UrbanUpdate

This winter I found myself on a second date, watching Masterminds. Nathan (his real name) had invited me over for a weed hang after I mentioned that I enjoyed weed and hanging. We got takeout, and then we smoked a bit. Actually he smoked a bit, and I, nervous, smoked way too much. Throughout Masterminds I sat straight-spined on the couch like it was a pew. We did not speak. I wondered if I should inch over and snuggle up next to him, wide-eyed and adorable, but then I remembered that we’d only had one date. I stayed on my side of the couch.

All the trappings of comfort were there—the couch, the movie, the cozy lighting, the wool socks—but I was profoundly uncomfortable. I would have felt less self-conscious watching Nathan get a colonoscopy.

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If both parties are habitual smokers, introducing weed into your courtship early on can be nice. If nothing else, your “I'm just a little nervous—one sec” third-date sex becomes confident thirtieth-date sex. High sex is so great that it's easy to get stuck in a spiral of “weed hangs” that can feel a lot like a homebody phase, when you can forsake going out and binge Twin Peaks on the couch. But you're living a lie, because the key to the homebody phase is intimacy, and the only way to build intimacy is to experience mutual discomfort. And that means going on dates.

While the horrors of dating are many—you might arrive at the restaurant to find it closed, or you might go in for a kiss when she goes in for a hug and sort of bite her on the forehead—dates help us get to know each other. With the tiniest bit of planning, you can elevate your weed hang to a weed date.

The best weed dates involve an activity that you’d otherwise be too embarrassed, stressed, or bored to enjoy when you’re sober. Take the aquarium. Unless you’re high, the aquarium is a terrible date. Screaming children—the antidotes to horniness—are everywhere, and the animals look like they’re having existential crises in their enclosures. You both start thinking about Tilikum’s sad eyes in Blackfish.

Adding weed immediately changes the calculus. Suddenly your minds are lubed up to receive the full majesty of the aquarium in all its strangeness. Stand mesmerized in one of those glass tunnels surrounded by tropical fish. Laugh over the sea slug's formal name: nudibranch. Touch a sea star. Touch each other. What they didn't tell us in D.A.R.E. is that even the DMV is romantic if you smoke a bit beforehand. So take up your fancy vape pen, son, and go out into the world.

This story originally appeared in the March 2018 issue with the title "Higher Society."

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