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2004-09-23 21:30:04 ET Part 1 located at: http://www.subkultures.net/LeoZ?readjid=1711159 ****************************************************** We were in an averaged sized room, measuring 10 feet by 12 feet, made to seem small by the 3 bunkbeds which lined the walls perpendicular and parallel to the door. The mattresses in the bunkbeds, where exposed from under the thing grey blankets, were decorated with pinstripes of varous colours with white space inbetween which was yellowed out and worn. By the side of each bed were umbrella holding buckets. But they weren't holding umbrellas but long wooden pipes painted with long flowing lines which resembled streams curving around a thin trunk. The room carried a sense of strangeness and yet there was a slight familiarity to its design. "What is this place?" I asked. Tom nodded for a second, smiled a teeth-baring smile, and spoke quite proudly "It's an opium den. An old style opium den. The Element Cafe survives through the wonderful powers of the modern opium trade." I stood there looking confused. I've obviously heard the tales of opium dens existing in the roaring twenties, in hidden parlours where people used to lie on beds stuffed with dried poppies and smoke their pipes with the cultural infusion of old time jazz and prohibition. But I've never heard of any opium dens existing in this day and age. Even the media hasn't mentioned that crop in the decades that I could remember. And where was the opim acquired? Tom must've seen the puzzled look on my face and somehow he must have guessed what I was thinking for the next sentence spoken by him was: "I grow it." "What?" I asked, not sure if I had heard him correctly. "I grow the opium myself. It's not illegal, you know, to grow the poppies. Hell, even if it was the cops still wouldn't do anything about it. How many cops nowadays know how what an opium poppy looks like? You think they'll go after it with all the attention nowadays being focused on petty things like marijuana and media scare stories of heroin and crack cocaine? No, they ignore it. It's, in their view, a very small problem, and, in my view, it isn't a problem at all. It's a bussiness opportunity. An opportunity to keep the Element Cafe alive and its doors open." "Grow it? Grow it where?" I had to ask. I just couldn't imagine vast fields of opium poppies flowering in some lot in downtown Manhattan. It would be too apparent, too obvious. There are too many drug freaks in this town to let a field like that go unmolested. "Whereever I can grow it. Wherever there's space. I don't need to grow that much. Only a few dozen bowls or so. Nobody who comes here for a smoke is a hard and tight regular opium user. This is a sort of... recreational area. Like an expensive cigar shop into which people wander into only on special occasions. I run this place like a place of celebration. Of sorts." "And who are your customers? How do they find out about this place?" Tom gave out a belly laugh and brought his voice down a notch, "People find out about this place by word of mouth. They come here to enjoy themselves and relax in anonymity. And I think they'd like to stay that way." With that he smiled, turned around, and walked out of the room. I took one last look around and followed him out. A week later I moved out from New York City and settled in Boston, Massachussets. I've lost all contact with Tom and his Element Cafe which now, in my mind, held that mystical tint of a memory of a thing so pleasantly strange that its reality is slightly doubted by the reasonable mind. A little bit of dream stuff hiding in our reality like a pearl in the sands. And every time I think back to that one day I smile and sip my tea in simple silence. The Fin. *************************** I'm too tired and lazy to read the whole story back and see if part 2 makes sense in the context of part 1. Hope this doesn;t suck and I hope everybody who reads it will comment on it. Your feedback and opinions are always accepted. Moo. |
