Getting High with Jesus' Son
I got high with Jack, the Son of the Son of God.
I was living in Chicago at the time, and my neighbor across the hall was throwing a kegger. This was not usually my scene, but sitting alone listening to music through the walls was depressing, so I went. I was sipping tepid beer from a solo cup and watching people get drunk when I saw him.
Jack first caught my eye because he was hot. He was slightly taller than me, which almost never happened. His dark beard was trimmed short enough that I could still see he had a jawline right off a geometry test. His long straight brown hair fell down over wide shoulders, just hanging there perfect like he'd never need to run a brush through it. He had arms thick enough to hurt me but soft enough to show he probably didn't exercise. His chest hair stuck out from the top of his t-shirt, and his arm hair went halfway down the back of his hands. He was absolutely dripping with secondary sex characteristics.
He was standing with a group of people when he looked over at me. I looked away, not wanting to be caught staring. But my preferred hobby must have been obvious, because when I looked back, he was standing right in front of me.
"Hey dude, want to go smoke up?" he shouted over the music.
His voice was so deep he could probably talk to whales.
"Hell yeah," I squeaked, then I cleared my throat. "Sure!"
We headed out to the wooden back balcony I shared with my neighbor. The thumpa-thump sounds of the party muted as the door shut behind us. I did this a lot at parties—found one or two interesting people and a quiet corner to smoke—so I felt like I was back in my element.
It was a late spring evening, not so cold that you needed a jacket, but not so hot that you were sweating. We'd get about two days a year like that in Chicago, if we were lucky. The view from the balcony wasn't great, just an alley with some dumpsters and the brick backside of a taller building. We sat on an old stained couch that had been there long before I moved in. He pulled out a jar and started packing a bowl.
"I'm Jack," he said.
"Hey, that's my name, too!" I said.
"Nice!" he said, smiling.
This was surely a coincidence.
He let me have first greens, and I coughed my ass off. I hadn't had an actual combustible since they legalized it—I much preferred vaping. But I missed the ritual of sharing a real bowl.
"So, what do you do?" I asked once I recovered from coughing.
"As little as possible," Jack chuckled.
He took a deep, smooth hit without flinching, and passed the bowl back to me.
"You got a trust fund or something?" I asked.
"Something like that," he said. "My dad's famous."
"What does he do?" I asked, lighting the bowl.
"Dies for our sins," Jack said.
I coughed some more.
"What, your dad is Jesus?" I asked.
"You've heard of him!" Jack grinned.
I laughed, because what else do you say to something like that? It's not like I was going to walk away from free weed. And also, did I mention this guy was hot?
"How about you?" he asked. We talked about me for awhile. After a couple more bowls, I managed to stop coughing after every hit. As the weed started working its magic, I couldn't help myself from turning the conversation back to him.
"So, your dad is Jesus," I said. "Like, the Son of God? Died on a cross?"
"Yup," Jack said.
"Oh, um, my condolences?" I said, because that's the polite thing to do when someone says their dad died.
"It's cool," Jack said, "he came back."
"So I've heard..."
This was starting to get weird. There was no wink or nod. He was answering as casually as you'd talk about a pizza topping. I already had a buzz that would last awhile, if I wanted to walk away. But I'd slept with weirder guys than this, so I pressed on.
"Um, do you see your dad often?" I asked hesitantly, hoping for a sane response like no.
"Only on Christmas, really," Jack said. "He has to work on Easter."
"What about your mom?" I asked.
"I barely know her," Jack said. "They split up a long time ago."
"Jesus is divorced?" I asked.
"According to her, yeah," Jack said. "Dad still thinks they'll get back together. It's kind of pathetic."
He stood up and tapped the bowl out over the railing.
"Look, let's not talk about my family," he said, "but you can ask me about something else!"
"Ok," I said, playing along. "So, like...is heaven real?"
"Definitely," he nodded, "there's one just a six day saucer flight north of here."
