Alan Ilagan

I didn’t get to see her acceptance speech for Best Song (“Masterpiece”), but I did hear that several people thought she was narcissistic and arrogant. Well, duh. It’s Madonna, and she’s entitled. And as Matthew Rettennmund rightfully points out, she never wins anything, so I’m forgiving most of what she may have said.

Let’s talk, instead, about the dress. While I think it’s lovely enough, it feels like she settled for an in-between version of a full-blown ball gown (which I would have loved) and something far simpler. The diamonds do brighten it all up, though I have mixed feelings about the cross. Still, the whole effect is passably pretty, but once again I yearn, perhaps unfairly, for something more.

I like when she goes daring and edgy (as in her dramatic canary Olivier Theyskens gown, woefully under-appreciated at the 1998 VH-1 Fashion Awards, her brilliant bunny-eared Louis Vuitton ensemble at the 2009 Met Gala, or the glorious John Galliano get-up of the Evita premiere in 1996 – my favorite red-carpet look of all-time), and this one seemed to play it just a little safe – albeit in a gorgeous way

It’s a nice soft set-up for what she’s going to wear for her next high-profile appearances: the Superbowl and the Oscars (assuming she attends the latter). I hope she removes the half-gloves before they become a sad trademark, or opts for a full-length formal version a la the Golden Globes of 1996, or the bombshell Marilyn Monroe-homage at the Oscars in 1991. Love it or hate it, the world is once again talking about Madonna. She wins.

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

I can’t help falling in love
I fall deeper and deeper the further I go
Kisses sent from heaven above
They get sweeter and sweeter
The more that I know.

It was a cold winter night, and the big Victorian house was drafty at best. Downstairs, the wind swept by stained glass, while the wrap-around front porch offered little protection. Despite this, the dark home offered warmth and refuge, the velvet red wall-paper in some rich damask pattern winding through the first few grand rooms. This was Suzie’s house, where she grew up, and where my family spent all of our holidays. It was the repository of memories old and happy, sad and pronounced, silly and momentous. On the night at hand – sometime in late 1992 or early 1993 – Madonna had just released ‘Deeper and Deeper’ from the infamous Erotica album, and we were convening for a Friday or Saturday night of nothing. No more than seventeen years old, we had no idea what the outside world held in store, nor how protected we were in that old Victorian.

When you know the notes to sing,
You can sing most anything,
That’s what my Mama told me.
Round and round and round you go
Where you find love you’ll always know
I let my father mold me.

Deeply-stained wood framed everything, and the staircase wound round and round, higher and higher, or deeper and deeper. A small group of us wandered the dim corridors, peering into darkened rooms, seeking out the refuge of light in the kitchen, or the hidden recesses of secret passageways. Empty bedrooms, cold tiled bathrooms, and the call of darker secrets in the attic high and beyond lent the evening a slant of mystery. The flickering light of a few candles fluttered on the velvet walls, while shadows grew and receded.

Daddy couldn’t be all wrong
And my Mama made me learn this song
That’s why I can’t help falling in love
I fall deeper and deeper the further I go
Kisses sent from heaven above
They get sweeter and sweeter
The more that I know.

A bit of music played, someone did a little dance, and I sat on the couch and watched it all unfold, the only boy among all the girls, accepted as one of them, my gayness already entrance to the world of women. I leaned back and let my eyes close. A copy of the Sex book sat on the floor, and someone rifled idly through it. Ripples of laughter echoed from the kitchen down the hallway. Surrounded by ladies-in-the-making, I felt completely at home. No matter what else happened – and much did – I would always feel that comfort with them.

All is fair in love she said
Think with your heart not with your head
That’s what my Mama told me
All the little things you do
Will end up coming back to you
I let my father mold me…

How I loved those girls, and how loved they made me feel. When you took away the sexual tension between two people of the opposite sex (as being gay tends to do), it’s much easier to get along and become great friends. I wasn’t there yet though, and so we danced upon the rollicking sea of teenage hormones and the taste of freedom on the tips of our tongues.

Daddy couldn’t be all wrong
And my Mama made me learn this song
That’s why I can’t help falling in love
I fall deeper and deeper the further I go
Kisses sent from heaven above
They get sweeter and sweeter
The more that I know.

They would grow into women before my eyes. One would fuck me, one would hold me, one would laugh at me, one would make me laugh, and one would love me for life. Through it all, the woman to whom I compared all women sang her siren song.

