The Beaver Bong Build Off

A image of a cartoon beaver that is smoking out of a water bong

The Beaver Bong — 2019

In 2019, a friend showed me a video.

It was a porn.

No, we weren't fucking.

I don't think.

Well... maybe.

I honestly can't remember.

What I do remember is that it was fucking freezing outside. It was raining, and somehow I was out there frolicking around in the mud like a goddamn lunatic.

My friend was Storm.

We'd been friends for more than twenty years. He was one of those people who had been around long enough that you don't even remember when the friendship started because, at some point, they just became part of the scenery of your life.

Storm eventually lost his battle with heart disease while I was away in rehab.

I still think about him.

I'm pretty sure if I ever build the Beaver Bong again and it becomes some huge fucking deal, I'm going to name it The Storm.

Anyway.

Storm shows me this video.

It's a group of friends sitting around wanting to get loaded, except their bong is busted. Instead of doing what normal people would do and, I don't know, finding another bong, they get creative.

One guy offers up his girlfriend as a receptacle.

And boom.

They stick the bong chamber where it needs to go, add water, pack the bowl with green bud, and, sure as shit, the bong works.

One by one, everybody gets a hit.

I am not exaggerating when I say that something in my brain fucking switched on.

At that exact moment, I had no clue what my life was supposed to be for.

Until then.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

Every bad decision.

Every late night that turned into morning.

Every bizarre road I'd somehow managed to wander down.

It had all been leading me to this moment.

I had to build one.

Period.

And by God, I wasn't going to rest until I did.

After multiple failed attempts, along with the wreckage of numerous glass pieces and other casualties along the way, the dream of building the world's first ever patented Beaver Bong was born.

And holy shit, was I consumed.

For the next three years, I became a bong construction project manager, engineer, designer, and apparently the world's foremost authority on a device nobody had asked me to invent.

I wasn't going to quit until I built it.

And because I was completely consumed by the idea, I needed the bong to be perfect.

This wasn't just throwing some shit together and calling it a day.

There was math.

There was science.

There were measurements.

I had to figure out how much of the chamber needed to be insertable, how to make it comfortable, how much tilt was appropriate, and all the tiny little design details that apparently mattered a whole hell of a lot when you're trying to engineer something this ridiculous.

The downstem needed to be longer than a normal bong's downstem to prevent unexpected bowl burns.

The hole for the downstem had to be drilled at exactly the right angle so the stem and bowl could sit high enough to be comfortable and safe.

I tried different chamber materials.

Plastic graphics tubes?

Too thick.

Too uncomfortable.

Eventually I settled on glass tubes that were tapered at the end, the kind used for blowing wax.

I sacrificed about four of those poor fucking things before finally admitting something important:

I needed professional help.

Not rehab.

Not therapy.

Not that kind of help.

I needed a glass guy.

A friend introduced me to a friend of a friend who was a glassblower at the Crystal Palace at Disneyland.

By then, I'd already decided that my Beaver Bongs needed personality.

Little dimples.

Warts.

Ribs.

You know...

ribbed for her pleasure.

The problem?

Nobody could drill the fucking hole without cracking the entire tube.

Damn Pyrex.

So the project continued.

And while I was obsessing over glass thickness, downstem placement, angles, measurements, and the structural integrity of my ridiculous invention, the Beaver Bong idea had apparently escaped into the wild.

It spread like wildfire.

People were trying to build their own.

And they weren't having much success either.

I started hearing stories about people who lived cities away who had heard about my little engineering project and were making their own frugal attempts at recreating it.

I even recently watched some guy on YouTube who tells all his drug stories tell a story about somebody else's attempt at building a Beaver Bong.

But I'll be honest.

His version didn't compare to the bong I'd built in my mind.

I didn't need another story about one.

I needed to build the damn thing.

I'd almost given up when the Beaver Bong gods finally decided to stop fucking with me.

I was hanging out in Huntington Beach with my friend John, telling him the entire story.

John is a true badass go-getter.

Instead of laughing at me and telling me I was insane, he goes:

Let's build the fucking thing.

So we drive straight to the head shop.

We buy a glass tube.

We tell the shop owner about my Beaver Bong.

He thinks it's an amazing invention, by the way.

Boom.

We've got the tube.

Next, we drive about fifteen minutes to Garden Grove.

We pull into a driveway in what looks like the most innocent Brady Bunch neighborhood imaginable.

Pink and yellow two-story house.

Windshield repair truck sitting nearby.

John gets out.

Walks into the garage.

And disappears.

About fifteen minutes later, he comes back out carrying the glass tube.

The fucking downstem hole is perfectly drilled.

I remember thinking:

What the fuck?

But at that point, I didn't care enough to ask the obvious questions.

How did you do that?

Who did that?

What the hell just happened inside that garage?

None of it mattered.

I just wanted to hit the Beaver Bong.

Meanwhile, back home, apparently I'd started a fucking fire.

There was now a Beaver Bong build-off happening.

Everybody was trying to build one.

And somehow...

I won.

Of course, with every great achievement comes the inevitable gossip.

And somewhere along the way, through all the tweaker rumors and small-town bullshit, I had suddenly become the biggest slut in town.

Overnight.

Apparently I was letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry get a turn on my Beaver Bong.

Which was not exactly the case.

I had actually intended to throw a launch party.

Fifty bucks to hit the bong.

BYOB.

Bring your own bowl.

Because apparently even in the middle of a meth-fueled shit show, I had developed a business model.

I had even built a little attachment that allowed whoever was serving as the base of the bong to smoke too, using a small hose attachment.

Because what the fuck was the point of building the world's greatest bong if the person holding the goddamn thing couldn't get high too?

The Beaver Bong worked.

Two times.

Maybe three.

And then it ended up in a landfill at the hands of local law enforcement, along with a whole lot of other evidence proving that I was, in fact, a literal badass.

Every once in a while, somebody will bring it up.

Usually I hear some story about so-and-so who supposedly got to take a bong rip from the legendary Beaver Bong.

I just smile.

Politely nod.

And move on.

Because I know who actually got the chance to hit that bong.

And I know how much fucking time I wasted building it.

But here's the thing.

At the time, I was knee-deep in the shit show of meth addiction.

I had nothing better to do.

So I built a fucking Beaver Bong.

For three years.

I researched it.

I designed it.

I engineered it.

I broke glass.

I recruited professionals.

I did math.

I developed prototypes.

I nearly created a goddamn manufacturing process.

And eventually, I actually built the fucking thing.

So if you ever hear the story about the girl from Lake Elsinore and the Beaver Bong...

Now you know the story.

And if somebody tells you they heard about the girl who let every Tom, Dick, and Harry hit her Beaver Bong?

Well...

They're probably telling you the wrong story.

The Beaver Bong wasn't just some weird drug story.

It was one of those completely insane little chapters of my life that somehow makes perfect sense when you know exactly where I was at the time.

It was ridiculous.

It was obsessive.

It was probably a spectacular waste of time.

And somehow, it was also fucking brilliant.

Too bad Fishnet Boy wasn't around to see it.

I still think about that weird old guy every now and then.

Maybe if I ever build another one, I'll finally patent the damn thing.

And maybe I'll design it in his honor.

Maybe.

Because apparently I never learn.