A Dollar Out of Fifteen Cents

The narrative reflects on a deep friendship between the author and Mark, who represented wealth and charisma in the author’s less privileged life. They bonded over shared interests in music and social activities in high school. However, Mark’s battles with drug addiction ultimately led to a divergence in their paths, with Mark experiencing severe consequences, including homelessness and multiple arrests. His tragic death from a heart attack serves as a stark contrast to the author’s life, which improved as he moved away and found success. This results in a contemplation of life’s unpredictability and how fate can drastically alter life trajectories.

 I heard the news from a text while in a waiting room for a Covid test and then confirmed the message through social media.  “Mark update…he passed away.” Took the wind out of me.  I knew he had had a history of drugs and rehab, but thought that by now, 20+ years later, he had gotten his shit together and was simply off the grid separated from the old crew and our negative influences, similar to what I had done to get away from my own skeletons to survive. 

Mark didn’t grow up in the same neighborhood, nor did he attend public school, but he was an honorary member of the group. To me, Mark represented everything I wIanted to be and have– what family wealth and success looked like, and hanging out with him I felt like I had those things.  He knew people all over the city, all the chicks digged him, and he was extremely generous with his money, which I really appreciated since I was dirt broke normally. 

I first met Mark through some mutual friend who went to private school with him in the summer of ‘94, when I was 16. We would sit on my one friend’s front porch and listen to music– we really loved music and connected on discussions of the deeper meaning of certain lyrics, new songs on the alternative rock radio station, my numerous call-ins and funny things I had said that led to air time on the radio to announce songs on the top 5 at 8pm during prime time hours, and books about music. We’d spend hours talking about grunge music (we LOVED Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots), classic rock (the Doors, Hendrix, and CCR), alternative music, rap (Dr, Snoop, Easy E, and big bass music– particularly Master Ace “Born to Roll”), and also the high testosterone music of the era (Rage Against the Machine, Pantera, Marilyn Manson), and we drank cheap beer all summer. A lot of cheap beer, particularly Milwaukee’s Best (the Beast), Ice House, Red Dog, 40s of Old English and Mickeys, or if there was some extra jingle in the pocket, Miller Genuine Draft, Miller Lite, or Zima. I was drinking a 12 pack each night by the time I was 17. 

Me and Mark immediately connected and would grow to be very close friends through the end of high school. I considered him my best friend for several years, which is distinct due to my very large circle of friends. My circle of friends was wide, but not very deep, however he was a very good/close friend. One of the few people I’d talk to on the phone several times during the week. He was like a brother to me.  I considered Mark my best friend, although he had quite a few other very good friends.  He recognized my clout and popularity with the neighborhood, my success in sports, the fact that I was smart, that everywhere we went chicks would cling to me, and me being the life of the party. I guess I had qualities he also found value in.   

Even though I grew up on the other side of the tracks in a lower middle class/working class part of Cleveland, Mark would by his choice drive out to the neighborhood every Friday and Saturday from the outer affluent suburb of his residence and be our ride.  He never asked for gas money or anything like for us to buy him beer, etc.. he just did it, regardless of where we were going, which was literally all over the greater Cleveland area to the various parties of people we all knew from our circle of friends, a lot of whom went to various private schools around town.  Many times he’d pick us up to go to his house and then he’d drop us off, which didn’t make sense since it was nearly an hour round trip, but he never complained, and did this every weekend both Fridays and Saturdays.  I was almost always the first one he’d scoop up.  He even would drive out on school nights–sometimes on Sunday when we started going to the rave clubs, or on Sunday afternoons we’d simply go to his house where he’d wash his car and then we’d go to the gym in his neighborhood and then his mom would make us dinner– we looked forward to Sunday Pasta made by Mark’s mom.  His family was very Italian, so the food was always amazing. Sometimes it was with one or two other friends, but very often it was just me on those Sundays. He was a very loyal friend. I also appreciated that his mom took an interest in my life, granted it may have been just to see who her son was hanging out with.  

Matt was the first person I worked out with that wasn’t my brother.  As a matter of fact, my first time ever benching, at age 17, I put up 240 while working out with him at the gym he went to in his neighborhood. 