Someone said that romance was dead
And I believed it instead of remembering
What my Mama told me, Let my father mold me
Then you tried to hold me
You remind me what they said
This feeling inside, I can’t explain
But my love is alive
And I’m never gonna hide it again.

The most fun song on the Erotica album whirled its dancing beat, and on the television upstairs the video played in an amber-lit room. On-screen, the candles and the incense glowed, the whole sexy Madonna mystique was in full effect, with echoes of Dietrich in her blonde-afro wig, and waves of Andy Warhol rolled through the disco party scene. There were drugs and danger, and the master re-arranger, and then, finally, for the first time, Madonna quotes herself, and the then-rather-recent past of ‘Vogue’:

You’ve got to let your body move to the music,
You’ve got to just let your body go with the flow.

The music took up again, spinning wildly into dizzy abandon, and with it a little pocket of our youth was turned inside out, emptied and torn, ripped ragged in the wind of that last winter of our high school years. We loved each other then, as best as we could. We tumbled together down the final rocky stretch of childhood, holding onto one another, grasping and pushing and pulling, hoping to make the night run on forever…

Falling in love
Falling in love
I can’t keep from falling in love with you
There’s nothing better that I’d like to do.

Song #61 – ‘Deeper & Deeper’ – Fall/Winter 1992/93

On the day she (please-God-jokingly) said her new album would be titled “MDNA”, Madonna walked the red carpet for her London premiere of directorial effort, W.E., wearing… this. Normally one could correctly assume that Madonna and a black lace cloak of some kind would have my panties rung out from wetness already, but I’m honestly not feeling it. I don’t know if it’s the way the lace just seems to lifelessly hang there, or the lackluster way it comes across in photographs, or whether it’s simply too much black and lace over the last year or two, but whatever the case it’s not my favorite.

However, after deriding the look on FaceBook and Twitter, I had to stop and pull back. While I love Madonna more than my own self sometimes, I’m also quite hard on her, and waste no time criticizing something I don’t like. This is not for the sake of change, it suddenly dawned on me, but the simple fact that I hold Madonna to a higher standard than just about everyone. It’s to her credit that she gets judged so harshly, because she set the bar so high. If she looks bad, it’s only because she usually looks so good. Then it dawned on me that this is precisely the sort of back-handed compliment I absolutely despise.

It’s kind of like when someone says they think my facial hair looks like shit but I’m handsome anyway. With that bit of reflective reconsideration in mind I have but this to say to Madonna: Rock on with your bitchin’ and bewitchin’ cape. Everyone deserves the chance to fly.

PS – The red gloves are smoking.

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

Okay, I admit it – I almost cheated on the Madonna Timeline. When I saw that ‘High Flying Adored’ was up next, I was about to skip over to the next song because this is really most Antonio Freaking Banderas. But I stayed true to the method of the madness, and am putting this up now, in the order in which it was received.

Not much to say about this bit from Evita. It takes place when Eva Peron is first realizing her glamour, and a bit of her power, and whenever I hear it I think of Madonna walking up that flight of stairs, impeccably gussied-up in a sparkling evening gown, hair pulled dramatically-high into lofty bun (the start of the transformation into Eva’s signature chignon), and head held aristocratically above it all. It’s the attitude I try to convey whenever I walk into a roomful of people I don’t know, but especially into a roomful of people I know well. Sometimes the latter is harder to do, and for those times it’s nice to employ a little Evita as armor.

Song #60 – ‘High Flying Adored’ –Winter 1997

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

You can call me a sinner
Or you can call me a saint
Celebrate me for who I am
Dislike me for what I ain’t

The iPod has selected ‘Like It Or Not’ from 2005’s Confessions on a Dance Floor album for the first Madonna Timeline entry of 2012. This one bucks the last-song-of-the-album-that-usually-sucks tradition Madonna has sometimes employed (‘Act of Contrition’, ‘Gone’, ‘Easy Ride’). Filled with confidence and matter-of-fact defiance, it haughtily exhibits the classic Madonna-mantra of self-empowerment, but after twenty years into her career it wasn’t so much an act of haughtiness as simple truth.

Put me up on a pedestal
Or drag me down in the dirt
Sticks and stones may break my bones
But your names will never hurt.

It’s an excellent starter for 2012, a year which will usher in a brand new Madonna album (her first on a new record label), a Superbowl performance, and the wide opening of her directorial effort W.E. Once again, we seem “poised on the precipice” of greatness, and she will be the one to take us there.

