Bok-Choi 

By: Stepan Soroka

Corey coughed. He tried to hold it in but the machine-gun hacks escaped his mouth with such ferocity that he was actually convinced his lungs might fly out his mouth at any second in a fury of phlegm and blood. He cursed himself mentally for showing weakness in front of these people. He considered it a high privilege to have been invited to the ramp, and to be brought to his knees by a bong in front of all these "older guys" truly shamed him. Slowly regaining his breath, he felt the warm fuzzy feeling of the pot come over him like a thick wool blanket.

"Rookie lungs got annihilated." Scoffed Bryan, his long blonde hair waving methodically in front of his face as he laughed. A couple of the other guys chuckled. Someone sparked a fresh bowl and for a second all Corey could hear was the bubbling of the bong before the chatter of teenage politics once again gained momentum.

"..drank the vino to his dome, dude, didn't even puke, fuckin' trooper I'm telling you."

".. never seen a fatter bitch in my life, and he totally hit that shit.."

".. Five feet of vert, I swear."

Then one of them places his tail down on the coping and drops in. Corey recognized him as the guy he saw doing inverts at the park that day. The conversation lowers once again as the surrounding crew shift their attention to the skating. Corey watches in disbelief at the ramp's five-foot walls momentarily become the center of the universe. He watches the guy do wall-to-wall tricks he would never dream of. Every grind he does seems to span the entire length of the ramp. He smacks his tail down on a body jar and the whole wooden structure shakes. He lofts a backside ollie and pretty much knees himself in the face. Corey looks on, transfixed in a slack-jawed hypnosis. Then, one last pump up the wall and the guy's worn out Emericas and on the deck. He looks around with widened, wild eyes and Corey can practically see the adrenaline dripping from his pores.

"Fuckin' too low on the lien to tails, feels more like a stall than an air, y'know." He says nonchalantly and recedes to background. Humbled, but thinking this as good a time as any, Corey walks up to the coping and sets his tail down, only to be immediately denied.

"Uh,uh. You've gotta earn it, little guy. How do we know you're cool to skate the ramp?" says a mullet-sporting older looking hesher in a ripped SNFU shirt.

"Here, I'll take a run, dude." Corey says as meekly as he can. The guy seems to think for a second then replies "Here, one more bong toke and you can skate, ok?"

"Okay." Replies Corey, although he's so fried he already doesn't know how well he will be able to skate.