It looked like a medical instrument. It was filled with a black, viscous, tar-like substance.

“Now we talking topical? Or internal?” I said, unable to hide my excitement at the prospect of getting blasted to another realm.

To a realm that didn’t involve any of this.

That didn’t involve any of my current body.

“Seanie! No!” my mama interjected in Stern Japanese Mom Reprimand. Like Down, dog! Yelling slightly since she was mildly lit off the wine bottle she and M were splitting. They’d poured me a coconut water, in a wineglass, so I wouldn’t feel excluded.

“Well actually,” M said, smiling cheekily. “It is primarily used topically. To reduce inflammation and fight infection. But it’s also very CBD-heavy, and can, in moderation, be taken internally. Talking a grain of rice amount.”

“OK we talking sushi-? Or we talking…nah’m sayin…that long-grain basmati?”

M smirked.

“Standard-grain basmati, maybe—”

“OK!”

“Just to help you rest.”

Then she told us about how lil sis once scooped up and railed a fingerful of this stuff that had spilled onto the counter at a patient’s house, and within an hour didn’t know where, or who, she was.

“Goddamn,” I said, grinning, cauliflowered ear to cauliflowered ear.

After she showed me how to apply it, mixing some in a turmeric-infused, aloe-based gel she provided, and getting it into the cracked, open wounds on my soles and palms, I walked—shuffled—her out.

Once down the stairs, she handed me a “strong, indica-heavy” J. “For later. To rest.”

I was so grateful I was crying.

We split a pre-rolled American Spirit—that I was smoking, rather than rollies, since my hands were too fucked to roll cigs, the loose tobacco getting stuck in, and stinging, my cuts—in the alley out back Whole Foods.

Unable to roll cigs with my Minnie Mouse glove hands.

Her energy felt different than lil sis’s previous partners. Calm, stable. Masculine, but un-performatively. With nothing to prove.

She was 30, I learned. Had a younger brother my age, who she said was going through something similar: dealing with the aftermath of a seven-year relationship, trying to get his shit together.

She said she was confident that I was going to bounce back from this, and that, once I did, things would be different.

That 27–28 was the year she stopped fucking around.

Started really making her own money.

“Yeah, I feel like I’m just now figuring out how the world works,” I said. “It’s like, my relationship, the affirmation I got from it, enabled me to retain all my infantile delusions.”

“Yup,” M said, nodding.

She was an encouraging, if uncompromising listener. I understood why my lil sis fucked with her so heavy.