Sex, drugs and my 15-year-old
When I had The Talk with my son, it didn't go quite the way Nancy Reagan drew it up.
By Gary Kamiya
"A few years ago, I took Zachary to a Steely Dan concert in Concord, Calif. He was a month shy of his 15th birthday and had just started high school. We had a fine old time, although as with all these dinosaur-band shows, it was humiliating to look around and see how bad we aging fans all looked. Toward the end of the show, lots of people crowded down into the first few rows and started dancing, and we did too. That was when the guy boogeying next to me offered me a very large joint.
I hesitated. I smoke dope on occasion, but I had never done it in front of Zach before. Was he old enough to handle it? Was it time to end this faintly hypocritical charade of "protecting" him from something I didn't think was dangerous or wrong? Yep. I accepted the joint and took an enormous hit. I glanced at Zachary. He was rocking happily away, but he definitely saw me. The Dan -- who, by a strange coincidence, derive their name from a stainless-steel dildo in a William S. Burroughs novel -- rocked on through another encore or two. The joint came around again and I took another major hit. The band finished their last song and left the stage, and we all began to file out, an inglorious army of balding men in shorts, Tevas and Costco Hawaiian shirts, and soccer moms losing the battle of the bulge.
By the time we had walked the mile or so to the car, I realized that I was extremely stoned. Which probably had something to do with at least part of the conversation that ensued.
"So, Zach," I said as I pulled out of the parking lot, "we should probably talk about drugs. Since you saw me smoke that joint back there."
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