I’ll be the garden
You’ll be the snake
All of my fruit is
Yours to take
Better the devil that you know
Your love for me will grow

Even when it seems she has nothing left to prove, there are those who would not have her around at all, so this is a necessary reminder of her power and relevance, her lasting contributions, and the promise of so much more to come.

Her live performance of this song, on the Confessions Tour from 2006, is a simple, straight-forward delivery with some serious strutting, and a chair straight out of Cabaret. It’s Madonna at her best, connecting with her audience, but just as happy being alone and doing her own thing.

Because this is who I am
You can like it or not
You can love me or leave me,
But I’m never gonna stop.

Song #59 – ‘Like It Or Not’ – Winter 2006

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

What’s new Buenos Aires?
I’m new!
I wanna say I’m just a little stuck on you,
You’ll be on me too.

Not-so-secret confession: I don’t sing. Well. I don’t sing well. But I love to do it, when alone, usually in the car on a long-distance drive in some strange state where passers-by don’t stand a chance of recognizing me. (Once I was belting out a Norma Desmond aria on Western Ave. and my friend Paul was sitting in the car next to me laughing his ass off. I’ve never sung on Western Ave. since.) What does this have to do with the next iPod selection for the Madonna Timeline, ‘Buenos Aires’? Well, back in 1996, as I was preparing for the Royal Rainbow World Tour, I recorded myself singing this song, over and over, on a cassette tape, and then sending it out to a highly-select group of friends. It remains one of my most embarrassing moments, in a lifetime of embarrassing moments (mistaken for a clown at Ponderosa anyone?)

I get out here, Buenos Aires
Stand back!
You ought to know
What you’re gonna get in me
Just a little touch of star quality.

At the time I didn’t care – it was such a fun song, and I was so excited about Madonna in Evita that I would have done just about anything to express my joy. That’s the problem when I get really psyched about something – I want to share it with everyone, and I can’t contain the exuberance inside, so it ends up spilling out in all sorts of silly manners. Case in point: me singing ‘Buenos Aires’ (and I won’t even mention the ad-libbing that went on – let’s just say the phrase, ‘If you got titties, shake ‘em!’ may have escaped these lips more than once.)

Fill me up with your heat, with your noise
With your dirt, overdo me!
Let me dance to your beat, make it loud
Let it hurt, run it through me!
Don’t hold back, you are certain to impress
Tell the driver this is where I’m staying.

Hello, Buenos Aires!
Get this, just look at me dressed up, somewhere to go
We’ll put on a show…

Putting on a show is all I wanted to do, so when I was visiting my friends, I made them all see Evita with me. I took troupes from Ithaca, Rochester, and Boston to take in the spectacle of Madonna as Eva Peron in a big-budget musical extravaganza, and for the most part people were politely impressed. Granted, it would never quite reach the excitement that I was experiencing, but most were good sports about it (especially Suzie, who took in a 2 AM showing of it in NYC AFTER seeing the musical Chicago – that’s a musical-soaked evening for anyone, and she was a trooper.)

Take me in at your flood, give me speed
Give me lights, set me humming
Shoot me up with your blood, wine me up
With your nights, watch me coming
All I want is a whole lot of excess
Tell the singer this is where I’m playing

Stand back, Buenos Aires
Because you oughta know what you’re gonna get in me
Just a little touch of star quality…

Fortunately, when all we need at this time of the year is a break from holiday madness, this song lends itself to silliness – and if you read the lyrics alone you may want to take Tim Rice to task for some of them. It’s one of the dancier-ditties from the Evita opus, with some Latin-inspired percussion and a driving beat. Personally, I love it, and it’s the moment when the movie truly starts to soar.

And if ever I go too far
It’s because of the things you are
Beautiful town, I love you
And if I need a moment’s rest
Give your lover the very best
Real eiderdown and silence.

At this point, Eva was just starting out on her own, making her way to a strange city, and doing whatever it took to get by. That sort of struggle was familiar to Madonna as well, and to anyone who got away from home and had to learn to be all right alone. It’s a time of desperation and desire, a drawn-out moment of being on-the-verge – of your future, of your life, of the person you were destined to become. For those who dare to try, who dare to dream, there is always the threat of extinction, but it is always worth the risk. We thrash ourselves about and put it all on display so you don’t have to.

