Is there a place for the hopeless sinner, who has hurt all mankind? (Bob Marley)

When I was fourteen, the eve of my fifteenth birthday in fact, I was lying in bed reading a book about civil unrest in the Middle East – a light read. It was a Friday night. This was what I did on Friday nights. Like I said, high school wasn’t really my time to shine. I had bigger fish to fry.

Scotch was hosting a big Christmas Eve party. Scotch turned holidays and quiet family Friday nights into wild party extravaganzas. She had a lot of friends and as far as I could tell none of them had a home, aside from a Volkswagen van or canvas tent. There were lots of sleepovers and my sleepovers I mean Woodstock was happening in our living room every weekend. My family still stuck to the kitchen though. Scotch circulated. Our house smelled like cannabis. The maid and my mother brainstormed new and innovative ways to clean but there was nothing that could get rid of it. It wasn’t just the smell, Scotch’s friends were messy. They were destroying our house, but it reached the boiling that night on the eve of my fifteenth birthday.

A belligerent looking bloke stumbled into my room. He had long brown hair, graced with a couple half-dreadlocks.

I looked up from my book and said, “Sorry buddy, the party is downstairs.”

He didn’t understand this. His glazed eyes weren’t open enough to register what was in front of him.

“Wrong room,” I repeated as he staggered another step into my personal space. Lock door, I noted to myself.

“Shh,” he said and closed the door behind him.

“Hey,” I said sternly and put down my book. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

“We got to party.”

“I will scream and if I do my father will be up here in a millisecond and you’ll regret ever setting foot in this room.”

“No regrets,” he said musically. For a second I thought he was going to start into a rendition of Bob Marley’s One Love, but instead he began quickly and unevenly trudging toward my bed. I leaped out before my bed caught his fall. In my oversized pink t-shirt I ran for the door. I was at the top of the stairs before I realized that I was about to race downstairs into a party of free love with no pants on. This was a problem.