Sour Joe

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

The first guy I smoked weed with in college became my best friend. His name was Sour Joe. Technically, we weren’t students when we smoked for the first time. At our freshman orientation, the two of us joined a field trip to South Street so we could stray off and find weed. We followed tips from passing strangers, going from corner to shadier corner until we found a skeptical young man sitting on a lawn chair on the sidewalk. After he asked random questions to confirm we weren’t the police, he sold us a few nick bags. We scurried away happily, and that evening we hosted a smoke-out in our temporary dorm room—college hadn’t even started, and it was already shaping up to be exactly what I had hoped for.

Throughout college, Sour Joe and I stuck together through a slew of crazy cohorts. I liked Sour Joe more than my other smoking buddies, because he was as culturally confused as me. A British kid raised in Florida, his accent was completely mangled. If he spoke for long enough, he sounded drunk and incoherent. I cracked up when people asked him where he was from and he replied, “I’m from Florida,” in a British accent.

During freshmen year, Sour Joe was the only dude with an off-campus apartment, so his place became our den of nefarious activities. (Many acids trip culminated in his studio apartment, including the one that turned our buddy Bol into a crazy person.) That first year, Sour Joe didn’t mind hosting this raucous activity, but the following year when he moved in with a guy named Hans, I felt a little less easy about hanging out at their place. Several times Hans expressed his hatred for me with grunts and a disinclination to hand me his ornate headpiece, so eventually I stopped visiting their apartment. I still spent a lot of time with Sour Joe, but instead of blazing in a row house, we discovered amazing places to smoke and trip in Philadelphia. On an average day, we’d explore the stone structures that were strewn about the edges of Fairmount Park. Sometimes we’d walk until we ended up in the wrong place. One time we walked into the center of a highway pretzel—we couldn’t figure out how we’d entered the pretzel, or how we’d leave it, so we sat in the tiny patch of woods with traffic whizzing all around us.

After a couple of years living with Hans, Sour Joe moved into his own spot not far from my apartment. During this period, we mostly smoked inside. We found ourselves aging, losing the drive and stamina that used to land us in Philly's weirdest places. We now ended our chill sessions early so that we could spend some of our free time in complete solitude. Whether we sat in complete silence or acted wildly, we maintained the same level of comfort.

Like any close friends, Sour Joe and I enthusiastically picked on each other. I always went for a more direct approach, insulting his haircut or harping on his goofy accent, but Sour Joe was a real sick fuck. He had a way of sabotaging my thoughts by saying a few calculated words. During one mushroom trip, he told me that I should try not to pee myself, and it pretty much ruined my whole day. Though some of his jokes were cruel, they were all hilarious, and I missed his quips when I moved to New York.

After nine years of symbiosis, Sour Joe and I unceremoniously parted ways. We both expected to see less of each other, but only Sour Joe was annoyed when it didn’t come true. During the first year, I was back every couple of weeks to crash on his couch. Living in New York was overwhelming, and I needed the therapy of Philly's armchair pace. I would spend the weekend with Sour Joe and his roommate, smoking weed, eating pizza, and watching movies we had seen before. For a while they didn’t seem to mind my visits, but they changed their minds when I violated the code of key borrowing.

At the tail end of one weekend in Philly, I was in a conundrum. I was stoned and alone at Sour Joe’s house, and I had his keys. I was supposed to drop them in the mail slot after I locked up, but I eventually realized Sour Joe wouldn’t be able to get his keys if they were locked inside the house. I knew I couldn’t leave them anywhere outside because this was South Philly. The more I thought about it, the more confused I became, and finally I decided that the best plan would be to make a copy of the key. In retrospect it didn’t make much sense, but that’s how Sour Joe’s couch became the Philadelphia branch of T. Kid Inc. Once I had a key, I would roll through Sour Joe’s spot with little to no notice, coming in like a whirlwind of hair and rolling papers, and depart whenever I woke up on Sunday. I took for granted that our dynamic had changed since I became a perpetual couch guest instead of a neighbor who could allow him some solitude on the weekends. His house was a capsule of the relaxed lifestyle I once had in Philly, but my nostalgia sessions encroached on my hosts.

Once I adapted to life in New York, my frequent visits to the City of Brotherly Love slowed down to a few visits a year. When I returned, I found Sour Joe where I left him, smoking a joint in his living room and watching Bride of Re-Animator. I thought seeing less of me would make my visits more exciting, but it seemed like Sour Joe was sick of me. This weekend I was invited to Philly for a glass show (I’ll tell you about it next week), so I hit up Sour Joe to let him know I was coming through. For the first time ever, I received no response. I think I’ve finally reached the point of no return and have been banished forever from the comforts of a relaxing weekend in South Philly. Perhaps one day my best friend Sour Joe will come around, recalling the days of yore, and open his door back up for his old buddy T. Kid. I don't plan on getting my hopes up though, because Sour Joe won't soften easily. He didn’t get his nickname by being sweet.

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