I had been obsessively doing about 1,000-1,500 push ups a day by this time, and had been in a progressive routine with push ups, dips, standing squats, calf raises, and every type of crunch you could imagine since I was about 11, so I was jacked and very strong for my size– I was also a 4 year varsity wrestler. I started at sets of 25 when I was younger and was doing sprint sets of 100 each for 15-20 sets by the time I started using weights. The workout routine would take me about 40-45 minutes, and I’d do this AFTER my wrestling practice at night. My brother and I would call these our Herschel Walker workouts (before he was weird), since according to SI for Kids he only did pushups (supposedly). After about 7 years of doing this everyday obsessively I had become very strong and was ripped. I actually set our middle school record with 98 crunches in a minute in 7th grade, and broke that record to do 112 in a minute in 8th grade. This is true. I was also able to do about 90 pushups in a minute at this time. I did them every day for years. Looking at me now all broken and sloppy you wouldn’t believe me, which I understand, but I did look like a young he-man action figure from about age 13 to 24 or 25, when my back issues became a game changer.  

  Mark and the other private school guys I hung out with introduced me to so many people in a different world on the right side of the tracks–the private school world of wealth, nice cars, nice clothes, big houses, and nice parts of town.  He knew the Who’s Who of that social circle’s in-crowd, the athletes, and the same with the chicks. I considered that level of a social circle to be the standard for having ‘made it’, or success. I wanted everything they had. I had nothing. 

I was a modern day plebeian. I had 2nd and 3rd generation hand-me-downs, things I’d shoplift, or get as Christmas gifts that were out of style, but I made the best I could with those. I obviously had no car– I walked everywhere or relied on my friends driving me around.  My mom still drove me to school through my senior year in high school.  I was too embarrassed by our financial situation to ask for new clothes, etc.  

All the money I had from my work with my dad’s construction company every summer was in low-returning savings accounts, and then I had to use that savings to pay for a lawyer on a vandalism situation I didn’t do, but wasn’t gonna rat out who did do it. I had to actually pay for a polygraph test, which was inconclusive. The suburban PD called me in for questioning early morning hours, like 2am, because they got my mom’s car’s plate info while I was returning home after a date with my girlfriend at the time, who was also a private school rich girl. I had randomly seen a group of friends from the neighborhood at a local pizza joint and stopped by to say what up. They had been kicked out for being rowdy and stealing beers from the restaurant’s cooler (underage, of course), and a couple of them decided to break the large store-front window next door to the pizza place for whatever reason.  I had nothing to do with it besides just being there for 2 minutes to say what’s up as they were leaving. That night the cops called and spoke with my mom and wanted me to be at the station at like 8am, and the cop was a dick– swearing at me, trying to intimidate me, a total bad cop routine. I told him to ‘fuck off’, which furthered his bad cop approach. I refused to work with the cops, who had gone as far as pulling me out of class at school to talk with me a 2nd time, and then a 3rd time with my mom and lawyer present. The star witness identified me from a yearbook, but it wasn’t me. The dude who did it did look like me quite a bit, so I understand the confusion, but fuck them, I wasn’t a rat. I took a polygraph test, and it was garbage and deemed inconclusive, so they dropped whatever they were planning on coming after me for. I had to pay for my lawyer out of pocket, and that basically drained all my savings at the time. 

Growing up, I knew we couldn’t afford anything new for me–shoes, clothes, anything electronic, or new. I’d hear my mom and step-dad fighting in the kitchen over money daily from my bedroom, and didn’t want to contribute to more financial hardship. I didn’t get an allowance and had the bare minimum for lunch every day. Earlier in my life we had the pink lunch card– the free or reduced lunch stigma.  Mark’s family brought that other world to me, or at least modeled what I wanted my future ‘success’ to look like, plus they appeared to care about me– they’d ask me about school, sports, etc.  His family was amazing in my perception.  His dad understood our mindset, himself growing up in a rough, Italian neighborhood, so he understood the ‘code’, or our playbook.  Mark’s mom, dad, and sister all took genuine interest in my best interests. I liked them. 

