I'm only going to write about this once.
I think.
10/10 was the birth day and month of one of my childhood friends, and yes, I was following astrology even then. Anybody remember Sydney Omarr? He was good.
My Libra childhood friend and I hung out a lot with my other dysfunctional childhood friend, who I wrote about earlier. We never called each other by our real names, only by nicknames. My Libra friend's nickname was a name I clearly remember because it was a funny one. I can't repeat it here because I use it as a password.
So let's call him Trippalicious, or 'Tripp', for short.
October
Adrian Curiel- Unsplash.com
Tripp was a natural-born Fonzie, he was the coolest guy in the 'hood. I always enjoyed the times we hung out together, but those times weren't regular. It wasn't like you could call him and he would answer, or you could show up at his house. Ever. No, Tripp just appeared.
He would show up and whenever he did the day had an almost magical quality around it, indeed it became a special day, because Tripp was part of it. He was liable to disappear as quickly as you could snap your fingers sometimes so you never knew how long he was going to stick around and be part of the scene. I never could figure the guy's M.O. out, where he was called to and what he did whenever he wasn't around. It was like the guy had a need to vanish.
He might be gone for days on end then reappear as if nothing had happened. Girls really dug him and most guys thought him super cool, though he had his share of detractors. Jealous, they probably were. Tripp had an aura of mysterious just oozing from him, which is a quality impossible to imitate. Charisma, they call it.
One sunny Junior High or early High School afternoon, I can't remember specifically, me, Tripp, and my other dysfunctional friend were skipping school and hiding in a grove of pine trees. We were just hanging out, but on the verge of doing something that might get us in trouble, for there was always the hint of that when we got together. I remembered exactly where I knew Tripp from before right then, for I had been feeling a perplexing and persistent familiarity with him ever since we had first met. Due to some hand gestures he was making, or the lighting, or the forest setting we were in, I suddenly recalled that we had been dandies in Europe in the late 1920's. We had been rather splendid and monied fellows, but not gay- no way. A definite dose of double trouble for the ladies. Germany/Belgium/Copenhagen was the general area.
Now I don't go around in life and have this sort of recognition happening with every person I meet so I know the difference, I know how it feels. With Tripp it was definite. I knew that I had known him before, and this event happened when I was a teen. Isn't that sort of miraculous?
I think so. But even more miraculous than that was knowing, in a otherworldly juxtaposition of space/time, that we had been placed together again in a different time, with highly different parents, and not at all in anything approaching a highly urbane cosmopolitan setting. Tripp didn't get this, or maybe he did. Either way he wouldn't have talked about it. He wasn't the kind to spill the beans. Keep it forever mysterious was his way and roll with it.
Anyway, fast forwarding here, Tripp was kind of on the same trajectory as my dysfunctional friend. He wasn't a born rule breaker like him, a crazy at times, almost nonsensical risk-taker-on-a-dare kind of guy. Tripp's issue was alcohol. He liked it but his system couldn't handle it very well, because unlike white guy me, Tripp was a Native American and did not possess an alcohol-seasoned set of genes. He was from a local band that had lived in the area before but was now mostly situated on a reservation about forty miles away. Few of his kind chose to live in town, but his family had taken a chance and relocated.
Tripp's dad was a great guy who had ten kids, I heard a lot about him from other people I trusted. Tripp's mother and siblings I never met 'cept one, who was Tripp's older brother, and he was alright by me but I know that the entire family got discriminated against. There were places in town where they were not welcome. Not that anybody would outright say it, but you can tell when you get the cold shoulder and I think Tripp and his kind knew they would never fit in in certain social circles, never be let in.
That's got to cause a lot of pain but Tripp never showed it. He and I were just teens placed in a setting where there was a lot of old stuff playing out amongst the settlers and natives but we didn't see color or race to be an issue.
I never went to Tripp's house, and he wasn’t at all welcome at mine, but I knew where he lived. I tried to call him on the phone a few times to hook up but whoever answered it always said "He's not here".
Tripp became over time (and to the dismay of his family, I'm sure) the likeable town drunk. He would literally drink until he passed out, but before he did, he was hours of fun to be around. He (a man now) could drink anybody under the table- don't even think about challenging him. His course in life seemed to be set.
It was about at this time that we started gaining distance from each other. Life was calling me to explore different areas of town, and then the country. There came a moment when we saw each other for the last time and you’d think that would have been memorable or something but it wasn't. Just another hanging out session with Tripp, it probably was.
Tenth
Ales Krivec- Unsplash.com
Then I really moved away and lost all contact until the early spring of 2009 when, during a raging blizzard that had suddenly sprung upon the town I had just moved to, I got word that Tripp had died. He had been found dead in his car after a night of drinking. All of 49 years old. Foul play was suspected, there might have been others around who could have saved him (it can get cold at night in my hometown at that time of year), but nothing ever came of any, and most likely halfhearted, investigation.
I kind of thought something like that would happen to him but was surprised when it actually did because Tripp had cheated death more than a few times before.
The news affected me a great deal. There are people in your life that have meant a lot to you, even though you never, ever said anything denoting caring to each other when you were together because that would have been a totally uncool thing to do.
So, here's to you, 'Tripp' old friend. Every year I remember your birthday. Not that it would have mattered to you- (or maybe it did?)- but it does to me.