You’re a tramp, you’re a treat
You will shine to the death, you are shoddy
But you’re flesh, you are meat
You shall have every breath in my body
Put me down for a lifetime of success
Give me credit, I’ll find ways of paying…

In the midst of holiday mayhem, sometimes you just need to get away from the insanity, escaping to a place of fantasy and make-believe, the idealized city-scape of Eva’s Buenos Aires for example, where all you need to conquer the world is a dance and a dream, and just a little touch of star quality.

Song #58 – ‘Buenos Aires’ – Holiday 1996

{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle, and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}

Never forget who you are, Little Star
Never forget how to dream
Butterfly

God gave a present to me
Made of flesh and bones
My life, my soul
You make my spirit whole

This is a non-traditional Madonna Timeline, going back to something I wrote ten years ago, and an event that happened twenty years ago. The song is ‘Little Star’, from 1998’s epochal Ray of Light. The hazy fog of early Spring is trying to arrive, while the chill of Winter has not yet limped off. The musical beauty of the entire Ray of Light album finds a highlight here, with its light, skittering beats, but soothing overall lullaby-ish feel. An ode to her newborn daughter Lourdes, it is a heartfelt gem of motherly love and a wistful blessing for her baby’s future.

Never forget who you are
Little star
Shining brighter than all the stars in the sky
Never forget how to dream
Butterfly
Never forget where you come from
From love

Yet as personal as Madonna’s songs can sometimes be, they speak on a universal level as well, and for me this will always remind me of the story I wrote for a now-defunct newspaper back in Amsterdam, NY. As I wrote it, I listened to this song on repeat, felt the thawing of a long upstate Winter, and the new breeze of Spring. My story has little to do with the song, but somehow the melody, the yearning, the wish for something good came to be a part of what I was writing. The love of a mother for her child also has resonance here, in heartbreaking ways.

You are a treasure to me
You are my star
You breathe new life
Into my broken heart…

It’s been over twenty years since the boy in this story killed himself. There are songs that were popular then that take me instantly back to those dark days that followed – “Hard to Say Good-bye”, “Save the Best for Last” – but it’s this one that has come to symbolize the healing powers of time, the way life continues to go on, no matter how devastating the moment. In some ways it’s like it never happened, and in others it’s like that was all that ever happened.

The Boys of McNulty
(Written for The Sidewalks, Spring 2001)

We were never supposed to have been friends. By high school he was a popular jock and I was a dorky honors student. He played basketball while I played the oboe. We didn’t exactly travel in the same circles. In the end we both gave in a little, distancing ourselves from one another and pretending the past had never happened. But I can’t forget. It’s been almost ten years since this city lost Jeffrey Johnson, and still I can’t forget.

We were far from good friends during our waning years of high school. Though our lockers were close together, there couldn’t have been two more outwardly different guys. It didn’t start off that way. In the beginning we were equals, similar in many ways. We both went to R.J. McNulty Elementary School, we both lived in the Van Dyke area, and we were both lovingly brought up by two good parents. Jeff and I each had different best friends, but the boys in the honors class of McNulty were in many ways a brotherhood ~ bonding together against the icky, and more numerous, battalion of girls.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In Mrs. Loomis’s second grade class we were awarded stickers for a good day of work. We amassed these treasures on a personal folder with our names printed neatly across the top, and at the end of the year the student with the most stickers would win a prize. We all had more or less the same number of stickers, though the subtle differences were discussed and debated among us.

One day my Mom innocently told me how Jeff’s Mom had once said that Jeff wished he had as many stickers as I did. Never one to let an opportunity like that go by, I confronted Jeff and he embarrassingly admitted it. I felt badly as soon as the words left my mouth, and his slightly crestfallen mood confirmed that I had unnecessarily inflicted pain to make myself feel better. But kids don’t realize this, and while outwardly I acted superior to him, inwardly I wondered at who the better person really was, and why it even mattered.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Each February his family threw him an elaborate birthday party. I begrudgingly attended these events, mostly on the stern advice from my parents, but I inevitably had a good time, always glad I had gone when all the other kids were talking about it the following day at school.

There was a lot of love in the Johnson house. Jeff’s parents and his brothers might have sometimes seemed at odds, but they had an easy way of getting past all disputes, talking and laughing through it all in a manner that differed from the quiet turbulence of my own home. His Mom organized the party games: Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey, and a homemade party task that involved dropping a clothes-pin from the height of your waist into a thin-necked jar on the ground (this being the only one I had a chance of winning due to my height, or lack-there-of). These were innocent parties, where boys and girls were friendly and everyone seemed to get along with each other.