We’d cruise around in Mark’s pimped out black Blazer with unhealthy volume and bass, and make a grand entrance via car stereo everywhere we went. His Blazer was all black with illegal light tints, borderline illegal window tints, expensive rims and tires, and one of the best stereo systems I’ve still heard to this day. We called it ‘bumping,’ or ‘bumps’, because when sitting in the back it made the seat vibrate, or bump. You could feel the seat literally bouncing. That thing was immaculately clean inside and out. Mark would come out to our side of town and pick us up and then we’d cruise. You could hear the Blazer from literally the top of the street ¼ mile up the road. It would shake the windows in the neighborhood. He didn’t need to beep when he pulled up in the driveway.   Normally we would party at one of the various private school kids’ houses– very rarely did we hit up parties from my school, and we had bitter enemies at most the surrounding suburbs, so weren’t normally invited to those parties. Oftentimes, we’d get a caravan of several car loads of us, and go out to his house and play pool and drink cheap beer all night. His family had a killer modern-style house with a five-layered deck out back that dipped into a wooded valley, and at the time they had a huge big screen TV, which was the biggest I had seen at that time– turns out it was a 60” when I had a 19” TV at home. His family had a fantastic 4th of July party, where the beer would be upgraded to Peroni that we’d jack from the cooler. I still associate Peroni as bougie beer.  

One year, at his sister’s graduation party, which coincided with their annual July 4th party, my group of about 8 friends fought the most of their neighborhood’s class of 1994.  His sister went to public school.  It was like 50 of them versus 8 of us. Although we lost, we held our own, considering we were a few years younger and outnumbered about 6 to 1. I wouldn’t call it our toughest fight despite the lopsided numbers because the rich kids couldn’t fight for shit, but it is a great story.  We didn’t win, and my one friend got his nose broken, which was deserved, since he started the whole brawl by making a very Italian racist slur toward their biggest athlete who ended up playing sports at Ohio State. When the dust had settled, and the group of graduates got kicked out/party over, we all had some bumps and bruises obviously, as did the other guys. Mark was livid about the situation and him not being able to join us in support, since his dad held him back the whole time.  Mark finally snapped when he saw that I had a bloody mouth and charged out front with a bat (or handle of something) trying to take on the group of graduates himself for me getting blasted. I didn’t need the help at all, and held my own, but I appreciated his loyalty.  

When we were seniors in high school we went down to visit his sister at Miami University a few times. These were the first times I had ever been on a large college campus, and my own brother definitely wasn’t having me visit him at school. I don’t remember much– I know we got pizza, drank some at the apartment, went bar hopping, and I ended up going back to some chick’s place and hooking up with her all night. Kinda awkward the next day when I met back up with Mark and his sister, especially considering we were 17 and in high school and I came back after what was clearly a long night. 

Me, Mark, and normally one or two others from our crew, would go to concerts and music festivals as they came through town.  I saw my first small venue concert with Mark at the Agora to see The Screaming Trees. We also went to Peabody’s DownUnder in the Flats to see Sublime with about 6 opening acts. Sublime hadn’t become popular yet, and I only heard about them from getting their radio demo CD from the radio station I was now doing an internship at my Senior year’s Spring semester (different story).  CIV was one of the opening acts, and they were great. Mark and I stood out like a sore thumb. The crowd was primarily Straight Edge skinheads who seemed to run in the same circle and all knew each other, while Mark and I clearly were the opposite.  I also wore my varsity letterman coat because it was snowing (in April) and I had never been to a concert indoors in the winter before, so had no idea what to wear. We were very visible in the mosh pit for the opening acts, growing bigger each band, and evidently pissing off the natives by stage diving.  We held our own in the pit, but when Sublime came on, whom I was listening to on repeat all day by that time, I jumped on stage, shook Bradley’s hand, and then stage dove into a crowd that moved out of the way and proceeded to kick the shit out of me when I landed on the hard floor.  The first boot I took the face was some skinhead chick’s Doc Marten I vividly recall.  Shortly after that, may have been next song, Matt and some dude started trading punches and we got thrown out, both of us slightly bloodied from moshing and our additional situations.  We had only seen about 8 songs of their set.  Had I known the Sublime lead singer would overdose a few weeks later we may have tried to stay longer and not gotten booted out (literally).   

