If you’re like
me, when you hear the words nitrous oxide, you immediately think of visits to
the dentist and Steve Martin’s sadistic character in the remake of Little Shop
of Horrors. At least, this is what I thought of before I started working here. Now I think of hundreds upon hundreds of tiny metal canisters
that I have to pick up out of the parking lot.
Allow me to
explain.
In addition to
being a mild euphoric, nitrous oxide is also a useful agent in pressurized
whipped cream. Thanks to Dennis Leary, and high school, most of us know that
you can get high by inhaling the gas contained in these cans. Unfortunately, it
takes special skill to let the gas escape without covering your face with
cream. Becoming high while you’re doing this adds another dimension to the
difficulty.
Fortunately, there are chefs out there who
enjoy making their own whipped cream and have created a market for small,
manageable containers of nitrous oxide. Because of this, we’re able to sell
small, steel containers holding 8 grams of the gas, which is about enough to
fill a normal balloon. To help create the illusion that customers are coming
into buy nitrous oxide (and desktop scales) from us for cooking, this section
of the glass case is filled with reusable whipped cream containers, cookbooks
and body toxin cleansing kits (more on this later.) This doesn’t explain why we
also sell balloons and nitrous oxide container crackers, but I’ll ignore that
for now.
In reality,
customers come in and buy these containers to huff out of a balloon and get a
three-second high. I know it’s only a three-second high because I tried it
during my first solo overnight shift. With no customers in the store, I cracked
a cartridge, filled a balloon, inhaled as deeply as I could and proceeded to
fall off my stool while giggling to myself. The high ended immediately and my
ass hurt for days. It seems like a great way to blow $40 on a Saturday night.
Other than the
ensured loss of brain cells, there isn’t a tremendous amount of risk with
huffing nitrous oxide other than suffocation. I’ve heard of nitrous
“connoisseurs” who have died after buying an industrial tank of nitrous oxide
and then opening it up in their non-ventilated home. I’ve also heard of users
suffering from blue lips after re-inhaling and exhaling directly into the
balloon, with no fresh oxygen for five to ten minutes at a time.
Again; a great
way to blow $40 bucks.
Once I started
learning more about nitrous fans and inhalant culture, I started pumping the
regular customers for more information. Many said they like the
unpredictability of the effect of nitrous combined with how quickly the effects
leave your system.
One customer
told me about how he was invited on a camping trip with a group of friends who
had gotten ahold of a 200 liter nitrous oxide tank and were taking it out to
the woods. Once settled, everyone gathered around the pick-up bed with their
balloons in hand, ready to trip out. After he had huffed enough, he sat on the
back of the truck and watched his friends empty a balloon into their lungs,
turn and sprint for ten feet before stopping and trying to figure out why they had
felt the need to run.
Another confided
that he couldn’t invite particular friends to their nitrous parties anymore
because certain people can become violent when their huffing. Nothing ever came
to blows, but as he put it, “It really harshes your mellow when the same
asshole screams at the top of his lungs for five seconds every time he takes a
hit.” Now he gets a group together to huff in a parking lot, then they just
drive home.
This is probably
the same fucker who keeps leaving me piles of empty canisters to clean up in
our parking lot at the beginning of every shift.
All things
considered… actually, considering the other stuff we sell in the store, nitrous
is pretty tame and relatively benign. It’s just expensive, short-lasting and
leaves a huge mess.
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