I was sitting at an outdoor cafe in a shopping complex, just brooding. I had just survived a harrowing 30-minute phone conversation with my friend Ana, who was ranting about how her husband had been seeing another woman for over a year. She had no idea. She was so livid, so I tried to make her feel better by suggesting ways she could get back at him, and the ideas just kept coming in rapid succession.
Pretty soon I was sorry I used this tactic to at least attempt to calm her down. Her ideas ranged from really horrific to hilarious! In no time, I got into the spirit of it as well and started adding my own, which naturally just encouraged her go on.
We went from having the poor guy exposed on this reality TV show for unfaithful jerks, to having him arrested on some false complaint. We thought of ploys to publicly humiliate the other woman day after day till she eventually dumps him. Just the thought of how he'd look and fall to his knees begging for forgiveness made her feel better by a thousand degrees. Until she realized what got the conversation started, and once again slipped to a fresh bout of self pity sobs.
She was inconsolable at this point. "We should have him stoned! That's what they used to do in older times," Ana cried feebly. Our plotting was beginning to wear us both down. Then I came up with this brilliant idea of 'us girls' getting all dressed up, go to some hip bar to get drunk and stoned and just laugh it all out. It finally got her all better, at least for the time being. So drunk and stoned it was.
That's what got me into a state of staring at nothing while I stirred the now-cold coffee I didn't even get to taste. Instead of looking forward to a night of partying and letting go, I was tired and really in need of something to pick me up. Then a vision appeared, not from thin air but from a revolving ad stand that stuck out from among the greens lined up in the pocket in front of me. It seemed to be answering the very thing I needed -- a massage, yes!
The ad for a spa showed a half-naked woman lying on her stomach with this tranquil smile on her face. These smooth massage stones lined up on her back. I heard those were therapeutic volcanic stones heated up and positioned on all stressed areas of your body to take away every cramp and spasm and pain. Hmmm.
Then it hit me -- what stoned can mean. Just the past hour it came up three times. It used to be what was done to humiliate, punish, and kill. Then at the height of hip and funk, it was used to call that state you went into when you took this trip to a wonderful place where things were just fabulous and all you cared about was what was so funny and what you can gobble up next. Now the sight of a stone was egging me at every 10 seconds leisurely turn of the stand to suggest another way to get stoned.
No thanks, count me out. I don't think I can lie there so vulnerably naked while someone methodically positioned hot massage stones on my back and expect to feel relieved, while the image of Ana's poor husband getting stoned to death, and the thought of waking up from a night of getting drunk and stoned lurked in my tired brain. Maybe just another cup of coffee for me, and this time I'm going to relish it.
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