We’d go to a rave bar on Sunday nights nicknamed “the Church” my Senior year, even though we had school the next day.  We had fake IDs. Initially, I didn’t go because I had wrestling, but they got me going regularly by the time baseball season came around, which I was on the varsity team for a few years.  Because we were all still too young to normally be in there, and had no idea of bar or rave etiquette, we’d be some of the first ones there, underage, pounding beers, but normally leave by like 1am while the line was just forming, so we could get home in time for school the next day (Monday).  I’d still have the stamp on my hand, or wristband saying I’m 24, while at school all day. My ID was actually my older brother’s from when he was in high school, which explains why I was so old.  Dan Drake.   

One Friday night the private school classmates of Mark (who I was also friends with by this time) and I were all tripping balls and went to a rave club. I went there a few times with that group on a few other occasions and we’d all be tripping on acid tabs or gel caps.  They were fun to hang out with. They gave me my LSD for free, since I was fun to party with and would get the action started normally.  This Friday was different though, because 6 of us were piled into Mark’s Blazer that one of the other dude’s brother was driving that night so we could all trip, inlcuding Mark. While there, his Blazer got stolen.  I went out to piss in the parking lot with one of the other guys because there was a lot of weird shit always going on in the bathrooms and we were tripping, but when we went out there the Blazer was gone. There’d be drugs being openly snorted, sex in stalls, transvestites pissing next to you— all kinds of weird shit for a 17 year old to be exposed to.  That night, once we gathered the tripping group and made our way to investigate the crime scene in the parking lot, we had to get the cops involved obviously.  4 of us decided to stay with Mark and squeezed into the back of a cop car to go to the police station to file the report with Mark, and then get picked up to go home. There were 4 of us drunk and tripping in the back of a cop car and then in the police station’s waiting area, tripping balls and waiting for Mark’s mom to come pick us up and drop us off at our respective homes all around the city. That had to be quite the scene at the precinct. I was laughing loudly nonstop the whole time and one of the other guys was playing with a potato chip bag pretending it was a bird flapping its wings. Another guy was kind freaked out because his hand looked yellow from being stained by smoking cigarettes, which he continued to do while in the waiting area.  Mark’s mom had to know we were on drugs, I mean I kept giggling the whole time in the back seat, apologizing repeatedly for getting Mark’s Blazer stolen, while trying to maintain my best Eddie Haskell level of being overly polite.  His mom was great. When they finally found his Blazer, which had been chopped up, the only thing left, literally, was the vintage coat I had worn, which I got from GoodWill, and my can of Kodiak dip, which I didn’t trust.  They even took the Blazer’s visors, but not my coat.  I ended up throwing that coat out, since I didn’t trust that any longer, either.  

Mark was who got me my first LSD. His friend from the private school, who I had met and hung out with numerous times, was a dealer of the hard stuff, and it was good quality stuff.  Tripping with him was always fun– he seemed to really understand how to maximize the trip. I had made acquaintances with a reliable dealer of high end product. The first time I tripped we went to a party and I spent a good portion of that night freaking out to ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’, and then rolling around in the girl’s house’s garden looking at flowers and plants and the garden lighting, thinking I was the size of a Smurf, before we moved to a drinking spot behind a local church and associated school, where I roamed their athletic field with my other buddy I was tripping with (not Mark, as he was driving us). I remember everyone appeared to be enlarged to giant size and two-dimensional, like a comic strip.  While driving home, my neighborhood looked like a run down, boarded up ghetto. Coincidentally, that is what it looks like these days.  

Mark would get me my LSD (pass through) and I’d party and trip with the private school kids by this point pretty much every weekend that later half of my Senior year. That had become more of my social circle than the kids I had grown up and went to high school with by this time. We were treated like rock stars by those private school kids. Our reputations had preceded us and being from a very humble background and an outsider my whole life, I loved the attention and people wanting me to be there. I felt welcomed and appreciated.  I had it all hanging out with them– my choice of women who were throwing themselves at me, hard drugs– I didn’t smoke pot, but did trip on acid regularly, free higher end alcohol, entrance fees to clubs like “the Church”, food— all of it taken care of.  I even actually briefly dated their very wealthy and beautiful homecoming queen. It was more of a fling; her chance at slumming it for a good time and to be rebellious.  She had dated their star athlete and homecoming king the year prior, so she was considered a goddess by most standards. In all reality, I was her rebound to get back at him, but I took it way more seriously than her.  There was no way that would work out, but it was fun and I’m glad it happened. We went out quite a few times– she’d drive her fancy SUV to my side of the tracks, talk with my mom, and then I’d use my fake ID, and we’d go to wherever and get drunk and hook up. She’d literally drive out to my side of the tracks just to drive me around and then hook up with me.  I was absolutely OK with that. 

