Ponys Gaff was great, a home from home. This was true to the most exaggerated sense for Spinky, a man who was to prove, over the course of several years, to be one of the worlds great moochers.
Spinky doesn't visit, he auto-installs when you open the door.
Memory is my heroin. Frozen moments of time, self contained chunks that exist untethered from the infinity, I have a whole half-assed philosophy based around memory and the illusion of now. Mostly half-inched from Watchmen.
Even as I write this, I can feel myself sinking into the couch in Ponys living room, I can smell the old sweat and the hash smoke that permeated everything. I love how this all becomes timeless and how I can be there again anytime I think about it. I don't remember the actual conversations but there were recurring themes and plans hatched that float up sometimes.
There was a plan once, in anticipation of the coming millennium and the possible end of human history, for cigars. There was a connection, someone knew a man that might be able to get cannabis oil, and if we could get enough, and also source several ounces of high grade grass, then we could create monstrous cigars of a reality warping nature. The price per cigar would have been about £150 had we ever got that elusive oil. Everything else was ready to go and cigar making documents were procured, but it was not to be. Oh but the dream lives on. Someday, when I'm auld and have resumed the drinking habits of my youth, I'm going to start making enquires and rounding up certain senile people with a view to inducing group incontinence.
Which neatly brings me back to the Ballad of Spinky, or Verse Chorus Chorus Chorus.
Pony is a man of passions, when something hooks him he gets drawn in further than a reasonable man could, his imagination runs wild and boundaries get battered, bent, ruptured and sapped. Arty like.
Ponys future at the time was to be the Bong business, and his research was conducted in his living room with industrial bits of pipe and endless enthusiasm.
Little handy bongs and big bongs, with interchangeable parts and cutting edge bong-tech. There was the six-shooter, six pipe bowls on a rotating thingy so you could fill the six bowls at once and then smoke them sequentially, a real time saver for people who almost by definition are not actually in a hurry.
Pony also adapted the top of a HazMat suit for his bongs, it was a big yellow one with a rectangular plastic front window and gas mask that you had to strap on. Instead of a filter the mask attached to a big tubular bong and you sat there on the sofa looking at your friends through that scratchy plastic window while you smoked the bong without moving because the valves rendered movement unnecessary. It was weird and claustrophobic but sure it passed the time.
Spinky was always there, always. I mean I called over regularly but I went home too. And also spent some time upkeeping connections with other separate groups. But not the Spinkmeister, it must have driven Ponys girlfriend nuts, but the man was an institution, in the architectural sense of the word.
Anyhoo,myself and Spinky became great ol buddies, we both loved drinking to excess, james bond movies, pretty girls and being suave. We went on to have many adventures and Spinky introduced me to many people that went on to become good friends of mine. He introduced me to Crazy J in Crazys J's Snakepit, a small-time dealers gaff where Spinky had insinuated himself, as usual, and as usual had invoked the ire of the woman of the house, in this case it was the younger version of my friend Superfast.
Inevitably he ended up on my couch, it was only a matter of time. This caused some low level strife with Biffo, who technically owned half the couch and took an almost instant dislike to Spinky. I say almost-instant because it was more likely due to a fast and accurate evaluation of Spinkys character than anything instinctive. That sounds harsh, but the truth is I don't demand very high moral character from my friends, just that they understand why James Bond is the ultimate role model and appreciate the importance of getting mangled.
Nonetheless, the tenacious mooch managed to move house with us, which is a three-pronged tribute to Biffo's tolerance, Spinky's thick skin and my own responsibility-shirking prowess.
I never thought of Biffo as the woman of the house before, but it fits the pattern nicely as it was Biffo that finaly gave Spinky his marching orders.
One new years eve night we somehow managed to pull a pair of stone-cold foxes. Spinky realised he was onto a good thing and kept his girl for an epic four years or so, moving in together so he could mooch more efficiently. Things didn't work out with my girl, partially because she was not actually single during the period we were dating, and also because I was a mess. Interesting side-note here: the girls referred to us as "pretty boys", to this day I am very confused as to whether this constitutes a back-handed compliment or the regular kind.
The beginning of the end was the night that Spinky introduced me to his girlfriend's cousin. It was Mrs Spinkys birthday in Handels on Fishamble Street, loud as fuck with the worst bar service imaginable. Whats a man to do when he gets introduced to a beautiful girl in a loud bar? he sticks the head on her, of course. That worked out surprisingly well, and I married the beautiful girl a few years later. But the night ended badly for Spinky, walking home down Harcourt street he was ambushed by scumbags and took a kicking before they took his wallet. As an afterthought one of them stabbed him with a needle.
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