Julio chuckled and said, “Yeah, this is the best. It’s all green leaf, straight off the stems with no seeds.” He looked at it in his hand and asked Ivan, “Are you sure you can handle the rest of this? It’s even stronger at the end.”

Ivan hesitated. Julio was right. The end part of a blunt was the more potent because the smoke had made it more concentrated. But Ivan decided to go for broke anyway.

“Fuck it, man, I need to change up my ways. If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, then you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting,” he stated to himself.

He reached out his right hand and accepted the rest of the marijuana. About a fourth of it was left.

“All right. Good luck, then, man,” Julio told him carefully.

Ivan asked him, “You don’t want any more of it?”

Julio shook it off. He said, “You gotta know your limit. I’ve been smoking that stuff all night. But I gotta get to bed now, man. I need to get at least a good four hours.”

Ivan grinned. “All right, so now you’re gonna leave me with the shit, hunh?”

“You asked me for it. But I’ll take it back for tomorrow night if you don’t want it,” Julio told him.

Ivan stepped away with it and took his first hit. “Nah, I got it. She going home with me now,” he joked, sucking the smoke in deeply.

Julio looked him over and said, “All right, man, just don’t get her pregnant.”

They shared a laugh.

Ivan shook his head and responded, “Nah, I ain’t doing that. This here is just a one-night stand, and I’m definitely wearing a condom with her.”

Julio laughed even harder before they went their separate ways.

IVAN LET HIMSELF into his apartment while still smoking the potent strain of weed.

When he walked in, he left the lights off and turned on his stereo system from inside the entertainment cabinet. He had a thirty-seven-inch color TV, DVD player, videocassette player, stereo system, cable box, and five remote controls.

After turning on more music, he sat down on the comfortable sofa facing the entertainment system and continued to smoke in the dark. Instead of listening to the brashness of rap, he clicked on the timeless jazz of Donald Byrd, A New Perspective.

Ivan sucked up the marijuana smoke that began to hit him like a torch, igniting his brain, while the harmonizing jazz voices, horns, chords, bass notes, and percussion beat patterns of rampant thoughts into his consciousness. No lyrics were needed.

What the hell I am I doing here? he asked himself in his high. What is the meaning of my life? I’m twenty-eight years old now, in the year 2003, and I’m still living in a damn two-bedroom apartment in San Diego with no plans for the future.