Drew the Drug Dealer was a kind, affable guy. The Mormon met him years ago on a jobsite, and this was the first time he’d been to Motueka to visit his old friend.
Last night, I returned to Drew’s house to pick up an ounce of good weed and the Mormon with whom I’d be splitting it. Somehow, the Mormon found enough cash for his half. He explained how difficult it was to get funds from his bank in England, and that he could only access $200 at a time. I, on the other hand, had an American credit card that was easily exercised daily, so it was hard for me to understand the intricacies of British finances.
Drew lived among the golden kiwi orchards just north of the town of Motueka. He’d really lucked out with his place – it was a two-bedroom flat with free water and electricity for only $220 per week. The interior explained it all.
Dirty dishes climbed the kitchen walls, which were grimy with grease and festooned with cobwebs. Every surface was a study in accumulation. Dust had graduated to dirt in the places that weren’t rubbed shiny by Drew’s passage. The toilet was an atrocity. Not just the commode, but the entire room. I thanked the yoga gods for the strength that allowed me to hover effortlessly over Drew’s bespattered throne in Chair Pose.1
I did enjoy Drew’s company, though. He understood the Mormon; at least enough to hold a respectable conversation with him, and to ignore his more bizarre comments. Drew had spent over a decade of his life living in the neighborhood of King’s Cross in Sydney, so he was no stranger to odd characters. We listened with delight to his sordid tales of gang violence and cross-dressing.
He presented us with a fat baggie of weed, and after the Mormon and I had sniffed it appreciatively, the Mormon carefully pulled out a thumb-sized bud and presented it to Drew.
“Thanks, mate,” the Mormon said. “A bit for you there.”
He turned to me to explain, “You gotta sort out your mates, you know, doll.”
I did know, even though I’d never shared anything with my weed guy back home. In fact, I usually enjoyed a few puffs from his own expertly rolled blunts after an hour of conversation.
I loved my local weed guy, Jake. He was a vegetarian body-builder who did social work in the poorest communities in our town. The nail on his right pinky finger was always left long and sharp to slit open the tobacco leaves around purchased blunts that needed a lavish boost of marijuana. He was outspoken about his socialist tendencies, and he always listened to my uneducated political ideas patiently; his intelligent, celery-green eyes open to the eastern philosophies that I endorsed.
Jake truly listened. His bookshelves were thick with Karl Marx, the Bhagavad Gita, and Anime classics. As a teenager in Philly, he’d been the lead singer in a death metal band, and Jake still made brilliant music alone in his apartment in the heavy, smoky hours after midnight. Kindness and friendship were of utmost importance to him, and if he wasn’t asexual2, I’d gladly have dated him.
Drew reminded me of Jake, and I wondered if it was common for hardcore and kindness to coexist in the same person.
It was obvious that Drew had once been incredibly good-looking, but round jowls hid what should have been a chiseled jaw, and his dark hairline was making an early escape from his pockmarked face. An old back injury kinked his spine, but his blue eyes still held some fire.
Drew slouched across the entirety of an ancient black leather loveseat, continually placing things into his mouth for consumption. First, he’d roll a cigarette, and smoke that with a can of beer. Then, he’d snack on a pile of greasy food from the local fish’n’chips shop. Next, it was time for a huge hit of weed, and, minutes later, the cycle would start again.
The Mormon and I both thought that Drew’s method of smoking weed was both ingenious and ridiculous. We were still using the plastic, skull-shaped bong that I’d acquired in Takaka in February, and the Mormon would always slide weed into his ‘rollies’. Drew, however, was a Kiwi. He was innovative, and he was a craftsman.
Dozens of empty beer cans decorated his filthy coffee table. One of them lay on its side, with a valley creasing its uppermost surface. Drew punched a small ring of holes into the deepest part of the valley, and carefully placed a little globe of marijuana onto that shiny silver landscape. He held the mouth of the beer can to his own mouth, and lit up, dragging smoke through the beery vessel in one, long, manly pull.
“Mate, you’ve got a killer system there,” the Mormon laughed.
“Yeah, mate,” Drew’s retained breath made his response sound throttled. A massive puff of spent smoke swirled above us as he exhaled. “It’s my religion.”
“The world is anxiously awaiting your Bible, man,” I said. My exhalation was nowhere near as impressive as Drew’s, so I tried again.
“He’s the only one of us that has a legit religion,” I added, swinging my gaze over to the Mormon and smiling at him broadly.
“Fuck, yeah, I’m legit,” the Mormon responded. “I’m a priest.”
“No shit.” Drew straightened his spine out of complacency for the first time.
“I’m not shitting you.” The Mormon’s wide open smile did make him hard to believe. “I’m an ordained priest, mate. I can perform marriages and everything.”
The Mormon had my complete attention. The wrinkles of his life were surprisingly deep.
“How long did that take? Why did you do it? What did you have to do to become a priest?”
“It’s not that hard, really. You get the priesthood conferred upon you if you just remain faithful for a little while. They just lay their hands on you, and God passes through them to you.”
“That’s amazing! So you know about the laying of hands.” I’d seen that in my childhood at the churches that I was obligated to attend. “How did it feel when God passed into you?”
“Awesome.” The Mormon’s eyes were large and serious, and he seemed well aware of his temporary celebrity status. “The power of God is electric. It’s like drugs, like a high that takes over you completely. I felt it on both sides: when I was being ordained, and when I laid my hands on others. The connection made me want to be part of the church. I’ve never felt such power before.”
“Mate.” Drew’s red eyes watered, but he backed up into a space of comfortable disbelief. “That’s brilliant. I wish I could experience that, but that’s not my scene.”
The Mormon shrugged.
“It’s pretty fucking cool, mate. I should go to church. It’s been years.”
“And now you’re consorting with a Jewish girl who believes that she’s God,” I said, ruefully.
Drew laughed, and the Mormon seemed confused.
“I’ve felt that power, too,” I continued. “A lot. When I meditate, when I’m in a spiritual place, or around spiritual people. I think it’s always there, but you just have to set yourself aside and become a vessel for it. It’s way easier to do that when the people around you can do the same thing: it becomes a conducive environment for God. I love that Mormonism recognizes how easy it is to hold God in you, and that you don’t need to have a special education to be close to the Divine.”
The men mumbled agreeably, and I left the room to visit Drew’s questionable restroom facilities. As I left, I couldn’t resist peeking back over my shoulder because I felt eyes velcroed to my swaying hourglass figure. Sure enough, there was Drew; sitting upright and mostly sober, naked lust darkening the hot blue of his eyes. The power that poured through me from that connection was Amazing Grace. Didn’t the Mormon notice?
Men. I love them, and I wish I could fuck them all. Drew’s performance would be abysmal, though, given the strength of his addictions.
Drew generously offered us the use of his second bedroom for the three nights that the Mormon and I would be staying in Motueka. I declined graciously, but the Mormon was grateful that he’d had a free bed for the night that I insisted upon being alone with Pup’s memory. For the next two nights, however, I arranged a room for both of us in the same local hostel that had accommodated me on my night alone.
It took the owner of the hostel several minutes to recognize me from the previous day.
“Oh. You’re back.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got a friend.”
“Yes. I found an Englishman.”
“That easy, huh?”
“Yeah, man. They’re everywhere. Just picked this one up off the street like a ripe fruit.”
The hostel owner grunted, and the Mormon followed me passively, without a word, to our cozy little room. I was still wet from Drew’s lust, and I didn’t waste any time riding that Latter-Day Saint home to the Celestial Kingdom.
1https://www.yogaoutlet.com/blogs/guides/how-to-do-chair-pose-in-yoga