Greta, the green thumb

11May11

“Am I doing it right?” I asked, knowing I was doing it completely wrong.

Greta looked over at my pile and acted mock horrified, eyes spread wide. “Wow. You mutilated that one. That’s, like, all stem now. Completely unsellable.”

“Shit.”

“It’s ok. I won’t tell Micah,” she said. She slid closer and took the next giant stalk of weed from my pile. Her bar shoulder brushed against my arm and sent a warm shiver. “You’ve got to carefully focus just on the leaves surrounding the bud, without hurting the actual bud. Think of it like you’re undressing a woman. Take her clothes off one at a time. You try to rip them all off at once, you’re libel to take a boob off with them.”

“Like a woman. Ok. I can do that,” I said. “And for the record, I’ve never so much as left a bruise on anybody’s boob.”

“Then you should be a natural, Romeo.”

Romeo? For a moment, I panicked, and wondered if my reputation had preceded me, but then I realized under no circumstances would my history of unhinged romantic entanglements have come up between Micah, my friend/seasonal employer and Greta, this unbelievably cute acquaintance of his. Oh, and you’ll be working with my friend Knox, who gets his heartbroken by, like, every girl he meets would have come nowhere near their conversations. I calmed myself.

The next night, we sat by the campfire, and chatted with the other trimmers. I played it cool, trying to involve myself in others conversations, or engage Micah to retell his drunken army stories, but I kept finding myself back in conversation with Greta, much to my delight. We talked about the organic food truck she was trying to start in the Bay Area, about how I was trying to find myself after my import company had imploded, about how trimming a little bit of weed up in the woods up Humboldt County was a fine way to drum up some cash, but was no way to live.

We stayed and watched the fire slowly pass on, long after everyone else had gone to sleep. There was a moment, where our conversation, which had quieted to near whispers, found a natural break, and we sat there, in sweet eye-contact, each half smiling.

“This would be a perfect moment for me to kiss you, but it feels a little too obvious, huh?” I said.

She turned her smile to full. “Yeah, I never was much for convention.” Without even a peck on the cheek, she fell asleep in my arms.

Greta left the next day, and told me to email her when I made it down to Oakland, which was supposed to be in a week or so. I was feeling really good about her, like maybe she felt the spark, too.

The next week, after a 9-hour greyhound and 2 hours wasted, lost on BART, I arrived at my friend Hank’s house in Rockridge and went immediately for his computer.

G-

I’m in the bay area. I think we should hang out as soon as humanly possible.

-K.

I went on an allnight bender with Hank and when I got back, in near black out, I checked for Greta’s response, which was equally succinct.

K-

My boyfriend just got here from Memphis, and he doesn’t think it’s such a good idea.

-G.

It was a likely story, but nonetheless, I tossed Hank’s laptop against the wall. Here’s to being obvious.

Photo via Aztlek, licensed under creative commons license.

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