Reality 86'd

During the summer of 2001, back when I was but a college livin' man at the University of California, Berkeley, I listened to Rollins Band's "Joy Riding With Frank" every single goddamn day. Each and every day from May to September whether I was sitting on BART, cruising to Safeway in my 1986 Mazda, or shutting my eyes trying to fall asleep at two in the morning after I'd finished watching The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, I had nothing but thirty-two minutes of hollerin', guitar bloops, and slappy bass fills rattling through my head. My roommate totally (deservedly) made fun of me for it, probably because he knew that it wouldn't be long before I'd come home late one night so jonesing to hear this song I would wind up snapping my headphones in half as I stumbled toward my bed.

This bed, I should point out, wasn't really even a bed at all. It was a twenty-five year old sleeping bag on top of a mattress pad on top of my olive green shag-carpeted bedroom, a bedroom which, I should also point out, wasn't really even a bedroom at all. It was our living room that'd been partitioned into a pretend bedroom by a plywood sheet that was screwed into the ceiling and decorated with charcoal-drawn orchids.

That was pretty much how I lived all through college. I slept on the floor and listened to shitty rock music from 1987.