Cody the Grower

Cody the Grower wore a dirty jumpsuit as he staggered into the living room. He was barely 30 but moved like the walking dead. A patchy beard mottled his face, obscuring his sunken cheeks and aging him at least ten years. I saw him as my emaciated grandfather, dragging his oxygen tank behind the garage to smoke hidden cigarettes.

That morning Andy and I had driven the forty odd miles south from Santa Barbara to Oxnard to see Cody’s two “daughters,” and to take care of some business for the housemates.

We waved hello to Cody’s other visitors before following him through the sunless apartment. I imagined a pair of brunette pixies napping in a back room, spindly and pale with long straight hair.

Through the cluttered kitchen and around a corner–the walls hung with frameless pictures of plants and naked women–we came to a door with a sign warning us not to enter. Cody turned the handle and I saw that his daughters were not, by my definition, what I had expected. Inside was an ersatz grow room housing two large cannabis plants—Ms. Morning Glory and Lady AK-47—the flourishing offspring of one man’s paternal hands. Cody stood taller as he showed them off, pride in his ashen eyes.

He took out a cigarette and lit it, guiding us back through the kitchen. The daughters were for show only. Not mature enough yet, he said with a laugh. We’d get to the pills, but first he wanted to play us some music. Andy and I sat next to Cody’s friends while he demoed his private mixing studio. The thin apartment walls rattled with house music. Cody added strobe lights while scratching and mixing and sliding a series of switches on his equalizers.

After twenty minutes of this he finally turned off his amp and lit another cigarette. He took two long, deep drags in a row and then joined us in the living room, taking a stiff seat on a queen-size bed centered beneath a ceiling mirror.

Two small baggies were passed across the room. In one: three oranges, the other: blues—their stamps intricate and no bigger than a freckle. His guy would be back next Tuesday, he said. He could offer us so much more then…The men shook hands and then Andy and I took off. As we drove along the coast, I rolled down my window and breathed in the ocean air. Out here, it seemed, you either got too much of it, or not enough.

June 2006

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