“Skinful” was originally published on March 20, 2015, at Completely in the Dark. This version has been edited for Medium. Image courtesy Giesla Hoelscher.

Skinful

Addiction and Altered Consciousness Across Two Generations

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do
(What will you do?)
I’d like to go there now with you…

(What will we do there?)
We’ll get high.” — The Small Faces, “Itchycoo Park”

Solemn drumbeats.

Then a scratchy electric guitar chord from a boom box — Mad Dog’s cassette tape player — echoes through the SOS Printing basement pressroom.

“September ’77,” intones Peter Gabriel, “Port Elizabeth, weather fine. It was business as usual in Police Room 619…”

“Mad Dog,” is John Larson, head pressman at the print shop, squinting through smoke from a cigarette dangling from his lips, raising his ink knife in salute to the memory of Stephen Biko.

And me?

Just another day huddled over the light table, stripping negatives, burning and developing press plates. And suckin’ down beers after 4 p.m., sometime in the early 1980s.

Or, maybe the shop mood was mellow and the other pressman, Mark Huttner, popped in a cassette of Michael Franks’ Tiger in the Rain. Mark and Mad Dog would then step outside to light up a spliff, crack open some more beers, and chill to “Underneath the Apple Tree.”