She was a really cool girl, but Mark also had a thing with her.  I met her through him, while they in their own right had mutual interest going on. He brought up their mutual interest to me regularly, and clearly resented me for that, and stole her back from me on their Senior Trip, which damaged our friendship significantly. That was an unofficial end to our close friendship, but we still hung out. I actually had a conversation with Mark about how he broke my trust and that was a line he crossed that would change the dynamics not just with me, but with our crew, as well.  

The last few months of my senior year in high school I had been working at the biggest radio station in Cleveland in their promotions department for a Senior year internship starting around March.  The idea to do so came from Mark, myself, and another friend meeting the very attractive prime time DJ and her coworker, the equally attractive weekend DJ, at a concert and hanging out with them for a few different shows.  Mark was hooking up with one of them.  That prompted the idea of doing a Senior internship at the station. Using our fake IDs, they thought we were in college, not high school.  When I got my yearbook that May I brought it to the radio station and had all the DJs sign my book– their artist who was known for drawing the mascot even drew the macot in my yearbook.  Our DJ friend happened to be in one morning coincidentally when I had my yearbook. She recognized me immediately and asked what I was doing there. It had been several months since we were hanging out with her that prior summer, so when I asked her to sign the yearbook she gasped, “you guys are in high school?!” and stormed out. I didn’t bother explaining that awkwardness to the other marketing folks who witnessed it.   

That whole radio station experience was an awakening for me. I was a few months shy of 18, but was ready to experience life and get out of the shell my life had been trapped in.  I was already accepted to a college of my choice in the fall with early admission, so I just needed to graduate, nothing overwhelming in school that year. I had 2 study halls and 2 gym classes each day, only taking 3 actual classes, 1 of which was typing. I was ready to get out of that house, get out of my neighborhood, get away from my abusive brother and neglectful mother. I was really struggling emotionally that spring. That recent December my brother punched and kicked my front teeth out in a hungover rage because I had worn his shoes to court for a hazing incident (should have been assault) that previous school year to some random freshman. That incident was nothing compared to what I had gotten my freshman year, and into my sophomore year up until my brother graduated.  I actually wrestled in a tournament that literal same day that I got my teeth kicked in by my brother. I had my semifinals match photographed by the local paper the day following my teeth getting kicked out, and was plastered in 2 different pictures, both the large 5x7s, with my missing teeth front and center. To get to the radio station I would take the bus from the top of my street down to downtown every morning. I still vividly recall those bus rides down Mayfield Rd and Euclid Ave through downtown, and just how beaten down by life everyone appeared, both to and from work each day.  I didn’t want that to be my future. I didn’t want to lose more teeth to my brother, I wanted to get away, and working at that radio station reinforced that to me. 

I loved baseball, and was on our varsity baseball team during that internship, so I would need to get back home quickly after work, walk from the bus stop to my house, change into my practice gear or game gear, and then try and find transportation to the baseball field a few miles away or back to the high school to catch the team bus to a game.  I’d need to walk about half the time, ensuring I was late, or I would catch a ride with my buddy who was also on the team, but he had to go way out of his way to scoop me up, and also there was heavy construction in my neighborhood which was a pain in the ass to get me, so eventually that stopped.  Plus, I had an injured knee cap from a late season wrestling tournament that had bone chips floating around the patella area, causing my knee to lock in place to the point where I’d have to tap my foot on the ground to loosen the fragments so I could bend my knee. 

