I have been writing a great deal lately. Some people know that I write either in a public setting where there is noise all around me, or in the mountains alone, other than my Jeep. Or most often, at home with the music that takes my mind back to the time and place, saturates my house. I write creative non-fiction, so I write about my own experiences.
All writers write from their lives, but some forms are more monogamous with the events. These songs, are a sampling of music from the pivotal year in my life. I met some of the most powerful friends of my life that year, almost died several times and felt love, for the first time. It was a hell of a year.
The book is called Hero Lost, and is the second in a 5 book anthology. It is in second draft and with a beta reader as I work on the last remaining book in the series, book 4.
The friends I had that year I had met the year before, but that year was the one that defined all of our friendships. It was defined by parties, friends, music and cars. This song, started most of our parties, along with a crack of pool balls and opening of bottles.
ZZ Top usually led to more hair bands, inevitably leading to Van Halen…
Big Rich was my oldest friend at the time, having met in second grade and we were the core of the group. He was a gentle giant who most people liked and was totally oblivious of any girl who liked him, just never picking up on the messages they sent. Big Rich wasn’t as into the music as the rest of us, but if you got to know him, you realized, he had one hell of a thing for one singer …
We lost track of Big Rich eventually. He was into hiking and had injured himself on the Appalachian trail several times. A couple of us years later, wondered if he is still out there on the trail, somewhere …
Pat was the funniest man I have ever known but you would never know it unless he decided to show you. He was a smartass and a prankster. I learned this by him drafting me, unknowingly often, into a prank he had worked on for quite a while. I cannot count the number of times we ran out of a house, a classroom or our work, with the closing door behind us muffling the yelling we were fleeing. His waters ran deep and he tended to see far more than others around him in any given situation. He was also so unassuming, it made all the above possible…
One of my best memories with Pat was when we got kicked out of a golf course. We decided it was too hot to be that bored so Pat made golf a full contact sport. I was apparently driving the golf cart ‘dangerously’ so we were chased out. In our defense, we parked the golf cart safely, in the parking lot of the 7-11.
Pat became a journalist for a time, dropping out of public life when his college sweetheart and wife, finally lost her battle with cancer. I don’t know here Pat is today, but I hope he has not lost that prankster in him.
Little Rich really had one role, ladies man. I have to give him credit, since he also suffered from short man disease, yet he had game. It was his house or mine that hosted most parties and this allowed him to be the center of attention. He preferred the light to be shone on him, and he was good at attracting it. He loved Journey, “cause the ladies love them, and me”. He was a trip.
He struggled to find himself for many years and an unhealthy competition for ladies affection with his younger brother, later led to a very unhealthy marriage.
For a time, Eileen dated Little Rich but they were both such flirts, it could never last and it didn’t. She grew up too fast and Little Rich was no help. She became the life of the party and loved to dance and got good at lying.
My best memory of her was at a party where she was a little drunk and wanted desperately to dance. She threw herself at a few party guests, so I walked past her and took her by the hand and danced with her while Elton sang one of her favorite songs. For a few moments, Eileen was quiet, and not a blur of red curls. I prefer to remember her that way. She was almost always happy and laughing and eventually found her feet and her own identity.
Ann … was different. She came to the group as Eileen’s best friend but she and I became fast friends, after she stopped yelling at me. At first she tried to keep up with Eileen but luckily, realized she was not built for that. She was younger than the rest of us, so she also was a bit naive. As a result, I became her protector. I got in a fight defending her, locked her in my room during parties when she was too drunk for her own good and always made sure she made it home safe.
She also struggled for a while after our time together but she eventually found her feet again. I pulled her from an abusive marriage years later and we ended up dating for a while, bringing me some of the best years of my life. We didn’t work out, but we are still in occasional contact and she is doing well. She made it home safe.
My role? I was the wheel man. I made the alcohol runs since I looked oldest and wasn’t scared to run from the police as I crossed the state line. I felt safe in my circle of friends that knew how broken I was, and didn’t care. They never knew the worst of it, since I got good at covering my pain.
Every morning when I picked up Ann and Eileen from Eileen’s mothers house, I tried to get to school in the time it took to play Jesse’s Girl. I caught my first air in a car trying. Pat was my co-pilot.
Big Rich had been there and stood as my friend as my life was destroyed when I was 14, before I knew everyone else. Pat made me laugh harder than I had in years. Little Rich was simply injected energy, that I needed. He also broke me out of the protective shell I had been living in. Eileen was really just a friend in the group, but she lived with such passion and so little concern about the next moment, she pulled me out like Little Rich did.
Ann remained the most ever present person in my life, from that era. Once I was sent away the next year, the group broke up. Ann I kept in touch with, and kept checking in on. We spent nights together over the years, like magnets that kept finding one another but never at the right time. What I got from Ann though, was I learned at a time in my life when I saw no value in life, that someone loved me. That may be the most valuable lesson, for someone that doesn’t know that…
When I write about this time, and these people, I listen to a playlist including all these songs and many more. I knew when I was leaving town with that year behind me, that I would never find another group of people like them. I was right. I found amazing ones later and they are the subjects of other books, but this time, was THAT time, when music expressed what our emotions could not and in crazy moments, girls and boys, became women and men. What I learned most from that era, good or bad, I also found in the name of a song that is still one of my anthems …
5280nup 