Bong Rips, Beer Mugs, and the Moment of Clarity

It’s always the second sip. That’s when the static begins to ebb and the signal starts to come in.

Randy was his name—a tall, chiseled Black dude who loved football and stinky weed. He lived down the hall from me in a crumbling Chicago apartment back in the ‘90s. Somehow our trajectories collided and we became friends. I suspect it had something to do with the ever-present aroma of marijuana wafting from beneath our respective doors—beacons of hospitality to the initiated.

He claimed to have spent time on the Bears’ practice squad. I never quite reconciled the idea of an NFL-level athlete with the prodigious amount of marijuana he consumed, but Randy also worked as a liquor distributor, which made him an undeniably valuable neighbor. He’d show up with Heineken mini-kegs, exotic lagers (in the pre-craft-beer era), branded T-shirts, and other assorted contraband.

One day, while I was beached on my couch, the door thundered with a kick—not quite FBI-sized, but urgent and conspiratorial. I opened it to find Randy, grinning, arms wrapped around a cardboard box.

“Here you go, dude. Enjoy!”

“Dude!” I said. “What’s all this?”

“I’m sick of drinking beer out of fucking Burger King cups,” he said, nodding toward the growing stack of 32-ounce, Star Wars-themed plastic soda cups I’d amassed from a local fast food joint. I didn’t give a damn about Star Wars, but I gave a gigantic damn about free, reusable vessels that could hold two beers and change. I proudly offered them to guests—who, in hindsight, were likely suppressing mild horror as they sipped frosty brews from faded plastic goblets bearing Chewbacca’s eroded visage.

Inside Randy’s box were ten 24-ounce Beck’s beer mugs. Thick glass. Sturdy handles. A score of massive proportion.

“Thanks, man!” I said, ushering him inside so we could christen the new mugs. I pulled Shaggy—my towering glass bong—from behind the television.

I couldn’t have known then that those mugs would follow me for the rest of my life. Relics from a time and place now buried deep in the sediment of memory.

I don’t remember who moved first—me or Randy—but once we lost proximity, our friendship quietly dissolved. Still, I’ve brought those glasses everywhere I’ve lived: a string of Chicago apartments, a place in Boston, a house there, and eventually three homes in San Diego.

They used to be filled with beer. These days, they hold my morning coffee.

As I sit here writing, one of them rests six inches from my hand. The word Beck’s has long faded into the aether, and a small brown ring at the bottom is all that remains of today’s first cup.

This was supposed to be a blog about truth.

I meant to write about how every morning begins the same way: I wake up and descend the stairs behind two excited dogs, their tails high with purpose. I let them out into the yard, where they take in the morning’s feast of smells and perform their various biological rituals before heading back inside for breakfast.

Sometimes we walk first. Sometimes later. But after they eat, the coffee is poured. I collapse into the overstuffed chair in the sunroom and stare out at the canyon. Maybe I catch a glimpse of a coyote on its way home from a night’s hunt. Usually, I just watch the breeze stir the trees as steam curls off the coffee, the silence interrupted only by the gentle hum of waking life.

At some point, I meditate. Duration and quality vary, but somewhere in that stillness—somewhere between the sips and the silence—the truth often arrives.

Usually not the one I was looking for.

It’s that moment of clarity—fleeting, subtle—that seems to surface when I’ve finally let go of whatever thought I’ve been clinging to. That’s hard, especially when I’m attached to some stubborn narrative. But when I can release my grip, even for a breath, something quieter, deeper, more essential begins to emerge.

This morning, the truth hit me between the eyes. No fanfare, just a sentence from somewhere:

It’s OK to make mistakes, but it’s not OK to defend them.

It was precisely what I needed. A moment of stark, uncomplicated truth. And in that moment, I felt peace. Resolve. And something else, too—power.

Because there’s something powerful about facing your truth—whatever shape it takes—and knowing that it’s enough. Not as a weapon, not as an excuse, but as an anchor.

Sometimes, it’s waiting for you in the quiet.

And sometimes, it’s just sitting there in the bottom of a glass.

So thanks, Randy—wherever you are. For the mugs, the weed, the questionable Bears credentials, and the unwavering belief that no man should drink out of a plastic Chewbacca cup past the age of 25. You might’ve been high as a weather balloon, but dammit, you were right.