4:15 p.m. - November 20, 2001
a camel's memory
The only image I still clearly retain of him (note: this is a different 'him' than yesterday) is that of a blood-soaked green shirt and his absolute refusal to go to the nurse. Everything else is blurry. The cheese fries story; all I remember was that it had to do with Fat Larry and he treated me like an equal while telling it. His.. there's no other way to say it.. terror, when someone touched him. 'Don't touch me!' Jesus. What could have gone so wrong with him?
This spiked my mind because of an English assignment (write about someone who intrigues you, I immediately remembered him), and it's not only making me nostalgic, but wondering where he is now. He graduated when I was only sixteen. He was seventeen, beautiful in his cap and gown, hair spilling out from underneath, a shaky smile when he accepted his diploma. Boom, and then he was gone.
Actually, it wasn't right then that I felt he was really gone, it was a few days before; the last day of semester exams. He was a senior, so he didn't have to take them, but was there in the music wing running around doing something (he was always there), and it was a free period for me. I was lying down in the music library, curled over two chairs with my jacket pulled around me, dozing. I was thinking about something, probably my math test, and the door opened. I sprang up, blushing, embarrassed to be caught sleeping in public, and of course it was him, standing there in shorts, sandals, and a baseball cap, smiling. He almost never smiled. But he was then, he had this wide radiant grin, and I was so surprised, I forgot about being embarrassed. 'Oh, there," he said, walking over behind me and taking a copy of 'Taming of the Shrew' off the shelf. 'I thought I left that in here.
He retrieved the book, and then just stood there, in the doorway, smiling, and I was looking at him, knowing, knowing, even then, I would not see him again, not for a very very long time. I wanted to do something, say something, tell him how intrigued I'd been by him the past two years, tell him anything, at least give him a hug. But I didn't, I just leaned against the bookshelf and looked at my shoes. His smile faded for a second, flashed a few times, and then he grinned again. ''Bye,' he said, softly, and turned around, and his sandals squeaked down the hallway, the flash of his red shirt disappeared around the corner into the music office, and I sat back down, clutching my jacket. I could have said so many things. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't. I wanted to, and still want to, remember him just as he was that day, as always blissfully oblivious, in his baseball cap with his hair spilling out the sides, the shorts that he wouldn't wear until this year, out of self-consciousness, and that uncharacteristic wide smile.
I still have that image, too. The blood soaked shirt in that dark corner of my mind, and this other one in the light corner. He was so bipolar, too. Bipolar describes him perfectly. It's only so fitting that the two images I still have of him take a compltetely different light. I do miss him, too. I miss so many people.

As for the everyday, I am off to the boring confines of Houston, TX, until Sunday. Won't be able to write; what a terrible shame. I'll leave you with this for awhile.

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