I had hurt my knee at the end of the wrestling season in a tournament.  I had to get my knee drained 3 times that same spring, something I hid from just about everyone, including my baseball team and friends. They had no idea because if they did my Senior season would be over.  I had surgery immediately after the baseball season in August, the week prior to leaving for college, and spent the first several months of college being called ‘shark bite’ due to a story I was telling people about how I hurt my knee getting bitten by a shark at the beach.

Despite the knee injury and logistical issues getting to our practice field or the high school for the bus, I managed to lead our District Champion team in batting average (hit .427) and several other categories (runs, stolen bases, on base average).  My playing time was limited for behavioral issues and truancy issues (the logistical issues and getting my knee drained), but I’m glad I played the season and we almost made it to State, losing in the round before that distinction. 

I was benched/not allowed to start the games for disciplinary reasons for saying ‘fuck you’ to the head coach on 2 different occasions, once after a harsh scolding that I felt was unwarranted–the wind moved a fly ball quite a bit, so I misjudged it; and the second time for not diving for a ball (I was known to play aggressively and dove for balls all the time) because my knee was locked with the bone chip at that particularly moment, so I gave a half-assed response trying to hide my injury and that turned into a swearing match with the coach. The biggest issue for my benching, though, was due to an incident at our St. Patty’s Day parade downtown, while wearing my letterman’s coat (because it’s cold in Cleveland in March). I was drunk, disorderly, and decided to jump on one of the parade floats in Public Square and shotgun a beer while it was cruising down the parade route. One of the Assistant Coaches was in the crowd and saw me, and then I came to practice afterwards still drunk and smelling like booze.  Not sure why I only got benched (only as a starter, actually) and not completely kicked off the team.  The athletic director said I couldn’t represent the team as a starter and could quit, or be benched all season.  Had I only been an average player I’d have been kicked off the team and probably suspended from school and my soon to start internship at the radio station.    

Those bus rides to and from the radio station really reinforced what awaited me if I didn’t leave Cleveland. I had to leave. I had no choice. I am certain I’d be dead from a suicide, drug overdose, car accident, or a bad decision had I stayed.  We had a series of suicides my senior year– my neighbor and classmate (who I saw hanging in his garage before they cut him down the day before the State wrestling tournament–totally ruined my motivation for wrestling, which I had put 110% into); 3 other classmates, including 1 that was a former baseball teammate and 1 that was a friend from elementary school; and separately another good friend who tried to kill himself, but the tree branch broke while he was hanging. To add to that, in the same several month window an elderly neighbor (and really good guy) died of a heart attack, and the custodian at the high school who I would dip with after wrestling practice each night while waiting for my ride also died of a heart attack.  Also, there was a car accident that killed a carload of kids from our rival high school. The driver of that car I had a feud with, and he’d go looking for me with his friends and with baseball bats that same year.  

I can’t imagine I would have made it out alive if I stayed in Cleveland, but I did.  And Mark, who first got me into LSD, didn’t.  I keep thinking that our stories’ outcomes are flipped— I was supposed to be the one who hit rock bottom, who was committing crimes for drugs, and who knows what else, and he would be destined for success. 

I had never paid for any of my drugs ever until adulthood. I was the life of the party and people fed me my drugs for free once I got to college.  Always the +1 in the circle on the K, Coke, Meth, GHB, X, Pills, Adderall, Valium, pain meds– people would hand them out like candy to me to keep me partying with them. I was the life of the party when I was there.  The only time I ever paid for coke was with Mark at a party while in college with a crew from a different private school.  In high school we used to fight these guys, but this was who Mark had evolved to hanging out with while he stayed back in Cleveland and commuted to a local art school our freshman year in college.  We split a teener. I think he fronted me most of the money and I only threw in what I had, which wasn’t much, most likely, probably like $20… most I ever paid.  Last time I hung out with him we were blowing coke off his steering column in his SUV at 2am– that’s the end of our era. 

