Pothead

By Stephanie Kurtzman

A twenty-something Long Islander moves on from her troubled past to find her purpose. After college, a stint with the law, and a breakup, old opportunities come knocking and new ones are just around the corner - but will she stick to her same old ways or turn over a new leaf? Find out from her sarcastic point of view, complete with munchies, movie references, and new ideas that may change your life, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329646377

Book preview

Pothead

POTHEAD

A Novel

By Stephanie Kurtzman

© 2017 Stephanie Kurtzman

Published on Lulu.com in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever

without written permission from the writer or publisher except in the case of brief quotations. Any mention of real persons or events is fiction.

Cover image by Getty Images, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-329-64637-7

For my Mom-Mom, who fanned my fire.

Big hug and a big kiss.

CHAPTER 1

Friday, June 20th

---

Go shave your toe hair!

That’s what he barked as he left last night. Totally uncalled for. Not like it hurt my feelings or anything - I actually found it rather amusing. Every so often, I’d point out the little hairs on my toes that I kept forgetting to shave. Is that really such a bad thing? Granted, maybe it’s a bit unnecessary and maybe I could have reserved it for girl talk, but if you’re going to be part my life, why should I hold back? For too long, I held my tongue and watched opportunities go by for the sake of avoiding confrontation and negative judgement. Now I feed off of it.

You see, I do not give a shit about what people think. In fact, I don’t give a shit about a lot of things. It is this lack of shit-giving which motivates my avoidance of those situations where I would be required to do so.

Such situations include being a teacher, for example. If you don’t understand something the first time I explain it, I can’t help you. Call it impatience, call it intolerance, but in the end, it's survival of the fittest out here, folks. I believe learning comes from your own self, from within, from intrigue and practice, and if you don’t have the passion for it, then it shouldn’t be there in the first place. I wouldn’t be able to force someone to listen to or read about a subject they have no interest in, especially if I myself have no interest in it either. Maybe I could teach Blunt Rolling 101, but there’s no demand for that position. Not yet, at least.

I couldn’t be a newscaster either. They always report on negative events that just make people go crazy, like who killed who and which politician did what with his penis, while neglecting to report on the really important issues like the effects of hormones in our meat, or the fact that a cure for cancer has already been found (Google Hemp Oil Cures Cancer). The term No news is good news certainly rings true. The media makes a field day out of terrorist attacks, fatalities of the innocent, and natural nuisances like hurricanes and blizzards. Although, there is Dog Day Friday on the local news channel where they promote pet adoption, so I guess we’re not completely sadistic and hopeless.

I also don’t do the whole babysitting thing, unless it involves actually sitting on a baby like a chicken on an egg. If you leave your little ones under my supervision, they will most likely end up eating the entire sugar jar, de-potting your plants, and possibly making cave drawings on the walls with their own feces. I will let them do whatever they please so they can learn from their own mistakes. I will not keep them on a leash and tell them they’re special.

As for petty gossip queens who yap about celebrities and their most-frequented vacation spot, arrest record, and affair of the week - go away. Really. Obsessions with people are unhealthy; they’re just humans. Leave them alone.

We only get one life on this earth, so I will do and say as I please and give no fucks in the process. Besides, this is America, dammit, and I will take full advantage of the first amendment granted unto us by our forefathers. Other citizens of the world are not so lucky to have this right. Then again, they also shit into a hole in the ground.

He hated going out in public with me. Last night was no different. We went to a new Japanese spot on Bell Boulevard for a late-night dinner, and I may have told the waitress that she really should be working in porn. In my defense, that lady had no business being in the foodservice industry. She forgot our drinks and I had to get up and fetch my own fork because she disappeared during the meal. If you’re wondering, no, I never mastered the art of chopsticks. But she had those beautiful, exotic features that any guy would want to splooge all over. Plus, her hair was blonde! Have you ever seen a blonde Asian? That kind of contradiction needs to be fucked in front of a camera.

So, when she returned with his credit card receipt, I told her, Your service kinda sucked tonight, but I bet you’d make a helluva killing in pornography. She looked at me with a confused look. He looked at me with a what the fuck? look and gave her a quick, Thank you, goodnight, before her cheeks could turn a deeper pink. He gave her a ten dollar tip. I gave her life a better direction.

After a silent drive back to his apartment, he dropped a bomb saying I embarrassed him every time I opened my mouth. My rather nonchalant defense returned fire with, I’m embarrassed every time you try to stick your dirty garbage cock in it. Now, before you go thinking I’m a total bitch, let me explain. I said this because he was an overnight sanitation worker which would make him (and his package) smell like all kinds of smelly, rotten things when he came home in the morning. Even after he showered, the eau de toilet still lingered. Imagine waking up next to Oscar the Grouch, complete with bad smell, bad mood, and furry body hair. You get used to it after a while, but I had nothing else at the moment and I needed ammo.

