Had a friend in college, his name was Lee. He was studying pharmacy tech. One day when we were all really high, Lee told us about how his parents had him kidnapped and taken to drug rehab, to this day he doesn't even know where it was, but he was pretty sure it was Arizona or Nevada, based on blindfolded-moonlit-drive time. They put him through a month of military-tough love style "therapy', then reversed the kidnapping and giving him another blindfold-ride back to his house.

I asked him how he got busted. He already had military-grade security on his naughty stuff, preferring to hide things in his bushy, wild hair. I smoked many a hair-joint in strange places. Just when you were in the middle of nowhere on some ridiculous hiking trip and you're ready to call it quits and tell the others to leave your body behind for the vultures to eat, Lee would rock up, and make a joint magically appear out of his hair. Lee liked to light fires with a magnifying glass he wore around his neck if there was sunlight. Lee was always, always prepared, and he always sneaked SOMETHING into every venue I'd ever been to with him. So how could he get busted?

One night, he was frying real hard on acid, rocked up to his mom, and said "HI, mom, I'm frying. How are you?" and got kidnapped three days later.

The crazy thing is, his parents had his sister kidnapped too. She joined a cult, so she went to deprogramming camp after she was kidnapped off a San Francisco street, having dropped a basket of flowers she was selling when they grabbed her. Lee's parents had a bit of legal trouble over that one, and went out of the kidnapping business.


Was Lee a good friend? No he was a fucking thief. But I had some good times with him, before he flunked out, ripped everybody off, and left town. There were a few golden days before the end. And nobody deserves to be treated the way Lee was by their parents. Maybe that's part of why Lee turned out to be such an asshole.