I did not know where to even start with that.
"Wait," I giggled, "are you saying heaven is a place on earth?"
"Sure is!" he said.
I don't think he got the reference.
"You're fucking with me," I said.
"I am not fucking with you," he laughed.
I said, "Heaven exists, here on earth, and you get there in a flying saucer."
"It's the honest to Grandpa truth," Jack said, "I swear!"
"Must be a slow saucer," I said, thinking I'd finally caught him out. "You can fly to Australia in something like two days. My aunt went a few years ago."
"No, dude, you don't understand," Jack explained. "The earth is actually flat. You only think it's a globe because you're fenced in by a distortion field that kind of pinches everything up into a ball. Your continents are like tiny islands next to a real continent. Anyway, there's a seam up in Canada where you can get out of the globe and catch a saucer that'll get you to a true heaven in six days. And there's a bunch of almost-heavens a lot closer than that."
A couple drunk chicks came bursting out through the door. One of them squealed and threw her arms around Jack. He let her just hang there, because of course he did. They lit cigarettes and struck up a conversation about some stupid shit, nothing interesting, while I tried not to stare daggers. By the time the girls went back inside, I had been sucking on my weed vape for awhile, and I was very stoned.
"They seem nice," Jack said. I could only nod.
"Here," I said, offering him my vape pen. "Want a puff? The strain is named after your dad."
"Yeah, thanks," he said, sitting back down next to me. He exhaled a giant cloud that held together in the still night air. I watched it drift under a streetlamp and down the alley.
"What about the afterlife?" I asked quietly.
Jack talked and I listened, I don't know for how long. He told me there was something like a psychic internet we were all connected to that was recording all of our thoughts and feelings. That recording was your soul, and when we died, our souls would be uploaded into new bodies. He insisted it was all just technology, and apparently fairly common tech at that. There were all sorts of angels and devils looking to scoop up your soul when you died, depending on what kind of person you were. These beings ruled over their own heavens and hells, but all of those afterlifes were actually just physical locations you could travel to on the same vast flat earth.
There were some places that were like your typical heaven: sun shining, fluffy clouds, grassy fields and all that. But there were other places that were more like Valhalla, or a dance party, or a giant library, depending on your tastes. There were places where you'd be something like a processing unit in the mind of God, and other places where you were more like a battery—you could even be written off into storage. There were apparently plenty enough places that were just places, where you'd just be reborn as a regular everyday human until you died again, and you might or might not remember who you were before. Some of those places were futuristic, advanced beyond our imagination, while others had yet to invent the wheel. Then there were true hells, places where they'd resurrect you mostly for the sadistic joy of slowly killing you again, day after day for all eternity.
"Well shit, dude," I said. "How do I make sure I go to a heaven?"
"Oh, don't worry," Jack said. "All of my friends get into heavens. I'll make sure you're on the list. I know a guy."
He smiled at me with that heartbreakingly charming smile of his. I have to admit it, I couldn't help myself any longer. I made a pass at him.
"Sorry," he said with gentle sincerity, "that's not really my thing."
"Oh," I said, embarrassment turning my stomach upside down.
We sat there awkwardly for a moment.
"I should..." I mumbled.
"No, wait," he said, pulling a joint out of his pocket, "I've kept the good stuff until now!"
It was the most graceful rejection I had ever experienced, and some of the best weed I had ever smoked. Suffice to say, I didn't remember much of the night after that. But I think I might have seen Grandpa.
I woke up the next morning on the porch sofa, and Jack was long gone. I hadn't gotten his phone number, and I had no idea if I would ever see him again. I thought about everything he had told me. I mean, it was obviously bullshit. But it was also...strangely plausible? Like, I'd suspended my disbelief for way crazier sci-fi than that.
After that night, I always kept tucked away in the back of my mind the possibility that, because I got high with a hot guy at a party, I was going to heaven when I died.
Next: Tripping with Jesus' Son