Underground Week 4

"Do they think it's weird yet?" my brother asked me relatively early on in the annals of the Opium Den. He meant our parents. The room had surpassed a certain threshold, a tipping point really between what could be considered 'normal' and what was noticeably creeping toward the deep end. Beside that, certain drug references were already in plain sight for those who knew what to look for - several broken clocks adorned the ceiling and walls and all were set to 4:20. Wall and ceiling art abounded of latent and not-so-latent implications. "I want to see what we can get away with," I answered him.
My father was once a professional musician - he dropped out of Ithaca College as a sophomore in 1969 to play with his band, called "Klondike," full time. In a place of honor above the door rests one of the Room's most cherished relics - a fluorescent pink bumper sticker that reads "Boogie with Klondike." It's position there predates the room's current function and dates to when my father used the room as an erstwhile, awkward office at some point. For some reason, that fact makes it much more valuable to me.
My dad remains an avid musician, and goes through periods of relative inactivity punctuated by months of intense practice and playing. He currently plays in a few local bands with other people of his stripe and uses the Room as a practice space. It has several natural advantages for this, but the fact that it is in the basement (and the aural implications of that) are lost on no one. As a result, musical equipment litters the room, although everything has a definite fixed place. The accoutrements include a killer vintage Fender Princeton Reverb amp, a few mic stands, my fathers acoustic and electric guitars (a Guild and a Stratocaster), my electric guitar (I live in a large apartment building in Cambridge where I can't use it), picks, metronomes, finger slides, capos, a duffel full of harmonicas, binders of sheet music and lots of electrical cords.
That my father uses the Room as his practice space lends a crucial legitimacy to the Opium Den. In it's absence, other elements of the family (mom) would likely find the room intolerable, and the fragile armistice that we've achieved might be shattered in the name of common sense, cleanliness, and sociability.
Come to think of it, it is odd that my dad has been so cool about it - he genuinely seems to only enjoy the extra atmosphere that the bizarre surroundings afford and hasn't once made so much as a comment in the spirit of my mother's thinly veiled disdain. In fact, I distinctly remember a few benign observations that almost amount to compliments.
There is little conflict of room usage when I am home on the odd weekend; although occasionally my dad sets up shop to practice for an hour or two and I give him the space and time he needs. Sometimes, we even play together in the room, though lately our overlapping music interests are limited to less popular stuff that I have introduced to him as well as some universal classic rock. When we do, I feel most surprised that not even a mention of the less-than-sane roomscape around us is forthcoming.
Overall, there's no denying it's the seclusion afforded by the room that is it's biggest draw for all who use it. It's so far from any regularly used space or travel conduit in the house that almost never do visitors or even some members of the family have reason to enter it. This quality makes for a slight feeling of exclusivity regarding it. When I'm visiting home, however, the place does feel almost entirely mine despite the fact that my father uses it to practice and my brother (who lives in NYC and is home more often than I) sometimes brings friends down there to watch movies or whatever.
The door has several locks on it, including a few that I moved from the door of an adjacent room: a hook-and-eye, a chain, a padlock-ready latch and the lock on the heavy doorknob itself. I almost never use the locks and have no real reason for them to be there, but they're a weird comfort nonetheless.