Last Friday, August 30, I got a letter from my best friend, Dan. He was coaching kids at this summer camp at Stokes State Forest in North Jersey. We had talked about writing letters to each other in college, so I decided to get us started by sending one to him at the camp. It gave me a chance to reflect on some things. His response was cool.
Ad --- I really enjoyed your letter. You said you looked up to me! That surprised me because I've always looked up to you! I guess that's why it works. No real competition or quest for domination – just vibes, if you understand.
The same day I got his letter I found out he was dead. He went on a pizza run and was killed in a pointless car accident. It’s hard to believe your best friend is dead when you’ve just read a letter he sent you. I still can’t get my head around it. The details of the accident don’t matter; they don’t change anything.
Dan and I became friends at the beginning of junior year. That’s only two years, but a best friend can change your life in an instant. We were about to leave Beatwater to be college freshmen. Dan used to joke about this tiny seam in time when August turned to September. It marked the chapters of your life, like between different grades or high school to college. The seam got a little bigger with each step. He tried to scare me going into senior year, saying I wouldn’t be able to handle Advanced Physics with Mr. Duxal. It was just like playing Donkey Kong with him. He’d yell ‘first level, first level’ over my shoulder. That was Dan being Dan; keeping me from doubting myself. But, one of us dying and disappearing into the seam; that was never a part of the story.
It’s almost been a week. I’m still numb.
I don’t know what to do. I fade in and out and keep mumbling to myself.
We looked at big art history books in study hall because we weren’t allowed to read Thrasher or other magazines in school. Art books were the most interesting option. No one else checked them out of the school library so we had a steady supply. Then we got hooked on certain artists. Goya (the great Spanish painter, not the canned beans) was one of our favorites. In 1820, when he was sick, old, alone and in despair, he painted The Dog right on the wall of his house. There’s no foreground or background, just a vertical abyss of yellow-brown sludge. All you see is a doggie’s head, struggling to stay above the surface. In my nightmares, I don’t see the painting, because I’m in it. The sludge is enveloping me.
Dan and I are meant to be alive and living, elsewhere, like in that Milan Kundera book. But life is saying ‘Fuck you, you’re Goya’s dog. Deal with it’.
After Dan’s funeral some family and people I didn’t know went back to his mom’s house. I was his only friend there. All the other kids had already left for college. Some of them gathered last week at Joe’s Pizza. I didn’t go. I was sick of hearing people saying they were sorry about him dying.
I sat on the living room sofa, not moving or talking. My body aches. People didn’t stay at the house for long. What can you possibly say to the mom of a recently deceased teenage son? ‘What’s in the potato salad?’ or ‘Let me know if you need anything?’ Need anything? How about bringing Dan back?”
I didn’t plan to be the last person there; it just happened that way. Mrs. Knowles brought me a beer, kicked off her shoes and sat down across from me. This summer, if we were staying in for the night, she would let Dan and I have one beer each. I squeezed the Bud, then took a sip. We sat in silence.
Mrs. Knowles is a cool mom. She doesn’t have that divorced anger. You had to be careful around other kids with divorced parents. One time at Len Scarf’s house, his mom poured me an iced tea and said ‘The more accurately we think we know someone, the less we actually know them, right, Adam?’ I wasn’t sure how to respond. The edge in her voice turned dark. ‘Life’s full of disappointments. You have to learn to deal with them. That’s real talk, right there.’ She threw me into this dark dimension. All I wanted was a cold drink.
I realized Górecki’s Third Symphony was playing on Dan’s boombox. You feel it before you hear it. The bass notes sneak up on you.
I gestured toward the boombox and whispered “Górecki”. My throat was sore from crying.
“I forgot I pressed play.” Mrs. Knowles said.
“We listened to this when we skateboarded.”
“This? It’s different from your favorites…. like, Squirrel Bake.”
“Bait. My grandfather turned me on to it. Górecki, not Squirrel Bait”
“I wish I’d met your grandfather. You talk about him a lot.”
“I don’t know if I should tell you this, please don’t be mad. Dan and I used to sneak into the high school at night to skateboard. We would listen to Górecki.”
“The high school? The place you’ve been clamouring to escape?”
“It was for the smooth hallways. We’d play the Górecki on the stereo in the music room. The three movements are 54 minutes long. We’d leave when it ended. We didn’t want to push our luck.”
“How did you break in? Yes, It was breaking and entering, even if you were students.”
“You know those domed skylights? They look like bubbles on the roof when you drive down the school entrance? The one on C-Wing was unlocked. I have no idea how we knew about it. It’s possible we were having a look around and discovered it was unlocked.
