There was a time in this country when taking a few puffs from a tightly packed joint was an act of sheer rebellion. It was the closest thing teenagers could come to understanding what must’ve gone into severing ties with the British Empire way back when. Our forefathers tossed boxes of tea into harbors up and down the Eastern seaboard, showing their love of coffee in a most circuitous way. There’s a high probability that they were inebriated at the time, fed up with soldiers overstaying and oversleeping. Seeing red or just seeing redcoats. The Boston party poopers dressed up like Indians – and it wasn’t even Halloween. Sadly, like so much, this once great act of civil disobedience is nothing of the sort today. I don’t always drink tea, but when I don’t, I prefer to throw it away in dramatic fashion. But how? How can a person dispose of tea without upstaging our American revolutionaries? Tell me that. So you keep it, thinking to yourself “I’ll make iced tea.” But you won’t. You’re a coffee drinker. You’re an American.
Ingesting that famous green herb is not the same either. Don’t let anyone fool you. It involves low risk and nearly universal acceptance. Grandma takes a few bong rips in between bingo yelps. Uncle Stevie is really into baking brownies these days, made with enough firepower to keep him couchbound for however long this quarantine should last. Little kids smoke, with kindergartens visiting dispensaries for field trips. Pets get in the mix when their owners are off sniffing themselves. These are stressful times we live in – or so they tell me - and everyone is searching for how to cope.
But these difficult times shouldn’t obscure the truth: this behavior is categorically uncool. It’s lamer than lame. You’re not supposed to say “lame” anymore, but what else can a sober person call it? Smoking a joint in 2020 is like drinking a latte in the year 2000. As predictable as it is banal.
How does a person rebel with this much permissible? You could try dancing in public, people don’t seem to like that anymore. Or not washing your hands for the full twenty seconds. That won’t go over well. Perhaps driving on the sidewalk is today’s leather jacket, the mark of a real renegade. But these behaviors pale in comparison to adopting the clothing and diet of a Deadhead circa 1972. Today, you’re just another yuppie with a prescription. Tattoos have undergone a similar social transformation, previously a signifier you’d been to prison or were headed there. Clean, uninked skin today shows you’ve gone rogue, adopting an iconoclastic bent, unwilling to bow to social pressure.
I wanted to know if I was imagining all these changes, conjuring them from the clear blue sky. I decided to consult the historical record, as I’m wont to do. There was an obscure cop show from the late 70s available for streaming. Desk Job, starring the great John Gielgud as Bath Avenue’s own Vinny di Paisano, a detective relegated to desk duty after parking in front of a hydrant during a major high rise blaze. Unlike typical police dramas, Desk Job never sees the streets. You barely see the sun, and if you do, it’s only through slightly cracked blinds. You see Vinny making a rubber band ball. You see him putting thumbtacks on a large Hagstrom map trying to determine the best route to Yankee Stadium. He’s bored out of his mind. There are no cases for a disgraced detective. The series follows Vinny as he puts in enough time to legitimately claim a pension. The show ends rather ambiguously with Vinny waiting in a long line down at the Department of Finance. In the show’s most famous scene that brilliantly nods to Gielgud’s Shakespearean chops, Vinny delivers a bathroom soliloquy about getting his car towed for final violation.
“For he today who shares his car with me, shall be my brother.”
He needed a ride home back to Brooklyn. The show has zero drug references - if you can believe it. A remake would likely have Vinny toking up just to cope. How things change.
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