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To my friend Russell, with whom I slept, how long has it been since we spoke? Well, if you asked me about six months ago the answer would have been "a really long time". The last time I had heard anything from or concerning Russell (with two "L's" he made sure to tell me when I first met him in the third grade) was the early summer of 1984. I still remember sitting on the front porch of his little yellow house in Alluvium Lakes with his boom box playing our most favoritest songs. When Doves Cry, Dancing In The Dark, and What's Love Got To Do With It blasted from the speakers. Russell had the best boom box of anybody I knew, it had a dual cassette that allowed you to copy directly from one tape to another with just pushing two buttons. That was high tech shit back then man. We went to school together for seven years. His father was a career military man and they, along with his mother and older sister, had moved here from California when he was 8. We ended up going to school together at E. T. Hamilton School somewhere over in Voorhees. I don't know if I could find the school again on a bet, I don't know if it even still exists. Although I still remember where Russell lived. Last time I drove by, the house was still there. It's Tudor Brown now not Lampost Yellow. I still remember that was the name of the paint color that we used when we helped his father paint it back in 1980. It was the year the Phillies won the World Series. That's my thought process on remembering when it was anyway, Russell swears it was 1981. But back to 1984. We were just starting to celebrate finishing our sophomore year of high school, which was the second best year of school, to me, ever, senior year being the best. Not so good for Russell. Around Christmas vacation that year (I guess that would be '83 at this point), Russells' mother found out she had cancer. An inoperable brain tumor the doctors told the family. Of course they were welcome to seek a second opinion if they liked but it would probably be the same result. The prognosis was grim, the cancer was at a fairly advanced stage. They said four to six months. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. They were off by a few weeks. She died Valentine's Day of '84. Russell took it hard. The entire family took it hard. As would be expected. His sister, whose name escapes me, took it even harder. She overdosed on some sort of pills, alas, I can't remember what they were either (I think a sort of sleeping pill), two months to the day that her mother had died. Two thirds of an entire family was gone in the blink of an eye. Russell, who had came back to school at the end of February after his mother passed, was different. He was a lot quieter, a lot more serious, and it seemed, anyway, a lot older. At least more mature. Your mother wasting away in front of your eyes can have that effect apparently. Russell and I were still in three classes together, and we still had that unspoken friendship but we were now distant. Probably caused by my inability to know how to deal with a situation like this. This continued until a few days before his sister would die. Russell was outside at the tennis courts before first period one early April morning smoking a cigarette. This was back then when you could smoke in school, on the property, anyway, and the area around the tennis courts was the appointed area at Eastern Regional High School for smoking. Like I said, we were sophomores and although I played sports, I still smoked occasionally, everybody did back then. I joined Russell at the tennis courts, luckily my bus dropped me off near the smoking area and I was concerned about him, like I was every day, except I noticed who else was around the smoking area, so that made me more worried. Two of the schools biggest bullies were also there. I won't give their names but I still remember them to this day. Funny what sticks in your mind and what falls through the cracks. I could see the look on their faces and they were getting ready to start trouble as I walked up to Russell. I asked him for a cigarette and he handed me a Parliament Light. He smoked them because he liked the recessed filters so that meant, to him anyway, that they weren't as bad for you as the "cowboy killers". That's what he called Marlboros. He handed me one and a lighter. The fact that he carried a lighter impressed upon me the fact that he was a serious smoker, even back then. I didn't carry cigarettes on me let alone matches or a lighter. Now, nearly twenty three years later, he hasn't smoked for almost ten years, I, on the other hand, am good for anywhere between a pack and a half to two packs and even though they are supposed to be "ultra lights", they are of the "Cowboy Killer" variety. Anyway, back to my story. Too late to say "to make a long story short" that option ran out a few sentences ago. The two bullies were seniors, and that meant we were mortal enemies. In the normal high school hierarchy, seniors are always the top dogs. Sophomores, are like the lowliest of the working middle class. The freshman, like the homeless, are there just to show us how bad it could be. For some reason, possibly caused by some rift in the fabric of time, our sophomore class was as big, as bad, and as popular as the seniors. Sure we couldn't drive to school, we didn't have senior study hall, but the one thing we did have that the seniors didn't was we were the winners of Spirit Week. Traditionally, the seniors won this honor and won it walking away. For only the second time in school history had a class other than the seniors won Spirit Week. The first time it happened it was the juniors that won. So this made it even worse. The seniors were, for a while, the laughing stock of the school by the underclassmen and faculty alike. I can remember my teacher telling a senior in science class to be quiet or he would sick a sophomore on him. That senior was now standing near us at the tennis courts, the sophomore the teacher was talking about was Russell. They were making fun of something or other about Russell or me and doing it loud enough for us to hear. Russell heeled out his smoke and glared at the two idiots. "Shut up, assholes." He told them. That was all they needed. One of them asked "And what if we don't? You gonna run home and cry to Mommy?" That would have been enough for Russell, but before it even had time to register and for that switch to flip, the other one added; "Oh that's right, you can't cause you're Mommy's dead!" Yelling as he got to the end of the unbelievably hurtful statement. The switch that had already been flipped, now blew a fuse. Russell went beserk. For what seemed to me to be about five seconds, only long enough for me to get out "That's really f...." the "...ucked up" part of the sentence only one of them could have heard because with one punch the bullies numbers had been cut in half. At least the conscious ones were cut in half. Russell knocked out the first one, "Mr. Runhomeandcrytomommy", with one wild swing. A noise I had never heard from a human being, let alone anything living, exploded out of Russell. I don't think Russell purposefully targeted him first, I think just the unlucky draw of being the first one Russell reached was all it took for him to be the first to suffer the pent up rage Russell now released. It wasn't just the words they said that got the reaction. It was the fact that Russell just needed an excuse. He had no one to release the rage upon, until now. The force of the blow caused Russell to fall back himself, into the chain link fence around the tennis courts, head first. The fact that a rough section of fence tore a gash big enough that would later require fourteen stitches to close didn't stop Russell from now going after "Mr. Causeyourmommysdead". Unlike his buddy, "Mr. Causeyourmommysdead" didn't go down after one punch. It took three. The two morons, got up and left as I tried to attend to my hurt friend. Although, he had "won" the fight, blood was pouring down his face. I was in a panic. Luckily this was the time when those paisley bandannas were in style. You know the ones that nearly everybody had back then. I had a red one in my back pocket and I used it to start tying to stop the bleeding. Russell cringed and jumped back. He shoved me away and said "Ouch, don't man, I'm okay." To which I replied; "Then Russell, I don't know what to do for you, tell me what I can do for you!" I don't know if the question was meant to be as deep as Russell took it, I admit I was almost in tears when I asked it so he might have thought I meant it differently, but I don't think I asked it the way he answered it. He stood there looking at me, blood now drenching the collar of his grey "Member's Only" jacket (remember those?) turning it black. He fell to one knee and just started to sob as he answered me. "Just be my friend man, just be my friend." And that's what I did until the summer of '84 when his father got the orders he was being reassigned to a base in Texas.

To be continued...