What’s a Honey Bee to a Cloud of Smoke?
The arid walls of my throat were starting to swell as I made what our AAA road map identified as the second to last turn of our journey: a left hand turn down a prolonged, residential street.
I had recognized such swelling as being due to a trifold of factors.
One: I was on the final days of another thrush recovery. This one being so severe my cotton mouth made me consider going without a drink for a day.
Two: I had been driving the pair of us for about ninety minutes. And the last time I had a cigarette in that first generation Dodge Durango he had one of his more insufferable asthma attacks. So as a courtesy to him and the upholstery of my car, I had been refraining from touching my marlboros.
And the third factor was something I could only sense—an uneasiness. One that grew stronger as the odometer ticked up.
Every mile covered unconsciously coincided with a somatic response in my right foot. The longer I sensed this final factor, the more incapable it became at applying pressure to the gas pedal. Delaying our arrival by negligible degrees.
But my throat was concave.
It required alien air.
The type that warmed my endoskeleton.
That exorcised my apprehension.
That compelled me to pull over without considering the laws of gravity, and propel both of our necks into the thread-bare nylon seatbelts—a kismet jolt.
Immediately to our right was an unmaintained playground—something for him to do, while I could smoke for as long as my lungs permitted.
It was a uncanny place. Especially to play. Bare of any playground main staple. There were no swings. No slides. See-Saw. There was no Merry-Go-Round. Monkey bars.
Just a swarm of imitation clocktowers—made from termite-ridden wood, and covered in poison ivy. All except for one.
The year prior, as a result of doing his required yard work haphazardly, he had a 21 day systemic steroid therapy treatment due to a severe reaction to poison ivy. But I assumed, once you go through such an experience, an immunity builds. So I told him: be careful. To go on the relatively manicured tower. And I’d smoke.
After one drag, my muscles expanded. My larynx sang.
But it was an ease that left all too quickly when I was reminded of that third factor.
What was waiting for us on the road ahead? What trials were we about to face? Will I be able to get marlboros in the middle of nowhere? My thoughts buzzed ad nauseam. And he walked across the lot toward the towers.
“Don’t touch the ivy!” I yelled absentmindedly. Because I realized if an immunity did not build, I did not want to pay for another steroid treatment.
He put his right hand in the air…gave a thumbs up… without turning around…trying to appear nonchalant… but tripped and grabbed a vine to prevent himself from hitting the ground.
I sighed half-heartedly—turning away to look down the road as a beeline vertigo kicked in.
Hundreds of those sickly green trees morphed around the periphery of my vision, and the broken yellow centerline of the road started to hum and cascade—like it was following a new path. Like it was visualizing the earth’s curvature. A panic attack in layman’s terms.
“I’m at the top!” He yelled to me from across the lot.
“That’s the point of climbing.” I said back to him unenthused.
Somedays I lived in the Emersonian school of thought that it’s not the destination, it's the journey. But that day I couldn’t be bothered. That day I thought “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind.” And that day those words gave me a sense of security.
I wanted to stop putting off the unknown.
I wanted to see our new home.
I wanted to have a drink.
I yelled for him to come back. Told him we were about 100 houses away from our next chapter. And he should take a shower to wash off whatever urushiol had brushed onto him.
I met the remainder of that drive with a welcomed sense of repose. In those final minutes, the liminal stage between the known and unknown that the two of us shared solidified a unification—one that practically obligated me to feel a warmth toward him. A warmth I was unaware I could feel toward another.
Not a warmth I would ever articulate outwardly. I hated how sensitive he was. And I knew treacly spectacles would do him no good. But it was a warmth that would perhaps find itself manifest in others ways.
Perhaps my jaundiced opinion of him would one day grow into that of approval.
Perhaps my fogged yellow eyes would one day expand in appreciation, imbued by the red of the roadside rhododendrons, and view him in that of an autumnal orange light—optimistic. Transformed.
Or perhaps my fogged yellow eyes would one day expand in abandon, impregnated by the blue of the countryside sky and view him in that of a sickly verdant envy. A real-world resentful green-eyed-monster.
“Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet loves.” That’s what I whispered under my breath as I made our final turn—the one down our new driveway.
I took the key out the ignition, and the engine’s whirring ceased, but a previously concealed whir remained.
One that had been following us gradually for the last mile stretch.
