Day Fourteen

A picture of someone I could never imagine my life without:

High school.  I'm thinking junior year.

We were walking to class one afternoon; as usual when the two of us were together - thick as thieves, on so brief an acquaintance - we were laughing.  I'm talking about the gut-cramping, back-spasming, oxygen-depriving laughter that has been his constant gift to me.  Suddenly I realized that we were on the street, in public, in a stream of other students and oh-gosh teachers who could hear us curse and guffaw.  "Jesus!  Shhh," I said.

"I don't give a mad fuck!"  He nearly yelled it.  "Fuck 'em all with a big wooden stick!"

Although D may not remember this moment - there were, after all, many like it - it was pivotal in my life.  It was when I realized it was okay to be me.  I'd been told all my life that I was too loud - "My, you can certainly...project..." - here was permission to enjoy life at the volume of my choice.  Here was the freedom of friendship with one who accepted and appreciated me as I was, and taught me by example to demand nothing less than acceptance from the world around me.  For the last few years of high school, it was said that we were always heard before seen; I took it as praise.

D and I had diametrically-opposed strategies, in the struggle with low self-esteem.  Mine was to cower, pull in; his was to beat his breast and crow like a Lost Boy (think Hook, not Barrie).  If I had not had his example, I would not have known how to progress in sobriety; I also don't think the period of my active addiction would have brought me as many joys amidst the sorrow.

Something else, and maybe this is more important: D is the only other person I know who has anything approaching the same racial identity as I do.  Obviously, I'm not just talking about being Black American, or preferring that term to "African-American" or whatever else.  I'm talking about what it means to us to be Black, the whole mental scheme we have in our heads when we say "I am a Black American man."  The ideas we share have been forged by common experiences - by common battles.  There are differences as well, forged by the parts of our origin stories that are unique. But being able to have this simple inter-subjective experience, this external validation, has been invaluable. So many times in our friendship, which has spanned half of my life, I have needed to vent about something and realized: "Only D is going to understand why this upset me."
There's more - he's been my best friend for fifteen years,  of course there's more.  But for the sake of brevity - and by this I mean, not actually sitting down and writing my memoir now - I'll leave it at this: without D, I would have all the presence, self-confidence, and high-energy delivery of Steven Wright.