He kept
sketches in a book, and would I please stop calling it a diary because that it exactly what it was not. But it was. Sketches instead of words, that is all the difference, I told him, and he said, exactly,
all the difference. He drank wine with hot dogs and
beer for breakfast and kept his refrigerator stocked with leftovers from the best restaurants in town. He was handsome with sideburns and Buddy Holly glasses and jeans. He shaved his head in winter and wore shorts. He bought a
motorcycle and rode with a gang to Sturgis.
Leather clad and bad, driving 55.
He took me out once on a
boat on the
Fourth of July and made me close my eyes until he had rowed out to the middle of the lake. He made me open my eyes, then, there, surrounded by nothing but water and sky and look up at the
colors bursting overhead. Yellows and reds and greens. An orange one went off and he said, Huh, orange, never seen an orange one before. Orange, orange, orange, he played with the word in his mouth for a few minutes. Mumbling and stumbling over the syllable, turning it into two and then three and then maybe separate words all together.
Orange, orange, orange. I thought, orange, like it is something new or different.
He took me for crazy drives in the middle of the night and once called me up at
three a.m. to ask if I wanted to jump off a cliff with him. I said, Greg,
would you please stop talking crazy and he said, no, never. It was not a death wish but a need to feel like flying and so we climbed to the top of the cliff on the edge of that lake and jumped and splashed for hours. It was exhilarating and terrifying and the most fun I had maybe ever had. We jumped and jumped and for years I could not
take a dive without thinking of this night.
He took me once to
California on the back of his bike, to meet his grandmother. She owned a
Harley and made the best damn
apple pie I had ever gotten my mouth on. She had white hair in curlers and leather boots. It was easy to tell which side of the family he took after, both in personality and looks.
He was romantic and gregarious and spontaneous and it was always hard telling what
his next move would be. He was good at being
timid and even better at being brave. When he left it was a big surprise, probably more so for him than for me. This is what’s left of him to me,
maybe there is more but that’s not for you to know.