WHO'S THAT KID IN THE BACK OF THE ROOM SETTING ALL HIS PAPERS ON FIRE?

   Scott would show up to hassle me at my Papa John's shift, we would go to punk shows, sneak into Rollins College dorms to watch Ren and Stimpy on Sunday mornings because our moms didn't have cable, etc. Suddenly Scott wasn't around anymore, and it turned out he robbed a jewelry store with some random guys and was living on a houseboat in the Gulf of Mexico. I didn't really believe it was true, the story was so insane. But sure enough, he was arrested on a houseboat, arraigned, and eventually released into a house arrest situation. He ended up living in a house seemingly alone, although I don't know how he afforded it. I was still in high school and lived at my mom's house. Anyway, Scott couldn't leave the house except to go to his shitty job at Golden Corral buffet restaurant, so his place became the hangout, partly because he needed company and partly because there were no parents around. There was always beer and guys tattooing each other in the garage with a homemade tattoo gun, listening the Stooges, Ramones, and Dead Kennedys. One of these tattoo guys crashing at Scott's dropped acid by himself one day and tattooed the Dead Kennedys logo on his own arm BACKWARDS. That was it for me: no tattoos, ever.  

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   One time Scott got into a bottle of whiskey and went missing from the garage for too long. I went into the house (which we were generally banned from), and the TV was blasting. I went to go turn it down, and Scott was passed out shirtless in a Lay-Z-Boy recliner with an almost-empty quart of whiskey in the crook of his arm. I turned down the TV and shouted his name. He didn't flinch. Then I heard a faint buzzing, and the tattoo gun had slid off the arm of the recliner while running and tattooed a faint blue scribble on his belly.

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