Marijuana use in the U.S. double that in the Netherlands

I just got back from Amsterdam... what a unique city! I love the canal network and the fact that everyone has a bike instead of a car, and a beer was surprisingly inexpensive for a tourist destination.

Most people who heard I was going to Amsterdam had the same reaction: they asked if I was going for the legal weed. With all the hype, you'd think the Dutch are all toking up... not the case.

I saw these statistics in the Hemp Museum in Amsterdam, and I found them again online:

The Netherlands has significantly fewer cannabis users than its reputation as a soft drugs haven might suggest, according to a study released on Wednesday.
...It found 15.6 percent of Dutch people aged 12 and over had used or tried cannabis, versus a U.S. figure of 32.9 percent.
-Reuters, available from MarijuanaNews.Com

Somehow I'm not surprised that the strict drug laws we have in the U.S. don't work. We have far too many people in prison for marijuana related charges (note: Incarceration rate as a percentage of population (1997): 73 per 100,000 in the Netherlands; 645 per 100,000 in the U.S.). I think the fact that marijuana is forbidden in the States makes it just that much more appealing, especially for younger people.

Imprinting

The clean smell of deodorant danced brightly around the musky aroma of cigarette smoke and his leather jacket. Pressed into his chest I was dizzy; if I’d been thinking about anything but taking in his scent I would have been glad to have the support of his arms, his body, his skin.

Djarum Blacks—those are what he smoked, with a crackle, and then a luxurious sweet exhale of smoke that you can taste on the tip of your tongue. I heard from someone that clove cigarettes are worse for your lungs than regular cigarettes, more tar I think. He laughed when I told him, and then chided me for my own bad habits, with a wink, of course. The cigarette itself was black, and he liked that. I didn’t know anyone else who smoked black cigarettes. “Classy,” he called it, in the self-ironic way he always carried himself. God I loved him.

Let’s stay like this, one of us said, as the August sun began to sink behind the trees. He leaned against his car in his leather jacket, me against him, and lit another cigarette. I was leaving for college in a week, a new life that would be a plane flight away in Washington D.C., and he would stay here. Let’s not think about it, neither of us needed to say, but I wrapped my hands under his jacket and pulled on his shirt anyway, fruitlessly trying to make him closer. To make me stay.

I inhaled the exotic smoke and tasted it. I still have that, today, every time I smell a black cigarette, it’s him.

**************************

I think a huge part of the sex appeal of cigarettes is the smell of cigarette smoke; maybe it was originally something we saw that we were attracted to, but it's the smell that we remember most vividly.

When you smell a certain scent it feels as though you slipped back in time and that you are actually at that scene again. If it was not for the other senses of your body, you might really feel as though you are back there again. But why is it that smell has this ability to instantaneously trigger memories of events, places or people that you usually would not "think" of?
-Smell and Memory by Shigeyuki Ito

Kids: A wake-up call to the world?

I had never heard of the movie Kids before it was discussed in Being Bad last week, so I didn’t know what to expect. After the lecturer introduced the film, I was expecting the worst… but still, I was surprised by just how bad some events in the film are. Watching those young kids recklessly doing what they do every day would shock almost any viewer, and this was the intention of the film- to shock, and to warn.

Says the Rolling Stone review of Kids:
“[Director Larry] Clark, a former druggie who in the mid-'70s spent 19 months in prison for shooting a man, is now a father of two who sees his film as a wakeup call.”

But is the warning effective? I don’t think so. I suspect the audience of this film includes mostly college students and educated adults who follow arty or controversial films, not at-risk kids or their parents. Is the film eye opening? Yes, very much so. But as a call to action, I think in reality it is pretty ineffective. All I can hope is that it inspired a few people to get tested.

She's faking it

Sometimes, talking to my sister can be impossible. She's twenty months younger than me, just turning 20 this past January, but at times the age gap divides us into two different worlds. I think she holds back from telling me the real story of what's going on in her life because I either won't understand or I'll judge her (this is more likely the case)-- but honestly, I grew up with the girl and her roommate probably knows more about her than I do.

I shamelessly tell my sister about stupid things I've done in public, or crazy stories about my ex boyfriends. When I talk about sex, she often giggles in agreement, but I sense her uneasiness. A part of me relishes watching her squirm as I urge her to be as blunt as I sometimes am.

And so, while we both spent Christmas break back in our New Hampshire hometown (in New England, U.S.), all I knew about the boyfriend she'd been with for a month was that "he's cute." I prodded for details: what attracted her to him? "We don't have much in common. It just works." So you're happy? "Yeah, it works, you know... it's cute."

Suddenly last week in our web cam conversation, she starts telling me about how she's having the best sex of her life.

I should probably add now that at one point last summer, I experienced a mind-blowing, several minute long, quadruple orgasm (yeah, for real). Needless to say, my boyfriend had a grin on his face all week and I was so proud of this incredible accomplishment that I had to brag about it to my little sis during our next phone conversation.

So I tell her that's great, and I'm glad she's happy. Then jokingly, I add, "so, any quadruple orgasms?"

She giggles and nods, "yeah, all the time!"

At that point I realized that my sister had never experienced orgasm before. It was tragic, really, watching her smile and gush about her great sex, because I could tell she really believed what she was saying. I remember beginning to masturbate in the beginning of high school and getting a bit frustrated when I hadn't yet discovered how to catch that elusive orgasm every time. The more often orgasms I had, I realized, the easier it became to have more. Eventually I could get myself off in 30 seconds, I learned tricks to prolong my orgasm, and I began to experience multiple orgasms. I bought sex toys and made a daily orgasm (at least one) part of my routine. But a crashing quadruple orgasm? That didn't enter my repertoire until my boyfriend (now fiancee) and I had been practicing our fantastic sex for eight months, and my sister is most certainly not as open about her needs or as willing to experiment in bed as I am.

I bet she doesn't masturbate. A decent percentage of women never have, and that percentage is even higher for young women. It's not that uncommon: I've seen questions posted online by young women who are wondering if they've had an orgasm (believe me honey, you'll know), and there are several websites and books devoted to helping women have their first orgasm.

Well, someone needs to get this girl into a sex shop.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV by Georgia O'Keeffe