Michael had a
gold tooth, and i tried not to
fixate on it when he talked to me. He used to be a
boxer, and he told me that the tooth was kind of a
trademark for him then.
He told me he was the
black sheep in his family, which seemed to have been mid-sized and
lower-middle class. He told me about setting
kittens on fire. But don't get the wrong idea: he was very interested in the way things should be, and
understanding goodness. His
passion when i knew him was
portraiture... he had been drawing faces from magazines in pencil, and his was the first room in
the house that i saw. There were
rigid facial portraits in pencil hanging on the walls. He liked to draw
celebrities, and i have one of his portraits on the wall in my apartment:
Meg Ryan. It looks kind of like
Kathy Bates, say most people (and it scares them), and that was also my
first instinct, but my second instinct was to be honored. He somehow thought i was a deep and philosophical person. He gave me a beautiful
fuzzy orange plant, but somehow it died: luckily it was still orange, so looking from his
porch to my
balcony that summer, you could not tell.
I don't know when he left
Cherry Street. I just don't know, and i feel guilty that i don't.