In the Basement Chapter 1

These are the times I find fugacious – by myself, but surrounded by others – in my own world. I flip through records in a begrimed and decrepit cardboard box.
Flip. Flip.
Black Flag, Slip it In. Flip.
Beck, Mellow Gold. Flip.
Jay Reatard. Fugazi. Big Black. Replacements.
Flip. Flip. Flip. “Ah, Pavement. This alright?” I ask, holding the record up for approval.
No one answers.
“Randle, when do your parents get home?” someone says.
I take a sip of beer and exhale my satisfaction. “Hello, Randle, when do your parents get home, we want to spark this,” my friend asks, igniting his lighter and holding it up to the joint in his mouth.
“Nah, outside,” I reply.
A chosen few get up fitting their arms into the sleeves of their jackets. John, his jacket is flannel - blue and yellow and lined with wool. His shoulder length hair tucked back behind his ears and secured by a white, backwards trucker hat with the slogan, ‘Grim City Super Rat.’ “Well I’m having a cigarette,” he says taking out another beer from the fridge.
John followed Eric, a leather jacket clad fellow with tight black jeans – his hair gelled into the same position since elementary school. Reggie was amongst this pack as well, supporting short blond hair with mutton chops and glasses. The cigarette hanging out of his mouth accentuates his flannel jacket and ripped jeans.
As they go outside, I lie on my back and listen to the music. Vinyl sounds like ecstasy in my basement. I have it all worked out – the speakers are tilted just slightly as to face me for the ultimate in home music experience. I’m lying; my speakers are from, ‘Mike’s,’ the local thrift store. I can only picture myself having something worth stealing.
I turn to this music because my friends came over on this rainy Saturday evening, ready for cigarettes and beer. I don’t mind the beer, it’s the cigarette, I’ve recently quit and I was sick of waiting for a good time to do it. The problem is - there is never a good time to quit smoking, only now, and cold turkey no less. Saturday nights are lonely in our small suburb just outside of Toronto. Your typical small town boredom haunted us relentlessly, so much as to take baseball bats to mailboxes, egg cars, light garbage cans on fire, but we had outgrown these mischieves many years previous. We were now young men, angry, unemployed, and raised by spoiled, free-spirited parents who had for the most part, forgotten we existed. Too self absorbed and in denial to the possibility anything had gone to shit. Oblivious.
Here, the days were long and the nights even longer. But oddly, I seemed to be the only one wanting to get out. Get away from it all. But for now, I’ll drink to that.