Savages

23

When it comes to the War On Drugs, Ben is a confirmed pacifist.

An Unconscientious Objector.

He simply refuses to participate.

“It takes two to fight,” he says, “and I’m not fighting.”

Anyway, he doesn’t believe that there is a War on Drugs.

“There is a War On Drugs Likely To Be Produced And/Or Consumed By People Of Color,” Ben allows.

White Drugs—alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals—deal enough of those, you can overnight in the Lincoln bedroom. Black Drugs, Brown Drugs, Yellow Drugs—heroin, crack, boo—you get caught, you wake up every morning in your cell.

Chon disagrees. He doesn’t think it’s so much a racial thing as a Freudian thing. He thinks it has to do with anal/genital shame.

“It’s about hemispheres,” Chon says one fine California day, standing on Ben’s deck sucking on a spliff. “Look at a globe, now analogize it to a human body. The northern hemisphere is like the head, the brain, the center of intellectual, philosophical, superego activity. The southern hemisphere is down there near the groin and the anus, where we do all those dirty, shameful, pleasurable id things. Where are most of your illicit—dig the word, B, “illicit”—drugs produced? In that nasty dick, vagina, and asshole southern hemisphere.”

“But where,” Ben posits, “are most of those same drugs consumed? In your brainy, moral, superego region.”

“Exactly,” Chon answers. “That’s why we need the drugs.”

Ben ponders this for a loooooonnng time, then

“So,” he says, “you’re saying that if we all took good shits and fucked a lot, there would be no drug abuse.”

“And,” Chon adds, “no more war.”

“We’d both be out of work.”

“Okay.”

They laughed for a long time.