I can pinpoint the
exact moment I burned out on marijuana culture — 3:45 p.m. on Aug.
18 in Seattle, which was experiencing something of a heat wave then,
a strange three-day run of unblemished skies, blazing sunshine and
90-plus degree temperatures. This would normally be good news for a
city used to an average of 36 inches of rain per year, but the
weekend of Aug. 18 wasn’t one that particularly meshed well with
heat and sun. There were about 200,000 hippies in town for Hempfest,
an annual pro-marijuana rally and music festival, and the temperature
only made what is naturally an odiferous gathering all the more
pungent. A bartender told me that Hempfest was the only thing that
made him miss the smell of dead fish wafting up from the docks on
warm days.
I was there to my authorly duty for Pot Inc. On Hempfest’s opening day, I’d spoken on a panel with other authors about marijuana laws and all their attendant idiocy and chaos, but it was pretty clear that the crowd was none too interested in academic discussions. About 20-25 people attended the panel, not bad considering all the other distractions to be had, and I figured we were lucky to have been scheduled early on the first day, when most people were still sober enough to give us their attention for an hour or so.
That was not the case on this day and navigating my way through the crowd toward the stage, I actually began to worry. That’s saying something for a fairly experienced public speaker. I’ve addressed crowds in the high hundreds and been on live television shows seen by millions, and you would think that speaking before a gathering of stoned people would be a walk in the park.
“It’s harder than you think,” said Ed Rosenthal, the legendary cannabis author and former High Times columnist (not to mention a one-time cause célèbre after having been arrested for cultivation and run through the courts in a legendary case in which he was found guilty in a federal courtroom but only sentenced to one day in prison). We were standing backstage in a sort of outdoor greenroom set up for the speakers. He’d just gotten offstage himself and had fallen flat, but he didn’t seen to care. “Don’t try to tell any jokes because no one’s going to get them. I always say, ‘Sit with it for awhile, you’ll get it eventually.’”
People too stoned to get jokes told by one of their heroes worried me. I had no jokes in my repertoire. In fact, my entire shtick was to talk about how I wasn’t a pothead, but had come to embrace their cause after researching the book from a common sense perspective. Is that something they could grasp?
Bruce Perlowin, the famous drug-runner, spoke just before me, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I’d profiled him—rather unflatteringly—for Salon.com and he’s featured in the book, but when he turned and walked past me standing in the wings, I didn’t feel like saying hello. For one thing, I’d meet him on a number of occasions and he can never remember who I am, but more importantly, I was focused on what type of reaction he’d gotten from the crowd. Perlowin is notoriously unhinged in his articulation and I figured if people with zero attention spans didn’t heckle him, neither would they heckle me.
That turned out to be wrong.
When I took the microphone after the MC’s very flattering introduction—which included the description of me as “a real-life writer!”—there was a mere scattering of lackluster applause. Oh well. I did what I usually do in uncomfortable public-speaking situations, which is to sort of unfocus my eyes and look over everyone’s heads while launching into my remarks. Only this time, it was harder to zone out the audience. Half seemed to have died under the wiltering sun, sprawled out like victims of some plague on old blankets … other were like characters from “Borderlands,” their faces strapped into gas-mask bongs … those who were lucid enough to turn my way seemed baffled by the reverberating waves of sound coming from the speakers. I had a few high notes in my remarks, moments when you’d normally expect some ripple of laughter or a “hell yeah!” from the audience, but they all passed without any reaction at all. People began to scratch and talk among themselves. I was bombing.
Finally, some dude stood up and began yelling, “Just play some music, man,” from in front of the stage. I tried to ignore him, but he persisted. “Play some music!”
Right. Music. It clicked immediately — It was nearly 4:20 and all these people really wanted to do after an entire day of smoking pot under the blazing sun was endure the next 30 minutes or so before they could take another big toke and then wander home to look for the aloe vera. The last thing anyone wanted to do was listen to some “real life writer.” I finally looked at the guy, who was waving his arms to get my attention. He did the air-guitar at me. A few other people were nodding at him.
“You’re right,” I said. “We need music.” Then I wrapped up with as much dignity as possible and left, passing the next speaker on my way out, a pro-pot politician who was stone white at having to bore the restless crowd for five more minutes before the band was ready to play. I consoled myself with the fact that within 20 seconds of leaving, no one even remembered I was there.
Even though it was my first time being heckled, I wasn’t upset. In fact, I considered it to be something of a happy détente, proof that the pot crowd was as bored of me as I was of it, at least for the moment. I never thought I’d grow tired of something as colorful and criminal as the marijuana movement, but the truth is I’d been immersed in it for more than two years and there was very little left that I found original. Before I was interrupted, I’d been talking about how, from an outsider’s perspective, the needle was unquestionably turning in favor of those who attend such things as “Hempfest.” I brought tidings from Colorado where a proposed amendment to the state constitution legalizing pot was sailing toward victory in November, and that, because I don’t smoke pot, I’m the perfect example of a previously undecided voter who’d been won over to their side by the arguments they’d been pushing for decades. It’s happening with others too, at least from my perch within the most active state on the legalization front. Hell, the Colorado Republican Party nearly added support for the legalization amendment to its official party platform.
Of course, there's a time and place for that sort of message, but Hempfest wasn't it. Outside my hotel, I gave my VIP pass to a homeless guy and gave him directions to the free food tent that it would get him into. Later, I got a call about an afterparty for VIP ticket holders; I would have sent him there too, had I known about it. At that point, I felt he'd have fit in better than I would have.