Originally posted: March 25, 2004.
I was just listening to Lagwagon Hoss and was blasted with some old memories from college. If I believed in nostalgia, I probably would have just had it. In my senior year, I lived in a rad house with my brothers Dre and Chris, and pals Leo and Freaky. This house was crazy – almost every bedroom was huge (except for Chris’s – that was more like a closet) and had a door to the outside. We had a lot of fun in the house – pounding Budweisers, smoking cigarettes inside (remember those days?), blasting punk rock… Good stuff.
One of the songs on Hoss is called Violins, and, man, we couldn’t get enough of that tune. Blasted it all the time when we were slamming cheap beers in preparation of going out on the town. You remember how it worked in college, right? You’d drink as much as possible before going out, so you wouldn’t have to spend as much when you got to the bar…
Well, I remember one time we were blasting Violins and got so stoked, we found ourselves in an impromptu air guitar jam session. Some songs rock so hard that the fact that you and your buddies are all playing air guitar doesn’t seem quite so lame…
So, I was thinking I would write a quick treatise on air guitar. But then my memory started rollin’…
Rolled out of Leo’s room, which is where I recall the air-jam took place, rolled through the dirty-ass kitchen, around the corner, down the hallway with the strange aqua-colored concrete floors and Mafia photos on the walls, and rolled into my bedroom…
My bedroom sucked.
It was big. Tons of potential for that thing. But, since I have no sense of class and spent most of my college years single, there was no way the room was going to look anything but lame. Lame posters, dirty floors, and a messy bed. That was it. Oh, and a desk that was not so much a desk, but rather an unpainted, unstained, wooden door laid horizontal across two stacks of cinder blocks. That was my desk.
Oh, before I go on with this pointless tale, I should probably mention that my bedroom also had it’s own bathroom. The bathroom was also huge. And, for some reason, the toilet sat on top of a raised section of the floor. Not sure why it was raised, but it really made the toilet feel like a throne. You sat on that thing, and you were supreme, man. Not even the roaches could get up there…
So where was I? Oh yeah, my stupid boring room. Well, I’ve resigned to the fact that I have no style, but damnit, I hate mundane shit. I’d much rather someone see something of mine and think, “that completely sucks” than not think anything at all.
Hence, the ponytail.
So one day I decided it was time to renovate the room. But what to do? Well, I had no money to spend, no style to lend, but I was weird and I had a weird friend. So, I called Leo into the room and told him my idea.
“I want my desk to be really tall…”
The goal was established. It was time to get to work.
We grabbed an old desk that had been left behind by the southern frat boys who lived in the house before us. We grabbed my fake-wood dresser that stood at about 5 ft. We grabbed the cinder blocks and the wooden door. We grabbed some purple fabric that was left over from a period-piece movie I directed for one of my classes. We grabbed a couple lanterns and skull – props from the same movie.
We had our materials. We had our vision. It was go-time.
We got to work on the desk, and a couple hours later our work was complete. We had created a new desk that was so big, and so stupid, it would be more aptly described as a big dumb fucking monolith.
The cinder blocks were stacked up to be at a level height with the dresser. The wooden door was laid on top of the dresser and extended over to the rickety cinder block piller. The actual work area was now about 4-5 ft high. The left-over fratboy desk sat underneath, and perpendicular to, the wooden desk workarea. A shitty wooden chair was placed on the top of the frat boy desk. You could sit on the chair, which was on the desk, and comfortably work on the 4-5 ft high horizontal door. The purple fabric was laid over the door, covering the desk/chair combo underneath. The two lanterns were placed on either side of the door. The skull sat in the middle.
When it was complete, the monolithic desk looked like a cheesy prop for a 10 ft tall Las Vegas magician. Man, this thing was big. I knew at this point that when I would sit at my desk and study, I would be closer to the ceiling than the floor.
It was awesome…
Leo and I stood back and observed our work. I turned to Leo, and he was just shaking his head in quiet disbelief. And envy, I can only imagine…
For the rest of the year I would sit on top of the chair, on top of the frat boy desk, and read my textbooks on my 4-5 ft high wooden door workspace. When I studied, I was higher than my bong-hitting classmates ever would be, man..
Sometimes folks would enter my room from the door that led to the outside, look up and see me sitting at my mammoth desk wearing a shitty plaid robe and gloves with the fingers cut-off, smoking cigs, and know they were in the presence of true architectural wonder. Or in the presence of a big tall rickety piece of purple shit. One or the other, I’m sure…
What a wonderful desk. A HUGE wonderful desk.
I miss you, big desk.
One day we’ll be reunited, big desk. Keep my seat warm for me, old friend…
