Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): "Pot Hikes"
To walk around Center City Philadelphia on a sunny
spring or summer day, stoned on a lot of grass, was
a tradition inaugurated by Gaetan and I at the turn of
the century. The pot hikes, as you might call them, were
a chance for us to create cultural discourses, air grievances,
ruminate about our respective adolescences, compare
notes on different levels about the Center City scene,
and boast, also, of conquests, past, present, and future.
Macho stuff. But for two macho guys, thrown in headlong
into a heady mix of infinite socio-sexual possibilities,
even the continued, droll-ified war-chant bros before hos
couldn’t quell the cognitive dissonance which sometimes had
to be there. Competition and competitiveness had to take
and humanize a scenario that, when we walked around
Rittenhouse Square, for example, was mixed up with celestial
seasonings as well. The spring day I trundled Mary and Abby
to Gaetan’s studio in South Philly, the weather was idyllic. From
inside the sparsely window’d second-floor studio-space, that
didn’t matter much. The agenda that mattered for me that day—
I was with Mary, established, and I wanted to see if Gaetan and Abby
would go for each other. Occasionally, like any other two bandito
buddies, Gaetan and I would misfire. Gaetan, it turns out, when
finally almost alone with the lanky, willowy blonde, lost his shit slightly.
Abby clammed up. Within an hour, all four of us were very stoned.
Gaetan and Mary danced around each other (Gaetan had music
blaring from the studio speakers) provocatively. They were both
drooling. I was used to seeing Gaetan do putz-out with girls, but
this was my girl. I frog-marched the bewildered ladies out. No hard feelings.
© Adam Fieled 2026
spring or summer day, stoned on a lot of grass, was
a tradition inaugurated by Gaetan and I at the turn of
the century. The pot hikes, as you might call them, were
a chance for us to create cultural discourses, air grievances,
ruminate about our respective adolescences, compare
notes on different levels about the Center City scene,
and boast, also, of conquests, past, present, and future.
Macho stuff. But for two macho guys, thrown in headlong
into a heady mix of infinite socio-sexual possibilities,
even the continued, droll-ified war-chant bros before hos
couldn’t quell the cognitive dissonance which sometimes had
to be there. Competition and competitiveness had to take
and humanize a scenario that, when we walked around
Rittenhouse Square, for example, was mixed up with celestial
seasonings as well. The spring day I trundled Mary and Abby
to Gaetan’s studio in South Philly, the weather was idyllic. From
inside the sparsely window’d second-floor studio-space, that
didn’t matter much. The agenda that mattered for me that day—
I was with Mary, established, and I wanted to see if Gaetan and Abby
would go for each other. Occasionally, like any other two bandito
buddies, Gaetan and I would misfire. Gaetan, it turns out, when
finally almost alone with the lanky, willowy blonde, lost his shit slightly.
Abby clammed up. Within an hour, all four of us were very stoned.
Gaetan and Mary danced around each other (Gaetan had music
blaring from the studio speakers) provocatively. They were both
drooling. I was used to seeing Gaetan do putz-out with girls, but
this was my girl. I frog-marched the bewildered ladies out. No hard feelings.
© Adam Fieled 2026
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