We shot back and forth about trivial matters while he changed for work. He inquired as to whether or not I have a filter for expressing my thoughts. I questioned whether or not he was having an affair with a dumpster. Pissed off and fed up, he opened the door to leave and used my own hobbit-like feet against me.

Sitting on a bed I no longer felt welcome in, I began thinking it was time for me to get out of there. He had his own studio apartment in Astoria and made a decent living to support us both, but this one was not a winner in my book. My real prince charming would find enjoyment and blunt honesty in the things I said, not shame and disappointment. He would love me for who I was, not who he wanted me to be. He would encourage me to go out and find a good job, not just smoke weed and play housewife, though I really didn’t mind it much. It’s like I’ve been living in a dream, but it’s time to wake up now. I have so much more potential inside of me to do great things, I can feel it. Besides, tomorrow’s the first day of summer, so why not be single and enjoy myself?

Between finding things I haven’t seen in months, throwing away a whole garbage bag worth of crap, about ten bong hits, and being distracted by season one of The Sopranos, it took me about four hours to pack. Instead of getting some shut-eye, I decided to make my escape well before my self-declared ex-boyfriend returned from his nightly grind. I left my key on his pillow along with any feelings I had left for him. No note. No text. No dishes in the sink. No toe shavings in the drain. Out of sight, out of mind.

So here I am, homeward bound on the Grand Central Parkway at four in the morning. Mom and Dad shouldn’t be too surprised to see me. They took me back a few years ago when my first job out of college didn’t work out. It was a shitty production studio in Brooklyn and the boss canned me after only a month, get this, for not having enough experience. It was my first real job, how else am I supposed to gain experience? Why the hell did he even hire me in the first place? Turns out, he was evading taxes and the company shut down soon after I left. My closet, I mean apartment in Bed-Stuy didn’t come with a lease, and neither did the cocky bartender I was seeing, so I dropped them both and moved back home at twenty-two. Now at twenty-five, my parents have learned to accept me for who I am (for the most part) and I love and respect them (for the most part).

The early morning commuters have only just begun to hit the roads, so I fly down the Northern State with the hip-hop throwbacks on 105.1 keeping my mind awake. I pull up to our split-level house on Pine Hill Drive just as the sky begins to lighten, the birds sing somewhere in the neighbor’s evergreens, and Biggie raps the last verse of the Ten Crack Commandments.

The garage door opens and Dad’s black Dodge Challenger - a token from his mid-life crisis - slowly backs out and down the driveway. He pulls up next to my white Mercury Grand Marquis as we simultaneously roll our windows down.

Hey, you look vaguely familiar, he quips.

Yeah yeah yeah. Figured you’d be happy to see me.

Of course I am, but Father’s Day already passed and my birthday isn’t until next month.

I decided I don’t need a holiday to come home and see my favorite parents, I tell him.

How thoughtful of you. I assume from the packed car that it didn’t work out with Frank and you’d like to move back in with us, he correctly assumes.

I assume it won’t be a problem, I wrongly assume.

Well, we assumed you finally got your shit together so we turned your room into a walk-in closet.

Of course they did. Assuming really does make an ass out of everyone, as I simultaneously feel like an ass and think my parents are asses. This is not very surprising. My mother has so many clothes, shoes, accessories, beauty products, and all kinds of useless crap that you’d think she’d have her own show on TLC. Which she did, back when TLC stood for The Learning Channel and not The Learning Challenged. Sometime in the 80s, my mommy dearest played the voice of an outspoken little bird named Chirpy on an animated TV show for kids. She got the part half because of her amazingly annoying high-pitched voice and half because she was sleeping with one of the producers - my father.

Chirpy would teach her viewers worldly things that every youngin’ should know. She would point out the mistakes her fellow avian friends made, which must have been training for pointing out all of her future daughter’s mistakes. I wasn’t even conceived yet when the show was cancelled due to low ratings for educational programming. Although, I think they still play reruns in Canada.

After that, Mom finished up her special education degree at NYU and became an educator for developmentally challenged individuals. It was her newfound sense of giving back to the world that gave her an excuse to take anything and everything she could get her sign-language speaking hands on. That being said, I totally understand their need for some extra space, but come on; I’m still on their insurance plan so shouldn’t I still be entitled to a room?

Sensing my disappointment, Dad tells me to set up camp in the basement for now. I give him a less-than-enthusiastic alright and he’s off to the channel 12 news studio to warn awakening Long Islanders of isolated thunderstorms in the area, overturned tractor-trailers on the Long Island Expressway, and the crackhead out in Central Suffolk who faked cancer to fundraise for heroin (true story).

In his prime, my daddy-o was a reporter for a local network where he grew up in High Point, North Carolina. He met Mom while on assignment in New York City, they fell in love, and he migrated north to be with her. He landed a job as co-producer for Chirpy’s World - mostly because his cousin was the other co-producer, once again proving it’s not what you know but who you know that really matters - and gave Mom the leading role. After the show tanked, he was offered a position with News 12 Long Island, they moved out to the suburbs, squeezed me out, and so here we are.

Before unloading my life from the car, I let