Stoned on Babylon 5

I take a long drag on the small, black wooden pipe my brother gave me for my thirtieth birthday, smoke circling helix-like toward the ceiling. Through the haze I watch Babylon 5 on the television set across the room, getting dizzy as the camera jumps to kaleidoscopic nebulas and star clusters, hovering alien space ships in traffic lanes.
Lily comes into the room and sits on the floor, cross-legged. Her blonde hair is slicked down her back, wet, and she’s wearing my light blue pajamas. She waves away the smoke, letting me know it irritates her, without looking at me.
"I think Bruce Boxleitner is a lousy actor," she says matter-of-factly.
She’s wanting an argument, but won’t get one, not when I’m stoned. I shrug off her comment, though she’s still not looking at me, only at the television set. She coughs a few times but keeps watching the show.
"You can change it is you want," I say, but I don’t want her to. I always watch the show and she knows it. But I’m trying to give in a little, allow her some pull in my life.
"If I change it, you’ll be made," she says. Now she’s looking at me, with just her head turned, and I think maybe her head might disconnect from her body and float upwards, into the smoke. The idea makes me giggle. Her face softens into a relaxed smile and she reaches for the pipe. I hand it to her, a little surprised, because she seldom wants to join me. Usually, when I get like this, she goes to her mother’s house and fixes her parents dinner and then cleans up the dishes and takes her old, blind dog for a walk before coming home after nine. By then I’m not very stoned anymore, just tired, and she climbs in bed with me and tells me she doesn’t want to end up like her parents.
But tonight she smokes with me, trying to hide her coughs of inexperience, and we lie on the bed, side by side, and watch the show together.
"What’s this episode called?" she asks, because I always know, and because she loves the names the writers give them.
"Atonement," I say, and she releases a slight gasp, the kind of sound one makes when her soul has just been torn a little, and we both look to the TV screen as a woman, the half-alien named Delenn, must justify to her clan her love for a human. They tell her it has never been done.
They tell her it is forbidden.
I’ve had my limit, five drags, because I lose count after five and so that’s now my limit, but she takes a few more fits and then rolls over on her back to stare at the ceiling.
"I want to have a baby," she tells the ceiling.

The rest of this story can be read by obtaining the Spring/Summer 2000 issue of Gertrude.