My Juul Pod Party

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My idea was to throw one final going away party for Juul pods.

They’d been banned by one of California’s highest courts, or something like that. Heavily regulated, at least. To the point that pretty much every store in the vicinity had made it clear they would no longer sell Juul pods. You’d have to drive an hour each way and spend something like fifteen bucks just to get the tobacco flavored ones, which tasted even worse than cigarettes.

I guess the point of the ban was Juul pods were marketed towards children. It was undeniable that the stuff tasted like candy and was just about as easy to buy. So maybe a ban was for the best.

Anyway, my idea was to buy a dozen or more packs while we still could and sit around trying to puff up as much of the juice as we could in one night. Clearly this was a bad idea, even I knew it. That was part of it. I made a facebook page and everything. People seemed to find it funny.

I called it “Juul Pods and Coffee Pots.” That was the other part: we’d also drink coffee all night and see where that got us. Just sitting around, hitting Juuls wasn’t much of a party. Bringing the coffee into the equation felt like an important wrinkle. In my imagination, everyone’s heads would be tingling, maybe a few people would throw up, and overall it would be considered a pretty hilarious evening. Plus there was something about the “Pods”/”Pots” thing. Every party seemed to need a clever name and that was pretty much the best I could do.

At Johnston’s Market, the guy who must have been Johnston wouldn’t sell me twelve packs at once. He didn’t want to sell such a chunk of his remaining inventory to just one guy. These were the last Juul pods he’d ever sell. He wanted to give others a chance to get in on the final pods. I couldn’t see the logic here. Wasn’t this a business? Wasn’t a sale a sale?

But Johnston wouldn’t listen to reason, so I told him I’d take what I could get. He seemed prepared to part with six packs but then became suspicious of my intentions and ended up only selling me four.

Even just four packs put me out sixty-two dollars with tax, which was a real blow. I guess they’d already started marking them up, in light of the new law.

I was at a crossroads. It was seven o’clock. The party was supposed to start pretty much exactly then. I hadn’t figured it would take more than one stop to acquire the pods. I could go home now and start brewing coffee and maybe only a couple people would be there yet.

Then again, what would it mean to supply a Juul pod party with only four packs of pods? That wouldn’t be anything. The party would lose its purpose and fall out of my control. It would stop being a party at all. 

I shoved the four packs into my pockets and started moving away from my house. Shattuck was the closest place they’d be selling pods.

It was a long walk and I got distracted a few times on the way. I wasn’t feeling upset about it yet, though. Every setback seemed like it could be spun as another humorous snag in the story of why I was late to my own party. Probably everyone was already sitting around, waiting to vape, and bouncing around theories about what sort of noble nonsense had held me up this time. When I got back, out of breath, I’d tell them and they’d all laugh.

On Shattuck, the guy at the EZ Mart had no qualms about selling me every Juul pod in the building, so long as I could pay for it. As far as that went, the money was beginning to feel like a hurdle. Was I really about to spend two hundred dollars on Juul pods? Clearly I shouldn’t.

Once I saw how much it was for ten packs, though, I told the guy to throw five more in. What was fifty more dollars on top of two hundred? At that point, the whole thing could be chalked up to a financial anomaly.

The guy gave me a bag to carry them. He wasn’t worried about me at all. He didn’t even seem to be curious. I guess the true Juul-heads got their pods in bulk at the EZ Mart.

I walked home, trying to stay amused by my own strange plight. It started to make even less sense, but I figured new angles would come to light when I told it out loud. People would speculate about my motives and I would say, “Hey, your guess is as good as mine.”

At home, the front door was locked. Hadn’t anybody thought to prop it open? I guess all the guests had had to walk around to the back door or knock and wait for someone to let them in.

I went around back, with Juul pods overflowing from my bag and pockets. 

No one was in the dining room, but that wasn’t where they’d be anyway. No one was in the living room, either. I kept poking my head into rooms on the first floor expecting a patient crowd to notice me and erupt into party mode. Around each doorway, I prepared a bashful smile, but, each time, they weren’t there. Where were they hiding?

In the kitchen, I finally found someone. James, washing a dish.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

He splashed some water, trying not to drop his dish.

“Jesus, you scared me,” he said.

“Do you know where they are?”

“Who?”

“Everyone.”

“I think there’s some people upstairs.”

“Why?”

“Liv and Riley moved the TV to their room.”

“Everyone’s in Liv and Riley’s room?”

“I think. What’s in the bag?”

Turning to walk out of the kitchen, I said, “Juul pods.”

“Oh. Juul pods? Your Juul thing is tonight.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have Juuls? Or just pods?”

