luz

there's a line, somewhere, a line that marks the beginning of saying too much.

can you feel it?

i had this friend. his name was kevin. he was gay in an obvious way--my favorite.

one time when we were high school seniors he went on my annual family beach trip with me. he had just started smoking pot. we smoked weed and then we went swimming in the pool. we walked on the beach at night. one of those nights the combination of the chlorine and the pot smoke finally and truly fucked up our eyes. we were walking on the beach and we walked up on a stranger's boardwalk and there we found a hose. he squatted down, holding one eye open with his fingers. with the other hand, he let the hose pour water into his eye. his face was red. his eye was red. it was bulging from the way he was holding it open. I laughed until my eyes burned too much to open anymore. he led me blind back to the house.

another time he had a dream that this bitch-ass rich prep schoolmate of ours was an ice-skater. he purposefully let the secret leak. everyone knew Kevin was gay so it brought humiliation upon the "ice-skater." years later, when he was at my first apartment, Kevin called that guy and left a message on his answering machine. it was his rendition of "hit me baby one more time" i think, and at the end of the song he said "i love it when you iceskate." and hung up.

he wrote me a full page in my yearbook. not that i could look at it even if i knew where it was. i think of finding it a lot, though. i think of looking for it.

once he taught me that mixing nacho cheese doritos and pretzels in one bite is a good mix.

he had this great habit of randomly exclaiming "Rrrrrrrricky martin!" with a spanish accent, rolling the 'r.'

the last time i saw him, he came to my house in RVA right before i moved here. it was sort of a going-away party for me. he and i and two friends were sitting on the couch talking. at that time, kevin was briefly living in RVA. he told me, "oh my god we HAVE to hang out all the time everyday until you leave, oh my GOD, we are so best friends." then he went outside to get something from his car. he just never came back. and i never talked to him again.

and i never will.

and i never, ever will.

he just flat-out doesn't exist anymore.

he does't even have a body, because they decided to cremate him. also, they had to identify his body via dental records. so you know what that means.

700 ft into the woods before hitting a tree? that's two football fields, plus. he was drunk. he was going to meet a stranger from this fucking sick-ass internet

(this sick-ass internet that knows it all about me i tell it all about me)

and no one knows if he passed out "or what."

the 'what' that no one will specify is of course: he committed suicide.

but hey, either way you slice it, he killed himself.

one time he and i made up a synchronized swimming routine. we forced my then ten-year-old cousin to take part. the routine was sheer genius. i mean, it was awesome.

last night i was at a friend's. i was telling a story of vandalization and laughing, and not until now did i realize that the friend i was talking about, the friend who was my partner in this story, is dead.

the friend in all of these stories: is dead. suddenly. at twenty-four.

when i think, "what did he mean to me," the answers are not abstract generalities like 'love,' or 'friendship,' or 'loyalty,' or 'youth.' they are: his eyes bulged out over a water hose. a yearbook letter. a swimming routine. ricky martin. a sudden exit.

a sudden exit.

and there are no more stories for him.



there are no words to express
the loss i feel since you've been away
you made this typical sad song
a physical classroom
where i learned nothing
just flashes of your face

i had a friend whose heart was too heavy to hold
yes there's blood on the median like a boat without oars

it's all a facade and nothing really matters now

embriglio, by At The Drive-In