I used to hang out at a home boy’s house a lot when I was growing up.  They always had plenty of generic soda which I could mooch, and occasionally some manner of snack food as well.  He lived in the attic, which ran the full length of the little house and had small windows at each end.  The most central area was the room, such as that was, and there were side storage bits walled off with sheetrock.  Was it painted?  I don’t remember that detail.

What I do remember is that the place was fucked up as all hell.  Some kids can’t maintain a clean room.  Some take that to another level.  I remember one time when we were running a brazier of dubious contents crafted from an old pop can, it got bumped and poured burning wax on a crumpled pair of pants that were tangled with a disused phone cord and other debris.  Before taking the time to extinguish the fire, he had to point and exclaim “liar,” in reference to the old rhyme about “pants on fire, hanging from a telephone wire.”

The important takeaway here is that this was the kind of room where dirty laundry was twisted up with garbage.  There was a broken rotary fan on the floor and one of my friend’s friends who had ADHD nearly as bad as he did put a dirty sock on the blades, and poured an old pop onto the sock so it sprayed around the room like a sprinkler.  The garbage was feet high and ran the whole length of the house.

My homeboy (of my old friends this is the one I usually refer to as ‘My Tech Support Guy’) never finished his pop, which is weird to me, because until I hung out with him I hardly ever got sweet drinks, so I’d drain them to the last drop.  This dude had cans everywhere with the bottom sixth or so still juicy.  Over time, the sugar inside would turn into syrup or crystallize into grains inside the cans.  We referred to this as “iggy pop,” after the famous musician.  I expect it was his coinage, not my own.

At length, I resolved to help him clean the entire room.  As we worked, we poured those cans of iggy pop into a bucket, so we could crush them for recycling without splooging creepiness all over our hands.  (that was for other occasions hey-o!  uh, nvm.)  This bucket then was known as the Iggy Bucket.  I don’t recall how much igg was in there by the time we poured it out, nor if we had to empty it to add more at some point.

The title is misleading.  I never did sip from the iggy bucket, even on a dare, and I doubt anybody ever did.  However, observe the scene…

I’m on my Tech Support Guy’s bed, he’s sitting just over the foot of it in an office chair, playing video games on his PC.  We were in these positions often, I the fly on the wall observing gaming history but not participating in it, except as a commenter.  To my left was the table, mounded with garbage and cans of iggy pop.  Also perched at the edge of the table, a nice cold generic root beer for me to consume.

I reached for the table, I grabbed a can, not noticing the external temperature was warm, the surface lacking in condensation.  I sipped grainy old root beer.  I commented, this is bad.  I was mocked appropriately.  Do not drink the iggy pop.

I made the same mistake a few minutes later.  The grainy warm pop was no better the second time.

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