I probably couldn’t count the amount of jokes I still say today that I can attribute to my friend Ronnie. We used to skateboard a lot in college, and just when a regular joke would be getting old with anyone else was right about where a Ronnie joke was starting to get good. Aw, is that beeper gum? Gimmie a piece… Without fail if someone was wearing a beeper on their waistline, they’d get that from him. I still say it all the time now and it makes absolutely no sense, as there is no longer beepers or beeper gum amongst the general population. Another one, which I’m not even sure what it was in reference too, was, “Aww baby.. why you gotta be so stuck up…” It was the stock answer to, well, pretty much anything. And if ever he saw some Germans, it would be, “Dieses Jamskellr ist jungenfrie?” I’d guess he heard a German talking about Jungle music, the one-two punch of comedic set-ups, and never forgot it.

I could fill a book with Ronnie stories, from meeting him as the skater dude who was always late to our History of Science class, to the time he almost seriously convinced our other friend to inconspicuously “sack” a crushes pillow to get her used to his musk. Throughout the 90s though, Ronnie would never walk into an apartment or slacker crash-pad without saying, “What kind of stack you have up in this piece?” He’d then continue on, naming every funny porno-magazine. “You got some Oui? Swank? Aw…I know you have a Victoria’s Secret catalog…” Again, I still say this all the time and it makes absolutely no sense. The least likely the house is to have an actual “stack” the funnier it is. Nothing like walking into a million-dollar Hollywood Hills home and the first thing coming to your mind being, “Aw yea.. I wonder what kind of stack they have up in this piece.”

I also wonder if there are a few twenty-year-olds reading this and thinking, “What’s a stack?” So I’ll break it down: once upon a time, in a galaxy not that far away but completely devoid of the internet, a man assembled his tools for, um, “clearing”, in the form of paper. Paper is this stuff that is formed by sawdust bashed into a pulp and flattened so that images could be printed upon it. A man would hide this “stack” of pornographic images, unless he was in in a foreign war-zone army or a fraternity, because it was socially frowned upon to partake in such things as “masturbation”. It was in this sea of collective denial about something that was as common as drinking water where Ronnie wallowed gleefully with his embarrassing inquisitions, and it was always funny.

One Sunday morning a few years ago, a friend and I went to get coffee and ended up having the bro version of the 24-hour date, where time disappears and you just keep thinking of more things to do to continue the fun times. One of our stops was a friend’s house who was just getting up and not really “on the same page” as our caffeinated and excited selves. As he was trying to ignore us, we got on his computer and perused the history; the modern version of turning over the house and finding the stack. He was only mildly amused, and actually pretty cool about it, but we were just crying. Tears of laughter. Because not only can you take a walk through his masturbatory processes, but you get to see the finisher. Which in this case, unfortunately, turned out to be some gnarly porno pic with a spare-tired male porn-star getting it done with some equally gnarly woman. “THIS?!?” My friend was saying as I was gasping for air through tears and laughter. “This is what finally brought it home?!?”

So I guess there are advantages to the new school, it’s just sad that a stead-fast, dependable and all around unselfishly satisfying friend such as the stack had to die a quick death for the sake of progress. Next time you’re having a drink, pour a little out for a homey that is gone, but will never be forgotten. A homey you can forever pay tribute too by exclaiming “what kind of stack do you have up in this joint…” whenever you walk into someone’s space, without a care if they have any idea what you are talking about.