. And what are you going to do with those? Let me guess, they're for your father."

"Nope." I said simply, shaking my head. "They're for my friends and myself. You see, we just scored some killer bud and now we want to smoke it. That requires papers, as I'm sure you're aware. So, how much?"

The clerk stared at me for a moment, not saying anything.

"Now come on." I said reasonably. "Would you rather we came in and tried to steal them? That would be counter-productive for all concerned, wouldn't it? We're not asking to buy cigarettes, just papers. They're not controlled substances are they?" I smiled. "C'mon, didn't you used to cut school and get stoned? Help out the younger generation here."

He stared for another instant and then began to chuckle. "Fuckin' classic." He said, shaking his head. He picked up the pack of zig-zags and rang them up. "Seventy-nine cents." He said.

I started to hand him a buck and then paused, my eyes looking at a display behind him.

"Oh," I said. "And how about givin' me a three pack of those Trojans there? The unlubricated ones." I winked at him. "We got a girl with us too and I think I might find some use for them."

"That was fuckin' radical." Lonnie proclaimed as we left the store. "Totally!"

"Let me tell you somethin' Lonnie." I told him. "I've found that you'll get a lot farther in life using that approach then tryin' to sneak around the issue. Keep that in mind."

"Trippy." He said again. "But why'd you buy the rubbers? You don't think you're gonna get into Debbie do you?"

"You never know." I told him. "It's best to be prepared for any eventuality."

"Avent-you-what?"

"Never mind." I said, opening the back door. The condoms were in my pants pocket. The papers I tossed to Raisin. "Let's go get stoned." I told him.

As I suspected she would be, Debbie was putty in my hands. We went to Raisin's house, which was actually an apartment. I'd been in the apartment complex many times as a paramedic on calls. It was populated with various varieties of unemployed trash living off of welfare. It was strange being in them in a way. They looked exactly the same as they had\would in my when. Raisin's mom, a single mother, was employed and spent the day at her job. This made Raisin's apartment a favored locale for school cutting, pot smoking teenagers. The apartment was cleaner than most I entered on calls, but not by much. It was a two bedroom and there were dishes scattered everywhere but at least the laundry was picked up and there were no roaches in evidence. The entire place reeked of stale cigarette and pot smoke.

Raisin put on an AC\DC album, Highway to Hell, and cranked up the volume. He then went about the task of rolling up a fat one which he lit and passed around. Predictably Debbie sat next to him on the couch, cooing at him and flirting with him. By the time the third cut on the album was playing, we were all pleasantly stoned; me probably more so than the others since I'd been away for a while.

"Isn't Bon Scott the greatest fuckin' singer on earth?" Raisin asked the room at large.

Lonnie gave a concurring opinion and even Debbie agreed, although it was easy to read her face and see that she didn't give a rat's ass about Bon Scott. I tried to remember who teenaged girls had been into back in the early eighties and drew a blank.

The conversation traveled around the room for a few minutes, long enough for me to be appalled by its immaturity. Both Raisin and Lonnie were trying like hell to win Debbie's favor but their attempts were pathetic at best. Lonnie was talking about how many push-ups he could do. Raisin was talking about how many beers he could drink before he puked. Had I been like this once? I feared that I had. No wonder I hadn't gotten laid until I was nearly eighteen. It was time to liven up the conversation a little.

"Have you guys ever considered," I asked. "How much religion has fucked up our views on sex?"

That got their interest. They all looked at me, wondering if I was telling a joke.

"What?" Debbie finally squealed.

"Think about it for a second," I explained, knowing that when you were stoned it was real easy to 'think about it'. "The drive to reproduce is, aside from food and water, the most powerful urge in the human body. We want to have sex; we NEED to have sex. It's programmed into us, into our genes and chromosomes. If a species didn't want to have sex, which after all is for reproduction, it could not perpetuate itself."

"Per-what?" Lonnie, his eyes open less than a quarter inch, asked.

"It could not keep the race alive." I termed it. "If we were not programmed with the urge to screw each other, we would have died out long ago. So, the urge to screw is given to us by God or chance or whatever, so that we will survive forever. It's a natural urge that serves a basic function, right?"

"Yeah." Debbie said, her eyes twinkling a little. Lonnie and Raisin had to agree with my logic too.

"Now we all feel these urges. I myself feel them very strongly." I gazed meaningfully at Debbie as I said this. She blushed a little but held my gaze. "Sometimes it's all I can think about. It's a bitchin' thing really. For the most part, guys want to put their dicks into a girl's pussy. Girls want to have a dick put INTO their pussy. Am I right?"

"Fuckin aye!" Lonnie nodded.

"Hell yeah." Raisin agreed.

Debbie refused to comment, she just giggled.

"But then you got religion fuckin' us all up." I went on. "There's some other social factors in there too, but religion is the biggest one. Here you have a natural urge, the urge to reproduce. It's a function of your body. But you got religion tellin' you that it's dirty. They make people feel guilty for these urges which occur through no fault of their own. They tell you that sex is wrong. They tell you to NEVER do it before marriage, and then they tell you that it's okay to do it when you are married but not to enjoy it. If you enjoy it, you're sinning."

"Yeah!" Lonnie put in. "That's fucked up."

"And if that wasn't bad enough." I went on, watching Debby carefully now. She was staring with rapt attention. "Religious influence throughout our history has led to the passing of laws against certain types of sexual acts. Did you know that in the State of Washington it is illegal for a man to eat a pussy."

"What?" Debbie and Lonnie said together; Debbie blushing a little.

"Yep." I nodded, picking up the roach in the ashtray and taking another hit. I was really rocking now. "And it's also illegal for a woman to suck a man's dick. Its called oral copulation in the penal code and it's listed as a crime. Now here we have an activity that people enjoy doing to each other." I paused, smiling at Debbie. "At least I know I enjoy the shit out of eating a nice pussy. An activity that hurts no one but that if fact brings a GREAT deal of pleasure to people. At least when I do it anyway. But, thanks to religious assholes back in our history, it's illegal. I could be arrested for, say, eating out Debbie there. And she could be arrested for giving me a BJ."