I kept trying to leave but he wouldn’t let me. “It’s supposed to be Bring Your Own Juul,” I said.

“What time’s that start?”

“It was supposed to start at seven.”

I closed the kitchen door so I didn’t have to hear him say something like, “It’s already eight thirty.”

The door to Liv and Riley’s room was closed. I considered knocking, but who knocks on the door to their own party? I opened the door.

There were maybe twenty people. They’d pushed Liv and Riley’s beds against the wall to form one long row of bed. My would-be party guests sat on the beds and on the floor in front of the beds. Every space in both rows was full of at least one person. They were watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

There were a few murmured hellos and someone said, “Close that door.”

“Does anyone want coffee?” I asked.

“Dude, it’s like nine pm.”

“Yeah, but-”

“We’re watching Harry Potter.”

Someone else said, “Guys, I’m trying to pay attention. Can you close that door?”

I tried to but couldn’t decide which side to put myself on.

“C’mon, in or out.”

I scanned all the cushions. I’d really have to insert myself if I wanted to choose “in.” I waited for someone to scoot a bit, pat the space that they’d created, and say, “Here, come sit by me.” No one said anything. I was letting in more and more light from the hallway. It felt like there was a certain threshold at which I would let in enough light that the room would never get dark again. The movie would be ruined and they’d never get to see Voldemort murder Cedric Diggory. The stakes felt incredibly high.

Each side of the door seemed impossible to exist on. I couldn’t shove people apart to make room for myself and watch Harry Potter quietly. I also couldn’t leave. I would end up sulking in my room until someone remembered the Juul pod thing and found me silently begging for attention.

Lamely, I set the bag of Juul pods on the ground inside Liv and Riley’s room. One by one, I took the other four packs out of my pockets and set them on the bag. I stepped outside and closed the door behind me.

I stood outside the door, trying not to think anything. I thought about opening the door again, but knew I’d get stuck in the doorway forever this time.

I told myself to go in there, move quickly past the doorway purgatory zone and sit down on the floor next to one of the chairs. The movie wouldn’t last all night. Before they could fire up The Order of the Phoenix, I would interject and announce that it was time to move into the Juul Pods and Coffee Pots portion of the night. The night wasn’t ruined. I could still go in there, as long as I made it past the doorway. It would be like ripping off a bandaid.

Working up the courage to go through with my new plan, it hit me that someone might come out and catch me lurking behind the door. That would be the highest known catastrophe.

I scampered down the hall on soft toes so they wouldn’t hear. I went into the bathroom and closed the door enough to hide myself but not so much that I wouldn’t be able to peek through the small crack between door and doorframe.

I didn’t want them to find me, but I wanted to see them looking around, wondering where I might be. I’d pretend to finish my business in the bathroom and come out just as they were walking back towards the movie. They’d say, “Oh! I was looking for you!” I’d say, “Oh! I was just about to join you guys.” 

I waited for a while. Too long for it to make sense that I was using the bathroom that whole time. No one was coming.

I opened the door loudly, abandoning sneakiness. With shame, I wondered if I  secretly hoped they would hear. Whatever. It made no difference. I started stomping around in a parody of my own attention-seeking behavior. I started slapping lamps and walls, wondering if the volume of the movie was so loud that they wouldn’t even notice. Even if they did hear me, they’d probably look at each other like, “Huh. What was that?” and go back to forgetting it. It was a lost cause and an ignoble one.

I did a weird little move where I tried to kick each wall on either side of the hallway with both feet at the same time. It wasn’t a planned thing, just an outburst. I wasn’t very flexible. I made contact with one wall and then the other, but ended up on the ground.

Someone came out of Liv and Riley’s room. It was Liv. She took care to step over my bag of Juul pods and softly closed the door behind her. Then she turned around and saw me sitting on the ground trying to look like an injured swan.

She cocked her head to one side.

I gathered my wings into myself and didn’t dare look up at her.

She waited for me to say something. She slowly started to smile.

In the top of my field of vision, I could see that smirk. I tried really hard to pretend I didn’t. I couldn’t give her the satisfaction. She owed me an apology. Why had she kidnapped my party guests? Of course a Harry Potter movie was more enticing than nineteen packs of Juul pods.

She kept looking at me. Now she was shaking her head and waiting for me to laugh first. I kept trying to frown. I couldn’t do it. It felt like she was tickling me from all the way down the hallway. When you’re being an injured swan in a puddle of your own tears, the last thing you want is to be tickled. But once you start getting tickled something starts to make you forget why you were trying so hard to be injured.

I let out a pfft of air that was almost a laugh, released my clenching, and thudded myself down onto the rug like a starfish.

Liv said, “You, you, you…”