I saw Go in theaters. I remember when me and my friend Matt went to see it, we were Freshmen in high school—no, we were in 8th grade, middle school, it was right as theaters were starting to crack down really hard on minors seeing R-rated movies without parents. They wouldn’t let us in, but we were quick to point out: “Last week you let us in to see Van Wilder and that was way raunchier than Go could possibly be,” and pointed at our parents standing at the door going, “Let them in, morons.” So we got in.

And then I sat there, transfixed, while I watched all this drama unfold over drugs and gay television stars and there was danger and sex and 14 minutes of Katie Holmes being all… Katie Holmes-like, cute and such. While I sat there I thought: Damn, this life seems awesome, I can’t wait until I get older and start doing drugs and get involved in drug culture and have friends who go to raves and get into trouble and fuck shit up and dang! Selling drugs must be AWESOME.

This was before I had ever done drugs, being that I was in middle school and I wasn’t one of those kids who could say, “I’ve been smoking cigarettes and pot since I was 12 years old!” and these were always kids with older siblings and my older siblings were so much older than me that by the time I could have even been exposed to drugs by them, they were out of the house and gone. Go left me obsessed, though, at such a young age, with the idea of drug culture.

Go was one of a few movies (Rushmore, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a few years later Donnie Darko would be added to this list) that I left on repeat in my room while I “surfed the net” as I was a youngin, a mere ten years ago. I don’t rewatch movies like I used to, but I’m still transfixed by media involving drugs. The Salton Sea (w/ Val Kilmer), John from Cincinnati (more about the emotional issues that drive people to drug use), Spun, Weeds, Burning Bad (which I don’t watch because meth is scary) and countless others have carried the torch throughout my life.

Now that I’m older, and I’ve had the opportunity to live nights like the one Go describes, and have mostly passed on them and taken a few others, I’ll say that everything is just as exciting as the movie made me think it was when I was a teen. Sure, no one gets hit by a car, and I’ve never been chased by an irate drug dealer (I’ve never even pissed one off), and the girls aren’t ever as cute as Katie Holmes and Sarah Polley (not the ones you get to lay your hands on anyway) but for the most part it’s easy to feel alive, to feel young and excited, to feel dangerous and beautiful.

Sometimes I feel bad for people who don’t live on the coasts of the USA. I get the impression that life is boring and monotonous for people in Illinois, Michigan, Kansas, et al. The whole universe revolves around us Californians, us New Yorkers, and the drug culture itself in California is so lively and high quality. In states where marijuana is a felony (Nevada), the quality of product is so low that you might as well be smoking oregano (you’d probably get higher, too). Out here, there’s a rave going on somewhere every night, there’s always someone with drugs around every corner, and every night can feel alive and exciting if you look for it.

Yay coastal elitist living!