That following summer, after my sophomore year in college, I got an unexpected phone call from an ex girlfriend who was familiar with Mark’s private school circle, as her sisters both went to that school.  She was crying and told me that a mutual friend, Carl, had died. He was in a head-on collision in Florida that killed both him and the truck driver he hit, in what I was told was a fiery crash. Carl was playing college baseball down in Florida.  Carl had been drinking that night he died, and had several prior DUIs in about a 2 year window .  He was Mark’s legit best friend from private school, and was the Richie Rich of that crowd. His family was the wealthiest in the wealthiest private school in town.  He was very down to earth, funny, and a great baseball pitcher, even though my team beat him our senior year.  I’d partied with Carl quite a bit, and I considered Carl a friend.  Hung out with him a lot.  Carl’s death hit Mark hard, and his drug use had escalated quite a bit following that. Mark’s girlfriend at the time, who I was also good friends with, had said she’d wake up in the middle of the night at her college apartment that Mark would frequent, and Mark would be curled up a ball in a corner, or anxiously roaming the bedroom throughout the night versus sleeping– more likely signs of withdrawal that were unrecognized.  She couldn’t handle the increasingly erratic behavior and they broke up as a result. Mark took that hard, too.  

Carl was with us when the Blazer was stolen, and many other parties.  Carl had some awesome parties at his mom’s multi-million dollar mansion that sat on quite a bit of land in an outer rural suburb. They had ridiculous family money.  Old money I was told.  My friends would always raid the fridge and wine cellar when he had parties.  Carl’s mom had built what is called a ‘storm simulation room’ that was about the size of a larger hall closet and you could set a gage on it that would produce rain (shower), wind (fan), heat, cold, and such.  I never used it.  I’d prefer to take my choice of the private school groupies while at Carl’s– my neighborhood friends always found that funny, and for whatever reason would always try and watch, normally not at all subtle about it. On one occasion 3 of them poured out from behind a half open door after they were laughing, whistling, and cat calling. I liked the private school girls because they seemed repressed, and they would ordinarily be unattainable to me due to me being poor, but not when I was partying. One party at Carl’s I brought my neighbor Jerry (the one who hung himself), who by this time was totally lost to a crack addiction and had been basically homeless, living in neighbor’s and friend’s backyards and garages, although he’d still make social appearances.  Jerry was a bigger guy and was popular for being a fighter and rowdy before his crack addiction took over.  Jerry was committing crimes regularly by this point while in his crack addiction.  It troubled me watching him spiral.  Jerry happened to be with me one night when I got the invite to drive my mom’s car out to Carl’s for a smaller gathering. While there, Jerry got wasted and stole a bunch of shit from the house to barter for drugs, which I was not aware of until we got in the car to go home.  I’m glad that was the only thing he did, as he was known to be a loose cannon who liked to fight smaller people, or vandalize stuff for no reason.  While driving home, Jerry proceeded to puke continually out the car window all over the car door, and such.  A cop was just down the street from Carl’s house and saw him puking out the window, and pulled me over. I explained Jerry was wasted and I was trying to get him home.  The cop knew Carl’s family, assumed that is where we were coming from since it was the same street, and let me go without much effort on my end at all–total privilege that I acknowledge happened.  I made Jerry wash my mom’s car that following day.  Mark had called me the next day as well asking if Jerry took a cordless phone, and I said he did, and was able to get that back to Mark to return to Carl shortly after.  I would assume Jerry also stole other shit they were not aware of, nor was I. Carl was not mad at me surprisingly, and had seen Jerry enough to know that if that’s all Jerry did, it was probably a best case scenario for that night. Those guys feared him. Shit, I feared him by this point, especially when he was loaded. 

At Carl’s graduation party, which was probably the biggest graduation party I’d ever attended, a caravan of about 6 or 7 cars from my neighborhood showed up (we were all invited).  I was tripping balls with a group of the private school gang.  Carl’s cousin, who was a rich kid from a different part of town, kept talking shit to my friends.  The dude just kept talking shit and he clearly had nothing to back it up with– he was scrawny, loud mouthed, and rich– something that didn’t sit well with most of my friends from my neighborhood. As the night evolved, my friends were wasted and had been going into the Storm room in just their boxers, since no one brought swimsuits. My one friend, in his soaked white boxers that were by now awkwardly transparent from the water, body-slammed Carl’s cousin who was running his mouth before they got separated. As my neighborhood friends were getting ready to leave later that night, they decided to handle Carl’s cousin.  Several car loads of us found him down the driveway in a car smoking some pot in car near where we had parked. I was not a participant because it didn’t involve me and I was still tripping hard, but my friends basically surrounded the car, began rocking it violently, and then climbed into the car and beat him before they dragged him out of the car and kicked the shit out of him. That guy can thank God it wasn’t the tougher guys in my group, but rather the crowd that normally didn’t fight much and felt safer fighting in numbers– they saw the guy as an easy target and worthy of an ass kicking.  That guy really was asking for it.  You don’t run your mouth and wealth-shame people, get thrown around, then keep running your mouth, then keep running your mouth even more, and not expect some kind of retribution. He’s lucky it was handled by who did so because had it been some others of us that were there it may have been a lot worse.       

