After they let me inside the building, there’s still a wait, but I’m provided a menu to browse. It’s divided into the different offerings: flower, edibles, concentrates, and it goes on. The lobby has marble floors with leather couches and a sparkly chandelier. Not at all what you’d imagine for a place that sells marijuana, but sort of what you would expect from an establishment in Las Vegas.
The budtender who assists me is friendly and bubbly and has a nose ring that I can’t stop staring at because it looks like a booger hanging out of her nostril. I don’t know what to get, so she makes recommendations. I leave with an item from each category on the menu.
They open up dispensaries all over town, plenty close to my neighborhood, and I frequent them all. I sign up to receive text messages with daily specials. Select strains 30% off, free pre-roll with purchase, BOGO chocolate bars. I apply for my medical card because I get horrible migraines, and that’s one of the top conditions listed in the state’s eligibility criteria. I get to skip waiting in line, and I can’t tell you how pleased I am not to have to pay the extra tax.
I’ve become a regular at the dispensary where the budtender with the booger nose ring works, and now every time I visit, she hugs me before I leave. The really good deals start once the holidays roll around, and they have specials for the Twelve Days of Christmas. I print out the calendar and put it on my refrigerator. I go in every day. I don’t need to, but I can’t pass up the savings. On the seventh day of Christmas, the booger budtender recommends I try an aptly named strain called Casino Kush. I’m grateful for her suggestion, and I’m mildly ashamed that I can’t stop rubbing my hand across the bottom of my nose when I’m talking to her.
After the holidays, I stop by on a Tuesday for a BOGO special. I get my hug. The booger budtender asks me if the Casino Kush helped with my migraines, but I don’t quite know what to say. I don’t know how to tell her that I don’t smoke marijuana. I don’t vape it. I don’t dab it. I tried it once when I was in high school, coughing as I sucked it out of a dented soda can poked with holes. And I’ve not consumed it since. Not even the edibles. But there’s something about all of this that just feels right. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the growing collection of jars filled with flower, pouches of gummies, and vials filled with concentrates accumulating in my spare bedroom. It’s already packed with all my other smartly-shopped items. Bags of food for the dog I plan to adopt, the same perfect cardigan in five different colors, not to mention the patio set I got at Costco during their Fourth of July sale, you know, just in case someday I move out of this second-floor apartment and have a backyard to furnish. Eventually, I might run out of space. But for now, I’m just going to keep enjoying the hugs and the satisfaction of knowing that I’m saving more money than some average person walking into a dispensary on a random day. No hug or free pre-roll for those shoppers.
