The 6am bong stem incident.

A horrible nights sleep last night.


Listening to The Mountain Goats on repeat trying to block out the psychotic mess that share-housing can sometimes become as the sun came up. Other peoples' amphetamine habits and my inability to sleep are a recurring theme in my posts and this is going to be another one of those stories.


So I get home and the whole house is sparkling with cleanliness and nervous energy, the coffee table has been unburied, the bathroom is glowing white and our kitchen is immaculate, Mark and Gav are standing to attention staring at me with such intense grins that I thought their cheeks were going to tear. It's all too weird so I get a glass of water and walk out back for a smoke.


Of course I am followed.


MARK: "Gav and me having been smoking a bit of ice."

I looked at them again and see the lost on Mars look in their eyes, things are starting to make sense and that's when Mark hits me with the big guns.


MARK: "I solved it, my money problems, got all this meth and a ten bag of eckies on credit if I sell it even after I pay the dealer back I'll clear $380 easy. Oh course me and Gav had to have a bit, just to tell how pure it is, pure as fuck man, so I after I cut it I will..."


At this point I had to jump in, listening to a person recount get rich quick schemes that can get us killed by bikies are hard enough to take from someone who isn't speeding but from someone speeding on the very gear they haven't yet financed and can't afford? I look at Gav, he has the fear and I have a sick feeling in my stomach.


I asked the question, didn't want to know but I needed to hear it;


ME: "So how much have you used?"


MARK: "Oh well we smoked a couple of points each and then I've done a few lines and..." He must have heard me groan because he decided take a different approach "but when we started cooking up we'll make heaps of coin [insert a growing sense of dread]. Dangerous business you know but you gotta be ready cos if some cunt walks through that door to do harm you've gotta take matters into your own hands and stab the motherfucker, you've gotta be fucking hard. You've gotta defend your shit! Fucking kill him with scissors when we get our own lab going we're going to be fucking rich"


Gav's not saying much but he looks like his insides are vibrating at warp speed and he's gripping the porch rail white knuckled eye's the size of saucers.


It was after midnight when Mark put Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb' on repeat, over and over till dawn. The whole time he is freaking out about a scar on the back of his newly shaven head he's never noticed before stopping every fifteen minutes or so to let rip with a childish whine and moan about his need for a bong; "I can't do it man, joints are not giving me anything anymore!" We don't have a cone or a stem and neither Gav nor I could really care less so Mark is stuck complaining in vain.


I know it is futile but I decide to go to bed to escape the endless Pink Floyd and continuous circular diatribe about unrequited bong longings and mysterious scars.


The Floyd doesn't end and it sounds like their is an athletics carnival being held in the corridor outside my door. Change jingling, plates crashing to the floor, unravelled laughter and that fucking song playing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and then...

NOTHING

At about 6am everything stops dead and I emerge from my room, the house is dark and still, not a sound until...

BANG

...the door smashes open and Mark comes tumbling in red faced and puffed holding a length of obviously stolen garden hose in one hand and a steak knife in the other.


MARK: "Fuck, got caught man, I needed this, it's for my bong. Went next door [insert feeling of sharp chest pains] and was all stealth down their driveway but I was cutting the hose and the lady was in the basement doing laundry, she was staring straight at me through the window so I thought fuck it cut the hose and ran!"

ME: "Which hose?"

MARK: "The one to her washing machine."

ME: "But wasn't she doing her laundry?"

MARK: "Yeah, but...[I am no longer listening]