One that had been growing stronger in vibration with each tire’s passing revolution.
One that reared its unsightly head as the third factor.
Within a few seconds of being parked, the Durango became enveloped with a hundred droning honey bees.
And he looked at me worriedly—light refracting from the bee jackets, through the car window, to his eye sockets.
Both of which which started to glow golden.
And I saw myself in him for the first time.
The first time where I wasn’t angered by his asthma. His poison ivy overreactions. His capacity to enter into anaphylactic shock from one bee sting.
The weaknesses I found myself often eager to pick out, ebbed away for the first time. And I reached for my pack of marlboros, put three between my lips, picked up my lighter, and jumped out of the Durango.
He closed his eyes.
And when I retell this part of the story, I like to say, in this moment: 109 bees made their way from the Dodge body to my body.
I like to say these apian minds landed from the crown of my head to that protruding ankle bone at the top of my feet. And I like to say I waited for the bees to fully cluster.
And as I waited… I like to say I exhaled calmly, cigarettes resting on lips.
I like to say… I took the lighter up to each tip—additives and fillers burning, then smoldering.
Then I say I inhaled, and I inhaled, and I inhaled. Deeper and deeper. Chest expanding… until it made room for a temporary third lung. A temporary fourth. Until the tension within my rib cage grew to an immeasurable degree.
Until I let go.
And as the smoke left my body, it entered into the bee’s tracheas. The bee’s air sacs.
And gradually each foreleg, each hind leg, unlatched from my weathered skin.
And each forewing, each hindwing, aimlessly fluttered.
What was initially a purposeful sense of direction, of orientation, left their hive mind, and each began to hover higher and higher to every imaginable bearing. Until all that was left that signified their earlier existence was that of an immense Marlboro smoke cloud.
I looked through the car window, his eyes were still closed, and his lips were moving to a nearly imperceptible degree, but moving nonetheless, and whispering—whispering a clandestine chant. One I had never seen him perform before.
I knocked on the door, made eye contact with him again, and motioned with my head that it was time for him to come out.
He looked around cautiously, saw no bees, smiled at me, and exited the Durango.
The two of us walked in syncopated steps toward the front door. My strides got me there quicker. I creaked opened the entrance. And we stepped into our new chapter.
I like to describe the aforementioned events as so because it’s how I made sure he remembered that day. Weeks would come and go, and I would remind him: remember how I protected you from all those bees? It’s not safe out there. You never know when they’ll come back. You need me. You always will.
Within a few months, the events solidified themselves as the incontrovertible truth. And within both of our minds grew an ever-expanding hive; where my wants, my needs, my beliefs; they all became that of the omnipotent Queen.
And his mind: the worker. He would clean. He would repair. He would defend… the reality we created together.
—
It is now 10 years later . And I have just awoken from a dream.
A dream in which I did not feature.
A dream in which he was the sole actor.
A dream that has filled me with an uneasiness.
I often dream about him. But this morning my dream felt much more like that of a portentous reverie than an inconsequential fantasy.
He wasn’t suspended in time like he usually was. He wasn’t the same age as the day of the bees.
A newer, yet older, version of himself emerged today—emerged to oppose the unconscious image of himself that my mind worked arduously to calcify.
The events went as follows:
He is still living in our old house.
He is in a basement room—one that used to be my study, but now finds itself flooded with plastic storage bins.
He is looking through a small crawl space window—out toward the exact spot I parked the Durango 10 years ago.
He is anxious and undulating between standing on the tips of his toes and the balls of his feet.
He is waiting.
As he continues his rhythmic, anxiolytic dance, my dream shifts from an omniscient view to a novel one—a perspective matching his own gaze as we momentarily become one.
And as it switches, a USPS truck arrives.
The arrival, sees his right foot tense up.
My endoskeleton warm up.
And an unidentifiable figure pop up, and retrieve a Tyvek envelope.
He rushes out the basement room, grabbing a sky-blue bong from atop a plastic storage container in the process.
I stride up the basement footsteps, skipping every odd-numbered stair, much to my amusement.
And we creak open our front door as the USPS truck leaves.
He does not go back into the house.
I grab the envelope, and walk to the exact spot I found myself swathed 10 years ago today. We sits on the pavement.
He tears through the Tyvek with a contradictory cautious zeal.
I retrieve a half ounce bag labeled: Wild Dagga Smoke Blend.