It was in gym class where Jeff was truly at his best. He was by far the tallest and most athletic out of all of us: the first to climb to the ceiling on those giant ropes, the kid who routinely hit home-runs during wiffle-ball, and the one who kicked the ball farthest during kickball. Once or twice a year Mr. Noto brought out a gigantic sphere ~ five feet across and covered in patches of ripped cloth. The class played various games with this ball, the culmination being a contest between two teams who fought to get the ball to the opposite side of the gym. We started in the middle, and groups of us tried to push and maneuver this impossibly immense thing across the lacquered floor.

One contest featured three boys against three boys or three girls against three girls, another pitted all the boys against all the girls (the girls usually won, but only because they outnumbered us two-to-one). In a novelty match-up, Mr. Noto himself challenged our greatest player, Jeff, who was almost up to the teacher’s height anyway. Still, it wasn’t quite a fair match, so he gave Jeff a little help: namely, me. (And little help I was.)
It was Jeff and I against the brawny teacher. Huffing and puffing and exerting all their energy, Jeff and the teacher battled it out while I fought not to step on my cardigan sweater. Needless to say, Jeff and I lost, but we had put forth a valiant effort, and that was what mattered.

A few months later we were taking part in the end-of-the-year physical education tests, a time when we journeyed outside to figure out how many push-ups and sit-ups we could do in a minute, how far we could throw a shot-put, and other essential tasks which would no doubt prepare us for a well-rounded life.

Apparently not content to humiliate us with the gigantic ball episode, Mr. Noto discreetly approached me as Jeff was preparing to throw the shot-put (that eight-pound ball of iron that people throw for… whatever reason). He said that he’d throw it past Jeff, and I was to run out as though it was my throw. Even I thought this was funny since Jeff was at least a foot taller than me and had muscles where I had bone. As he reached the length of his shot-put effort, my supposed throw flew past him by a few feet. His jaw dropped and he looked around incredulously, eyeing the shot-put, eyeing me, and eyeing how far it had out-distanced his throw. For once I had beaten Jeff Johnson outside of the classroom, if only for a moment, and when he finally figured out what we had done, his smile was grand.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On one spring day I got a call from Jeff. School was out for the day (was it the week of Easter vacation?) and a group was playing Dungeons & Dragons at Bill Barbato’s house. It was Bill, Jeff, Chris, Joe, and Ben, I think ~ the boys from McNulty. I wasn’t really into the game, and would have much rather stayed at home watching soap operas, but they needed another player to make it even. Reluctantly, I agreed to come down.

I did not have the first clue as to what went on in a Dungeons & Dragons game, and I still don’t. I saw a bunch of weird dice, some crazy rule books, and told them to just tell me what to do and when to do it. The day was burning slowly along, my disinterest in the game somewhat mollified by the presence of friends and the suggestion that we go outside and act out a scene from the game. Someone (and I swear to God it wasn’t me) threw a bunch of stones to signal a battle or something, and one of these flying boulders hit Jeff right in the head. There was a moment of surprise on his face, just before the pain registered, followed by Jeff scrunching up his face, holding his head, and crying.

Like all tough boys our age, we avoided eye contact at first, embarrassed and ashamed in the presence of anything remotely akin to naked emotion, but to our credit we worked up the courage to see that Jeff was all right. We trudged back inside ~ perhaps our re-enactments were better left to our imaginations ~ but I wanted no more to do with Dungeons & Dragons. Jeff’s crying had spooked me. He was the strongest boy I knew. If he could crumble with the well-aimed toss of a stone, what would become of the rest of us? After allowing them to divide the rights to my character, I cited a pressing engagement and walked the few blocks to my home.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Such was the then-slow passing of our years at McNulty. There were battles and fights and disagreements, but we always managed to stick together. As we prepared for Middle School, we seemed to linger a little longer after class, and laugh a little more. When our time at McNulty came to a close, we shared a distinctive bond, but it was the elusive bond of childhood ~ a bond that would quickly disintegrate with the onslaught of adolescence.

Jeff and I shared a unique friendship ~ sometimes brotherly, sometimes adversarial, often competitive, occasionally poignant, always honest ~ and in some small but fundamental way we each had a hand in shaping and influencing the other’s life, as all childhood friends do.

