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Friendship

I cannot say how friendships begin. I know they begin at early ages. They begin in classrooms and schoolyards. I am not how friendships take form, or why they can change almost suddenly, and those that we were so close to us are more distant than the deepest past.

Life evolves. I know this.  And we evolve as well. I know this too, We either grow or stay the same. And when,  or should I say if we grow, a piece of us remains as we were in the heart of someone we shared time with. To someone, we will always be that kid in the playground. To someone, I will always be that kid in a classroom, or that short little kid that lived down the street from the baseball fields on Merrick Avenue. To some from my childhood, I will be referred to as Benjy. Some call me Benny and most from my adulthood will call me Ben.

I know there is something more cosmic to this thing we call friendship. There has to be. I believe this is why we meet; we meet for a reason. It is fate, I say. It is a slot we fill for either a temporary or long-term commitment. And that is Continue reading →

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A Note to The Old Man

I was trying to remember the last time we walked on the beach together. I must have been 16 for that one. That was a tough time for you and me. I was in the middle of so much then. I was on one side of the argument and you were on the other. What I know most about that time is we both wanted to be closer. We wanted to get along. And we wanted this so badly too. We wanted to be close but something always had a way of getting between us. Either I said the wrong thing or you did. I could never do things as you Continue reading →

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From Sessions in the Balcony: Phone Fun

She answered the phone with the soft raspy voice of a woman sleeping alone.  The light in her bedroom was off and all was dark, but the beam from the red numbers on her alarm clock gave a tinted glow across her night stand where the telephone rang.

She answered, “Hello,” with an unsure voice.
“Did I wake you,” he asked.
She cleared her throat. “What time is it?”

He informed, Continue reading →

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When The Change Began

 

After the long, uncomfortable hours in the precinct with angry desk cops and detectives, and after the questions that came while being handcuffed to the side of a gray-painted steel desk in a small detective’s office—after the yelling cops screamed, “Tell us what you did,” and after the detectives smacked me around, beat me, and played their version of good cop/bad cop; after the several rounds of different accusations and the phone call home to alert my parents of my arrest, the alcohol in my system gave way to the sobering moment that I was caught. I sitting behind a chain-linked fence on a wooden bench with my left wrist handcuffed to a pipe that ran beneath the seating.

After the hours of processing, and the trip to a holding facility where I went through the normal Continue reading →

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About a Boy

Sean stood a little more than five feet tall. His hair was shaved close to the scalp and his eyebrows were thick and dark. He had blue eyes. They were the wild kind. Sean’s eyes were the kind that explained his lack of sanity could arrive at any moment, and if prompted, Sean could switch his temper like the flick of a matchstick.
Sean had a large nose, which had been broken several times. Most of those times were from his alcoholic father during a drinking binge. Sean had three scars on the back of his head from different street fights. He had a thick scar that came from a gash, which began Continue reading →

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Letters from a Son: A Change in Direction

I remember there was snow on the ground. Outside was the kind of cold where the sky was perfectly blue and the sun was so bright, but yet, there was no warmth in the wind. I sat on the second level in the main house of a farm where kids like me lived.  To explain what I mean by kids like me, I mean kids that needed to get away from a troubled life of drug addiction.

The view from the windows was spectacular. I could see out into the distance as large, tree covered mountains wove together and interlocked like fingers from the hands. The trees were without leaves and the branches were crystalized and white with frost. There was a blanket of snow that covered the field behind the tall red barn. The cows were close to the barn. As always, the pigs were inside, grunting in their pens and the sheep scampered in a flock upon the hill behind the main house. Continue reading →

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the sights and sounds . . .

Not always, but when I hear the sound a cigarette lighter makes after a thumb rolls down to spark the flint that starts the flame, it immediately brings me back to a time of wild chaos.
I am reminded of a place where the curtain was drawn closed and the thin off-white horizontal blinds beneath them, which were beaten and bent, were Continue reading →

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Counting Days

The hardest part of my fall from grace was not the next day or the day after. The hardest part is when I could not run away anymore. I could not deny what I had done
I held on to the secret of my relapse like a dirty lie that continued to whisper in my ear. Six months away the farm, and I gave in.  The actual time of my relapse happened long before I found myself on Rockaway Parkway in a minivan filled with stolen equipment. There were steps leading up to my failure. There were obvious warning signs, but noticing them meant I would have to do something about. Noticing the signs I saw meant I would have to face some painful truths.

When asked about this time in my life, I always explain that I Continue reading →