“You just happened to be on the school roof at night with your skateboards? Mm-hmm.” Mrs. Knowles shook her head, smiled and looked out the window. It dawned on me that Dan might not have wanted me to mention this to his mom. It’s too late now. At least she was smiling.
“The school district spent months repairing the school roof. There were ladders laying around. We were roofers last summer, remember? It’s hard to pass up a good ladder.”
“Then what? Did you sweep chimneys or leave poems in a girl’s locker?”
“What? No! All we wanted to do was skate. We’d race around the hallways together, exploring the contours. There is literally nowhere else to skate in this town. It was cool when it was hot outside, warm when it was cold and dry when it was wet. We didn’t ollie or grind, we just cruised. It was ideal.”
“Sounds like it…”
“I think I wasn’t as ready as Dan to leave high school behind. The last time we were there was in early August. I was skating by the main entrance and I noticed that one of the doors wasn’t chained, so I gently pushed it open. I couldn’t help myself. I was curious if they were locking the doors properly.”
“Ah, you were trying to protect the school?”
“Well, yeah, kind of! Then an alarm went off. Dan was skating by the gym. He yelled ‘GO!’. We raced to the C-wing, up the ladder and across the roof. We got to the tree line as Marty Tartan came racing down the driveway in his green station wagon.” Mr. Tartan was the Vice Principal. He was worse than the cops.
“Dan was mad I set off the alarm, but totally psyched we got Marty Tarty out of bed. We didn’t have time to grab the Górecki. The second movement, the Tranquillissimo, was playing when Marty arrived. We heard he yelled at Mr. Mauro, the music teacher and accused him of leaving the music playing. Mr. Mauro yelled back at Marty ‘why would I play the great Górecki all night?’ People thought they were arguing about Wayne Gretzky, the hockey player. It was hilarious.
Dan made me buy him a new CD of the Third Symphony. It’s the one in the boombox.”
“You two…. I’m glad I didn’t know about any of this.”
“Yeah.” I sighed more than said. We drifted into silence for a few minutes. Górecki’s second movement began. The first minute of it sounds hopeful before it gets heavy again. I got up to turn the volume down a little. “I think about Dan by not thinking about him. Because, he’s still here with us. You don’t need to think about someone who’s with you all the time.” Mrs. Knowles looked like she was going to cry.
“I feel like that, too.”
Do you remember our absolute most favorite band?”
“Squirrel Bake? Kidding. Of course, I remember The Go-Betweens.”
“They had two songwriters. Dan liked Robert Forster, while I liked Grant McClennan’s songs. Well, we both loved both of them. Our favorite Robert song is “Head Full of Steam”. I talk-sang the opening line.
I'd never met her type she ignored me and that's alright
Never to be friends or my body lie naked on her floor
“The song is so Dan. If girls at school ignored us he never let it bother him. He could turn an unrequited crush into a zen art. His ‘head full of steam’ was his optimism and confidence. He helped me believe in myself. Okay, so we never actually laid naked on any girl’s floor, but we dreamed about it. We knew it would happen, someday.
The song ends with the line ‘go forward, go forward now’. I hear Dan telling me to go forward, but I’m struggling. I don’t even know if I can get up from this sofa. I don’t want Dan to become this shoebox of memories, but at the same time there’s so much I want to tell you about him. Stories and these essential things he thought. Even if he’s yelling at me not to. Maybe that’s why I want to tell you. I like hearing him yell at me.”
Mrs. Knowles smiled and said “I want to hear it all, anytime you’re ready.”
We both took sips of beer. The cicadas pulsed and droned outside. That was Dan’s favorite; the ubiquitous buzzing chorus on late summer nights. I could see lightning bugs in the backyard, too. They don’t make any sound, but they still have seats in the symphony. Beatwater could be beautiful sometimes. My Bud was sweaty from the humidity. I rolled the can across my forehead and returned it to my lap. It was still nearly full.
In memory of Harris Cohen, Ron Cardos and James Baxter.
Stumbled across this digging through Facebook. It was definitely a surreal experience. I remember we had all "celebrated" or at least "acknowledged" we were the first class in a while to make it through senior year without a tragedy. Then come summer Harris, of all people, was lost. Then soon after Ron, which shocked me more because I'd been closer to him. (I was unaware of James' passing until now). I know others have left, John Cleary as of recent, but yeah, that summer infused a sense of mortality into me that otherwise hadn't been there.
This is so good!