I just want to start off by saying when I up woke this particular morning I did not ONCE think that it would end with me buying cigarettes for my flat mate, unintentionally shoplifting from a store, and smoking marijuana.
After I got off work I didn’t feel like heading straight home. It’s the middle of winter so it’s getting dark earlier and decided to grab the bus to the city center and check out one of my favorite stores on Oxford Street to pass the time. It’s a large UK chain with some of the cheapest clothes. This particular department store is always hella busy, and honestly so big that if you find something you want to try on you grab it right there and then as you wander on through this maze of starry-eyed tourists and angry locals with roller bags that are meant to carry large piles of clothes (or children on occasion).
I’ve walked around a little while and at this point have taken off my coat and flung it over my arm, along with a reusable shopping bag containing my work clothes and a hanger with sweater I was debating on buying.
Then my phone rings.
It’s my roommate Whitney. She asks me where I am and I told her on Oxford Street. She asks if I could buy her a pack of cigarettes and some rolling paper on the way home. I agreed because she had paid for my drink the other night when we went out and didn’t mind, but I had to ask…..
“You want cigarettes AND rollers?”
And then she started speaking so quietly to the point that I had to block my one ear to hear her better in the crowded store. I don’t know why she started whispering as if Her Majesty’s government suddenly had nothing better to do and was tapping our phones but soon the conversation made sense.
“I uh…..have something…for us…..for when you get home.” She said.
“Uh, okay. What do you have?”
“Ummmmmmmm, it’s something I have for us, and also why we need the rollers,” She didn’t need to elaborate but she continued. “It’s what’s going in the rollers.”
Light bulb!
“Oh really!? Okay, let me finish up here and I’ll head home now!” I hung up. Well this was unexpected, I mean I had smoked some weed in high school and once in college, but honestly only took it if offered. I was usually good with just inebriating myself with alcohol but I was not about to pass up freely offered drugs (especially some that are hypocritically legal in other countries and states)
So I shrugged my coat back on, adjusted myself and headed out the store toward the underground station. I had made it halfway down the street when I went to adjust my reusable bag and I froze.
On my elbow was a hanger. Attached to that hanger was a sweater. And attached to that sweater was a price tag that could sentence me to a heavy fine and a shoplifting conviction.
I had just walked out the store with an item I didn’t pay for.
I had just walked out the store with an item I didn’t pay for past a security guard who didn’t stop me.
I had just walked out the store with an item I didn’t pay for past a security guard who didn’t stop me as I was on my way to smoke an illegal substance.
My stomach dropped and I quickly looked behind me, thinking I was about to be tackled by a security guard. But I saw no one. ‘What the hell do I do now?’ I thought. Should I stuff the sweater and hanger in my bag and keep going? Should I return it to the store and explain what I had done? I ruled out both of those quick, my conscious wouldn’t allow me to keep the sweater and my self-preservation said I still might be arrested in the process of returning stolen goods.
What I did next made sense at the time, I swear.
I back myself against the store I had stopped in front of, pressing my side that held my bag and stolen goods against the wall. I then bent down, putting my purse on the ground and pretended to shuffle around looking for my phone (it was in my pocket so pointless really). I let the hanger slide off my elbow at my feet, hidden mostly from any onlookers, and watched the sweater crumble in a pile. I then adjusted my purse, quickly stood back up, and booked it.
Running down the street as fast as I could I ducked into the underground train station and pushed past people on my way down the escalator and toward the ticket booth. I just kept thinking if anyone had witnessed what I did they would stop chasing me past the ticket check point.
I had just left the sweater on the dirty London high street. I had convinced myself that rather than risk imprisonment or eternal guilt, I would neither take nor return it. A part of me even thought I was a good person because it was approaching December and was freezing outside, so maybe some homeless person would stumble across it and be able to keep warm.
I emerged from the underground at my stop and just like that the world hadn’t changed at all. I had stolen something for the first time in my life and the world continued as it did. Maybe that was how bored teenagers I knew growing up were able to justify boosting makeup and baseball cards from local corner stores. As I walked in the direction of the Tesco to buy cigarettes and rollers no one spared me a suspicious glance, they had no idea what I’d done. And in a city as big as London would anyone care why I looked so guilty or scared?
I relayed the story to my flat mates when I got home. They cackled at my decision to leave the sweater behind. As we smoked I found myself laughing at the absurdity of it all as well. And not just at stealing but what caused me to leave the store so quickly in the first place which brought up a question that had been eating at me.
“Whitney,” I asked, “Where did you score the weed anyway, from someone at work?”
Whitney worked in a sales job that was predominantly male. She had recently moved to London from the country and was often taken the piss out of because of her accent yet fawned over for her tall figure and blonde hair. She had been approached with offers of cigarette breaks laced with innuendos so it wouldn’t have shocked me if she’d been offered weed by a coworker and had taken advantage of it.
The look that came over her was downright bashful, and for a moment I thought she had gotten it from a guy at work. She never gave them a name when telling me about the guys she worked with, and they were dubbed titles like ‘Fit Guy’, ‘Married Guy’, ‘Shit Boss’ and ‘Syphilis Steve’ (though I think his real name was Peter).
“I got it on the way to work,” She said, still looking down and smiling.
“Who the hell is out selling drugs at 7am when you leave for work?” I asked skeptically as I passed her the joint. I was sitting as best I could on the window sill of the bedroom we shared, my feet perched on the radiator. Whitney was sitting on her bed next to it. The window was open and we’d pushed a towel at the bottom of our door so no one would smell the smoke.
“I found it on the way to my car,” she said looking up. She leaned forward and exhaled the smoke out the window.
“What! Where?”
“On the concrete next to my car, wrapped up in some tissue.” She shrugged.
What. The. Hell.
I saw her produce the tissue earlier, a bit of a crude way I would think to carry drugs (I always saw them in clear plastic baggies on the TV), but didn’t think much of it. There was enough in there to roll two blunts worth, and the other we were waiting for when our other roommate would get home.
She passed me the blunt and took it, scrutinizing it with inexperience and awe. “So we’ve been smoking street weed?” I asked.
We had literally been smoking pot she had found on the ground outside our apartment building. Was she sure it was even weed and not just grass clippings?
I took another hit, feeling a slight buzz at this point but not much. I had never learned to inhale any tobacco right; it had probably saved me from forming addiction. I processed what she had told me, and the entire evenings events in general. Between the two of us we had both clearly boarded trains to Crazy Town, first stop being Questionable Decisions.
We heard the front door open and our roommate Allison call out she was home.
“We’re in here, watch the towel!” I called out. We had texted Allison earlier to let her know what awaited her in our room and if she wanted in. Of course she had said yes.
I turned back to Whitney, “Don’t tell her where you got the weed until we’re halfway done with it. I want to see the look on her face when we she finds out.”