I can still vividly recall our last meeting during that summer. School had just ended for the year and I hadn’t seen Jeff for a few days. He had been our paper boy for a while, and I was purposely avoiding him during the afternoon delivery hours. I can’t say why, except that I didn’t want to face him for some reason. On this day, he caught me by surprise.

He rode his bike up to our side-porch, his worn, gray newspaper bag slung heavily over his shoulder, and he sheepishly handed me an envelope. It was near the end of June ~ the end of our years at McNulty, the end of our innocent friendship, and the end of our Youth.

“My Mom wanted me to give this to you,” he said. I opened it as he sat on his bike on the other side of the gate. It was a picture of the five of us at a Gifted and Talented Competition, taken a few weeks prior. We had to get an egg through an obstacle course without breaking it. Dubbing ourselves the “New Yolkers” (most decidedly NOT my idea), we were dressed alike in white T-shirts with a “NY” Logo inside of an egg, drawn on with black marker. Of course, our egg broke within ten seconds of beginning the challenge, but I still had a fun time. After we lost so dismally, Jeff’s Mom rounded us up for the picture I now held in my hands. I remember his embarrassment at having his mother take the photo, and his red cheeks are still there, framing his forced smile. Such parent/child sentimental ways touched me ~ his Mom trying so valiantly to hold onto her youngest son, even as he inched and yearned to grow up.

I thanked him for the picture and felt a sudden sadness, despite the hot sun and the promise of a full summer ahead. I think I knew that we would never be the same again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Upon entering Wilbur Lynch Middle School, our little group was splintered into five different factions. I was placed in the Honors program and I think Jeff was in Regents. Our lockers were close by, but we rarely spoke. We had one class together that year ~ our last one ever. It was Health 101 with Miss Siebe. Jeff sat behind me ~ Johnson following Ilagan in the abysmally tiresome alphabetically-ordered classroom configuration. We passed answers back and forth during tests and cracked jokes at our not-so-well-liked teacher. The next year we didn’t share any classes at all.

I don’t remember much about Jeff during our early high school years. Did he attend Bishop Scully for a while? I don’t recall. We registered each other’s presence peripherally, if at all. It wasn’t until our junior year, and a few days before his death, that we made any sort of meaningful contact, and to this day I’m not sure what it meant.

His locker was near mine again. The bell had rung for the next class to begin, and Jeff and I were straggling behind everyone else; the halls were quickly emptying of noise and students. Looking up at him as I picked out books from the bottom of my locker, I first noticed his cross ~ a silver one hanging on a black cord around his neck. I made note of it because it struck me as vaguely uncharacteristic for Jeff Johnson to wear anything remotely like jewelry. When I rose to my full height (and still looked up at him) I saw that he was staring at me strangely. It was the most we had looked at one another in years.

There was a slightly disturbed expression on his face, an unsettling look in his eyes and I wish so badly that I had asked if he was all right, instead of giving him a disgusted glance and demanding in a sarcastic, annoyed tone, “What?!” He simply shook his head slowly and awoke from his weird trance. It would be the last time I saw him, at least the last time that I remember.

A few days later my parents would knock on my door, sit down on the bed, and scare the hell out of me with their grave faces before saying that Jeff Johnson had shot himself. I managed a quiet “Oh…” and didn’t say anything more about it. The rain started shortly after that, and wouldn’t let up for days afterward. Amsterdam’s perfect All-American boy was gone forever, and we were all left wondering why.

For reasons of my own, I couldn’t help but think, “That should have been me.” Jeff had everything. He was attractive, smart, friendly, and well-loved by everyone. I often doubted that I possessed any of those traits. I wanted suddenly to go back and give him all of my stickers in second grade.

I did not attend his funeral. Almost everyone else in the high school did, but I simply couldn’t. That wasn’t the Jeff I knew, at least it wasn’t the Jeff I wanted to know. Or maybe it was, and I couldn’t bring myself to go because of that. I didn’t need to say good-bye ~ I had done that in the summer after sixth grade, when we both said farewell to the shared past and began walking different ways.

The sad truth is that if Jeff were alive today we probably would not be friends. I have trouble enough keeping in touch with people from last year, much less someone from high school. I mourn for the many other people who would have been lucky enough to have known him ~ but mostly I mourn for the boy who handed me the picture of our childhood, and somehow quietly understood.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

May the angels protect you
And sadness forget you
Little star
There’s no reason to weep
Lay your head down to sleep
Little star
May goodness surround you
My love I have found you
Little star
Shining bright…

Song #57 – ‘Little Star’ – Spring 1998