When I was 18, and had just moved to Baltimore, a big sasquatch looking dude nick-named Ron Bone, who worked in the grocery store where I had just landed a job, offered to rent me a room—a couch, actually—for half my pay, about $50 per week. Thus I ended up living in a stoner apartment over top of the Golden Key diner and the Wilken's House bar. As a non drug user with a big knife, I was the watchdog, living at the end of the long hallway above the unlooked door to the narrow stair where Ron Bone's drug dealers, biker buddies, and sluts, would call at any time. The other two dudes were Paul—legally insane and on SSI—and Dave, a man whore whose girlfriend paid his portion of the rent. They each had a room.

Ron Bone had an XT-500 dirt/street bike that we used for our transportation. He looked like a gorilla on a tricycle on this thing. I sat my narrow ass on the back and carried our beer, and our groceries, and our beer, and occasionally Christmas presents for our mothers and friends, earning undying fame for falling off the back of the bike at a stop light, but saving the beer as my back smacked on the asphalt and my body cushioned the fall of the bottled nectar of our suicidal gods. This six months of living with the giant degenerate pseudo-biker was quite an experience. All of his friends and our co-workers were stoners. I was the only one that only drank—and that was new for me. When people would try to talk me into getting high, Ron Bone would say, "No, don't—he's already there. This is the only dude I can talk to when I'm tripping."

Well, Ron Bone would drink a case of beer, eat a bunch of acid, smoke a bong, maybe take a horse tranquilizer, and then "Go out on a mission."

He liked the fact that I did not get involved in his insane crime sprees, which kind of made me a priest-chronicler at his stoned midnight confession. He came back in the middle of the night with books [he robbed a catholic book store to get me some religious books, which I returned], CB radios, stereos, TVs, potted plants and even angels, Virgin Mary's and gargoyles from graveyards and churches. He would then hide this stuff and tell me his story, so I could tell it back to him the next day while he began to get drunk again. The missions were like his amnesiac dream quests.

Ron Bone could drink a case of wine or two cases of beer without pissing. He would then wake up and piss for so long that the toilet would flush from the added volume. His was not a healthy lifestyle. I was the beer guy, only paying half rent, hauling the beer, and chopping firewood on the living room floor where I slept—usually in the from of railroad ties that we dragged up out of the parking lot around back. The flew in the chimney did not work, so you would have to sit on the floor or die. This was cold winter 80/81, I think.

The long access hallway from the stairs was only 2.5 feet wide. Ron Bone, in a rare show of industry, applied Stucco to this long narrow hallway. I didn't get it, until, the morning after one of his five weekly parties. That morning, as I hid my bowie knife in a couch cushion so it wouldn't be stolen while I was at work, he said, "Hey Mork [his nickname for me], let's check and see how good the party was last night."

We found flannel at shoulder level, some skin, denim at hip level, and even a tuft of blond hair, the sight of which pleased him greatly.

Ron Bone was evil.

One night he drank me under the table—not that we actually had one—and went out for "a mission!" I had a first aid kit, so when he came home slashed up he tried to revive me to treat him and failed, wrapping the gashed open forearm in one of Bone Head's [his side kick with the car he used to transport stolen goods and dope, who did not even possess a real name] jackets and passed out next to me.

The next day, as we duct taped his forearm closed, he told me what had happened.

He rode out and tried to steel a lawn mower, but felt conspicuous hauling it on his bike. He dropped it when two guys in a pickup tried to run him over for stealing it, and sped off into the city. He rode, and rode and rode, until he ended up in this run down neighborhood with no cars, with seemingly nothing worth stealing. He pulled up to this crowd of dudes drinking whiskey and smoking dope in the middle of a street and asked them for directions.

They ignored him.

He said, "What are you stupid?"

Three of the guys turned to look at him, a white guy, and two black guys. In response to their stares he said, "Of course your stupid—you're partying with niցցers."

Then, all dozen or so of the men turned and looked at him, all black except the first man, and he said, apologetically, "Oh, you are niցցers."

They rushed him, and by the time he got his bike wheeled around and throttled it one was running beside him and slashed open his left forearm with a razor or knife. The gash seemed kind of wide for a razor to me.

We went to work, and then went drinking that night at a place that had a giant stuffed polar bear in the lobby. After eating two horse tranquilizers Ron Bone danced with the bear. Eventually, in some frightening dive, we met up with some Lumbee Indian bikers in Highlandtown. They didn't like the looks of me. But after he assured them that I was the most insane person he knew, they decided I could live. I had no idea how manipulative this guy was, or yet understood that he was a physical coward, cunning diplomat and convincing story teller, who was cultivating an image for me as his psychotic—stab you in the alley—twerp assassin.

Although he was a hulking athletic man, he never, ever used his size to intimidate and always practiced soft "I'm your best friend" diplomacy. I think he was 22, having just dropped out of College.

I was under his counter-culture spell, which did not seem so bad since we both hated the world and he—degenerate though he was—did not try to get me to compromise my ethics, or so I thought, and pointed to my "weird 'Mork from Ork' honor code" as the key to our friendship. I was, of course, being played, but still had a year before I figured it out.