The first thing the room needed was to be dark

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Blankets on all the windows were indeed making the pot smoking room quite dark, but Mark was not satisfied. Oh it was tolerable when the dark of night was there to assist but despite their thickness, the blankets still glowed slightly with the dreaded daylight. Daylight that competed with the blacklight posters. This would not do.

The worst was when air currents in the room would cause a blanket to billow slightly. Especially in the middle of a bright and sunny day. Bright outside anyway. Mark was adopting a completely nocturnal existence at this point. Typical of his over-the-top way of getting into any activity, idea or project.

Deep in the darkness of his room, Mark would spend hours in there, often alone, listening to Pink Floyd and smoking bong hit after bong hit. I walked in one time and saw him barely looking at all like the friend with which I once played ping pong all afternoon in our barn loft. He was hovering over the cleaning tray, the thick, ubiquitous pot smoke standing still in the stagnant air.

When he was like this, Mark seemed hyper-aware of any change in the room’s atmosphere, especially in the light. Any movement might cause a sharp shaft of brilliance from the corner of a momentarily dislodged window blanket and send him skittering into the darkest corner like a disturbed vampire.

Something had to be done.

So on that morning after yet another epic party. After Mark and I had “smoked ourselves straight” and I found myself sitting with Hadley on a burning couch… it seemed that Ronnie, had come up with a solution. He was sure excited about it anyway. This made me suspicious. Ronnie didn’t get this pumped about solving a problem or helping a friend or even making the perfect pot smoking room. It had to be because his plan included doing something dangerous and illegal.

I was right.

And when they started pounding on Melvin’s door to get him involved, I knew it was something I would want to have no part in. Ronnie didn’t like Melvin, so for him to be insisting that “Geek Boy” needed to be in on this scheme, meant someone might just get arrested and he needed a patsy. Or… it was simply that Melvin had something essential to Ronnie’s plan.

The latter was exactly the case but as soon as I heard what was going down, I saw that my patsy idea could have easily been on Ronnie’s mind as well.

This may have been the beginning of the end for me. That my “good boy/man” sensibilities were beginning to overpower my desire for social acceptance and stopping me from participating in something I knew full well to be wrong on many levels. Of course I couldn’t possibly have been aware of anything like that at the time and there would be many more occasions in which I participated fully in deeds of arguably equal criminality and moral questionability.

I probably just didn’t go because I didn’t like Ronnie. I was scared of Ronnie and I didn’t like his influence on what we did and didn’t like him living there. All this was true… there was no doubt in my mind, but I wasn’t thinking about it at all in that moment because as Ronnie and the gang were excitedly talking about the plan with Mark (and soon with Melvin) …

The couch was still burning.

It really was on fire. But since the vynal completely encased the couch, it wasn’t even visibly smoking. It took me a lot longer than it should have to convince everyone to take it seriously. So I forced the issue.

I grabbed the biggest knife I could find and plunged it into the little cigarette hole (where I had burned my arm) and ripped the thing open. It immediately started smoking. A lot! And then it burst into flame.

THAT got everyone’s attention.

The house was in total chaos for a moment, but we were not complete stoner idiots (I would like to think) so soon someone smartened up and shouted for someone to get it the hell outta there. Three of us picked up the burning couch, carried it out through the conveinant door onto the deck just outside the kitchen and tossed it onto an equally conveinent snow drift below.

We then shoveled a bunch of snow on top of it and watched and listened with no small amount of interest, as the couch on which I… (just a few months before) had almost had wild and fun sex on with three hot young high school girls… smoked and sizzled and smoldered under a pile of fresh snow.

A great start to the day, eh? Oh but wait… we still had to hear Ronnie’s plan to improve the pot smoking room. Mark’s room. Remember that? Heh. Well of course we all wanted to hear what bright idea Ronnie had to successfully block all light from the room AND get some cooler things to add to the decor. As a bonus.

Ronnie’s idea was… road signs.

Yes, road signs. “They would be perfect”, Ronnie insisted. Perfect for blocking light in general. No more glowing blankets. Road signs would also be perfect for keeping the blankets from moving and letting that harsh light in on the sides.

And they would look so cool.

And Roomie had the plan on how to get it done too.

That’s where Melvin came in.

To be continued…