I’m sitting in this living room. I look around and everything looks soviet. The couch, the carpet, the framed mirror covering the upper half of one of the walls and the TV were all contributing to this decorum. The only thing missing was the portrait of a glorious leader wearing a green uniform with an assorted cap. I somehow liked it. It was comfortable and it felt warm. It felt homely.
I soon realized that I was in none other place than my family’s apartment from this 1970 block from downtown Bucharest. I was still in middle school, maybe grade 5 or 6, and had all those middle school thoughts, concerning mostly video games, sweets and neighborhood adventures with my fellow peers from school. Speaking of fellow peers, I soon reminded myself that my two good buddies, Robert and Daniel, were about to arrive at any minute. I was waiting for them with the typical juvenile enthusiasm of that age.
Me and the two fellas planned something rather interesting. For some reason we were supposed to do LSD that day. And the place for that was the living room of my parents’ apartment. I didn’t know where my parents were and it didn’t seem that they were home at all. But there was another person there, breathing that same air from the soviet style living room. And that was my grandma. She was dozing off on her armchair, opening her eyes every now and then to hear this news anchor from TV talking about some corruption scandal in the nation’s parliament.
I had told granny earlier that day that two buddies from school would come and that we needed the living room to hang out. She had semeed alright with it back then but later on it looked as if she had forgotten completely. So it was time to refresh her memory.
“Granny. You remember that Robert and Daniel are coming here, right?” I said.
“Oh yes, dear. Your friends. Are they here already?” She woke up from her inertia.
“Almost. So granny, do you think you could maybe move to another room? We will be here doing something, uhm, just our thing, you know? We might get loud and stuff. We don’t want you to feel weird or anything.” I explained.
“It’s all fine, dear. I’m a bit deaf anyway. I’ll just sit here. You know how much I love this armchair.” She said casually.
“I get that granny. But you know, we need this space. We just want to be in our world and an adult like you sharing this space would make things strange for us. I don’t know how to explain this to you. It would really mean a lot to us if you would be somewhere else while we are all here.” I went on, hoping for a change of heart.
“Now listen here, you little brat”, she responded with indignation, “do you think I care about what you and your other brat friends are doing when you hang out? I’m a tired old woman that just wants to sit here in this armchair. I just want to close my eyes and let the time pass. I didn’t live all this life to get told what to do by a little punk who doesn’t know shit about anything. As long as you three twats won’t break anything in the house or set anything on fire I couldn’t care less about whatever it is that you’re doing. You understand? So give it up. I ain’t leaving my armchair!” Oh boy, did she get defensive.
Right when I was thinking about the right thing to say to granny, I heard the doorbell. Robert and Daniel finally arrived. We embraced and as soon as we went to the living room their mood changed a little bit. Of course, they simulated a bit of enthusiasm when they greeted my grandma but then they both gave me the look which said something like: “What the fuck, man? This place was supposed to be empty, just for us. Granny wasn’t part of the plan, yo.”
I made a sign that it was ok nonetheless. And as the three of us saw granny closing her eyes and letting out a snore from time to time, we proceeded with what had to be done. We all took over the couch. I got the LSD stamps out of my pocket and each of us took his portion.
Soon enough a lot of fantastic colors, clouds, auras and magic veils could be seen by our eyes all over that soviet apartment. Grandma was still there, sleeping and she was also displayed in the same colors. She was even glowing, in fact. At some point we all believed that the living room was in fact part of a space ship. We all went into hyperspace and grandma was always there with us, sleeping, glowing and transcending. In the Universe of our middle school minds, a soviet themed spacecraft filled with so many colors and auras was on its way to a galaxy far far away, breaking the speed of light.
So our space vehicle just kept on going. I wanted to wake up granny to tell her what she was missing. But someone else had to wake up instead. The dreaded 6am alarm cancelled every single LSD effect and I had to leave my warm bed and face the December cold once again. I could sure use some LSD now.