Within said bag is a potpourri of crimson-red pedals. Pedals we recognize as belonging to the Leonotis leonurus family—a medicinal South African shrub that is finding itself peddled off as a cannabinoid alternative. Peddled off at the same time as synthetic spice.
He packs his bowl. Grabs my bong. Lights our shrub. And he inhales.
Deeper and deeper.
With my chest expanding as though it were making room for a third lung. For a fourth. Until the tension within our rib cage grows to an immeasurable degree.
And he does so twice more before giving his brain a moment to recognize if it be affected or not.
It be.
Much more so than I prepared for it to be.
Much more so than than we read it possible to be.
The high: far from that of a euphoric calmness. Rather, an instantaneous shift in his reality.
My thoughts yell, and the frame rate of our vision increases trifold.
Hundreds of sickly verdant trees morph around the periphery of his vision while the glass of the broken blue bong (of which I have no recollection dropping) begins to hum and cascade right at the base of our feet as though it visualizes that of the earth’s curvature.
His throat looses any semblance of moisture. And my lips begin to move, to a nearly imperceptible degree, but move nonetheless, and we begin to whisper—
He begins to whisper:
Whatever the message is, it has been received. Please let me hang up the phone.
I says this three time.
We are stranger than he has ever felt before.
So strange, if strangeness were cyclical, I’d have reached back to peak normalcy.
Our mind is forever altered. Yet he is having no foreign thoughts. I am inconceivably exhausted. Yet our eyes will never close. He is overwhelmed by the mundane. Yet the preternatural unimpresses me.
A boundary dissolving experience in layman’s terms.
The immense cloud of wild dagga smoke (which may more accurately be identified as spice-laced wild dagga) lingers in the air. And through the cloud a bee emerges.
Not a drone.
Not a worker.
But a Queen.
One that flies closer until it lands on his right pointer finger. The same finger that maintains that of a poison ivy scar from when I grabbed a vine to prevent ourselves from hitting the ground 10 years ago today.
Despite the fatal capacity that the Queen holds over him, I do not meet this landing with any sense of trepidation. We feel within it a kinship. A kinship that has been missing from his life for the last three years.
And due to my Wild Dagga-induced dilated pupils, we are able to observe the Queen, specifically that of her eyes, with an all-consuming inspection. He counts five separate sections. 2 eyes on either side of her head—three atop her crown. And as I count we become more aware of a slight discoloration within her optics—as though each carried beneath it a flimsy film of yellowing fog.
It is upon this glimpse that he has a realization.
It is upon this realization that I experience trepidation.
It is upon this experiencing of trepidation that our viewpoint changes for the final time, and the dream concludes from the perspective of the Queen.
As I embody the Queen, I feel the claws at the base of my forelegs, of my hind legs, grip his weathered patch of skin.
I can see, from all five of my eyes, as he makes a calculated movement with his left hand. I can see, from all five of her eyes, as he swallows a dryness in his larynx
I can see, from all five of our eyes, as he carefully brushes me off.
I say carefully, but my grip, our grip, is tighter than he anticipates. And what he wants to be a subtle shooing turns into a hearty sweeping.
An inconsiderate sweep that fills me with jaundice.
An ineffective sweep that reminds me of his procession of weaknesses.
An insufferable sweep that causes me to bulge up my abdomen, fly toward the base of his neck and meet it was a swift sting.
The arid walls of his throat start to swell.
—
When a honey bee comes into contact with a cloud of smoke, it is not sedated. It is not subdued. It is confused.
A smoke cloud, to a honey bee, is a warning sign. A surefire indication that there is for sure fire. That their hive is no longer inhabitable. And that it is time to prepare for a peripatetic journey into the unknown.
When a honey bee senses smoke, they begin to get high on their own supply. So to say, they engorge on honey not knowing just how much energy they will require until they find a new place to build. They engorge so much so, in fact, that their abdomens become swelled and their ability to sting is momentarily abated.
It is thanks to this mollification that the overseer—the keeper can then approach their world. Smoke, to the keeper, is the key to accessing the inner machinations of the intricate hive: A ritualistic approach that allows for a journey toward the concave.
But what would happen to the keeper if he were to get to deep, and the smoke were to dissipate? Would he become overwhelmed by the gravity of reality or would he be greeted by that of an alchemical gold?