We lit the hill on fire with gasoline and sat on a cement bench across the football field to watch it burn. This particular hill had been direly dear to us — in the prime force of enduring the years of high school. It was this hill where we dragged large aluminum coated dining tables and long wooden benches from the canteen to furnish the dirt platform that we had flattened — either with our bare hands or spades and sickles that either one of us had stolen from the garage. Carefully hidden in the midst of tall large tropical trees and condensed bushy plants.
Ideal to our prerequisites so none of the teachers or shit mouthed students could rat us out to the abusive authorities. Disciplinary enforcers who abused us with rattan canes or primordially with (and again) their bare hands — the ultimate tool for plowing ground and smacking the shit across our faces. Fucking high school.
So what did we do here? Once it had been carefully plotted out and furnished — landscaped to chill out suitability. Each of us had brought in our collection of fine bongs. Some glass, some plastic — depending on our tastes and style and how seriously we took our pot smoking. Which was a pretty serious deal in high school next to skateboarding or either playing in a hardcore – punk band. Some went straight edge and vegan but nonetheless hung out with us there when they skipped classes — listening to Earth Crisis CD’s in their Discman.
And of course, I was thirteen years old, in fine fashion for the first time in my life — I took the hit of the bong — Coughed a little, choked a little and possibly farted a little but nothing had happened. I wondered why and voiced out my curiosity. All the older kids said was come back tomorrow and do it again. So I did. And again in fine fashion for the first time in my life — I experienced my first high the next morning, possibly during the two periods of Geography in which I was supposed to be attending. But I remember distinctly being wondrously paranoid and felt the teacher (a large hideous Chinese bitch) coiling around the branches of trees like a large blubber of fat morphing into snakes. But snakes added to the delight of being afraid, so maybe I was going to be swallowed by a dragon fly. The football field just below rung in a deadly silence. I heard the voices of prefects and teaches that threatened to show and eventually just dissipated with the wind. Then it started to come down — the intensity waving and I actually began to enjoy it. Just being high. Being content as a motherfucker. Sitting on a wooden bench within the security of a school system and within a security of our own. Totally invigorating. We had names. I mean look at us sitting here, in our school uniforms, fucking badge over our shirt pockets. Not belonging to nobody.
And yes we did. Now we walked around the school with a new found freedom. Brimming with a brotherly secret. With the days that followed, there was a constant supply and we had chilled. Lounging. Those who didn’t want to smoke had brought the good old Jack the Devil. Some did both. It was a great plan. Conceptualized by a bunch of high school outcasts. Those who were elevated from the rest. We lived a different consciousness. The gangs couldn’t figure us out. The teachers hated us. Those who walked around with cannes always pinned something on us — knowing something was up but not knowing where to pin point that shit.
We had even built a tunnel through the bushes. With a trap door leading to a second tunnel that took us there. You had to remove a bush door and crawl all the way in. The best part was, nobody even knew that shit was there. It was rather exclusive. No one needed a membership. It was just there. Either you knew it or you didn’t.
Well, and so we got discovered 4 years later. It sure was a blast for what it was. They finally legitimized this as an official problem. And then they brought the cops in. And the decoy was and investigation for kids skipping classes. But it sure enough was for us. And we had years of collected fine evidence of homemade bongs that were stashed around. Maybe little samples of stale cannabis here and there.
One day, me and a friend decided to torch it. We got some gasoline. Rigged the place up with enough dried leaves and smoked it. So here we sat. Watching it all go up in flames. History. A sort of communion in peace. The fire seemed to be a driving force behind an intellectual elite. We refused the system. We refused the pop culture. We had created what that had belonged to us and set it free into the world.
Then we grew up. And some of us had lived. And some died.
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