I had not seen Mark for awhile, but ran into him the summer when we were 21. He had apparently been in and out of rehab after he broke up with the chick from my neighborhood, and this was the first time I had seen him since.  I was pretty drunk and we were at a Greek Festival near my neighborhood.  He told me he’d been out of the social circle because of rehab and I had told him I heard, and told him someone had made a joke about ‘Marky Rehab’, which didn’t go over well, obviously, and I still regret saying that to him. What the fuck was I thinking– clearly I wasn’t.

By this time, I had already lost touch with Mark. There was still some resentment about him stealing my girlfriend a few years prior, which he knew. I knew he had a drug problem that had evolved into something more serious based on what his ex-girlfriend had told me, and also what some of the other guys who still stayed in touch with him had said. “He’s fucked up,” or “he has a bad drug problem.” I didn’t think much of it, because by that time, so did I, but I was able to function normally, stay on the Dean’s List each semester, still played sports and worked out, and carried on with my life. I know what my friends would tell me about my own drug and alcohol problems, so I assumed he was still able to function as I was.  I was wrong. As I continued to evolve in my own life and cut ties with the folks from the neighborhood, work numerous jobs while at college, and then work even more while at home for the summers (in 2000 I had 7 W2s and sold pot and X and whatever other entrepreneurial things I came across), I eventually figured he was part of my past. I was spending my available nights by this time going downtown to party in the clubs with quite a few different circles of friends, hooking up with the women I’d met at the clubs, or hanging out with people from college. People who didn’t fit that party profile socially were no longer in my circle. Then I moved down to Texas immediately after college to escape my past and start over and did my 180, which saved me.  I had evolved, but Mark hadn’t.  My older brother ran into Mark at a coffee shop a few years later while we were in our mid-20s– Mark was with a support group hanging out, and my brother and him conversed for a bit. My brother said Mark was in recovery, so that eased any worries I would have had at the time about his well being.  I assumed I’d eventually reconnect with Mark whenever that happened in the future, and we’d still be good friends and reminisce about the past like no time separated.  

That’s not how Mark’s life turned out. His life turned into a tragedy.  Limited in what I know, his dad went to prison for attempted murder of Mark’s sister’s/his daughter’s husband who was apparently molesting their own daughter/his granddaughter.  My hometown friends, who had informed me of all this with his dad, didn’t know where Mark was or how he was doing. Mark had apparently moved to California, was homeless, and from police records I found online, had 11 arrests in a 15 month span, including armed robberies, assaults, break-ins, theft, and more ( and this is what he was caught doing)– all to support his drug habit. That makes me think he actually did some time in the California penal system.  The only guy from home who was in contact with him, himself a very shady character known for hard drugs, crime, criminal enterprise, and other very bad decisions, was now hanging out with Mark, and did so until his death.  Mark was apparently homeless and staying in a motel while addicted to meth. He died of a heart attack I was told. The person with the information had said, “you wouldn’t recognize Mark, he was bad news, and you wouldn’t want to see him like that.”  I can only imagine what the last 15 years of Mark’s life was like.  

Last time we hung out we were doing coke.  Next time I saw him I made light of his addiction.  Now 25 years later, he’s dead, and I am writing this on a MacBook on my $3,000 coach in my expensive downtown penthouse condo with a skyline and sunset view in Texas, listening to my Itunes on my Iphone with my wireless earbuds, and a cashmere sweater, while sitting next to my tropical fish tank and my girlfriend’s Chorkie dog wearing his Christmas sweater.  I keep thinking that our stories are flipped— I was supposed to be the one who hit rock bottom, and he was destined for success.