friendship

Friday Firesmith – in memory of curt

by

Fire is the way I remember people. It’s a way of feeling warmth again, of seeing light again, and of reminding myself every fire goes out. With everything that is going on these days, it’s hard to take time to stop and look back at loss. There’s so much of it and once you reach a certain age there’s more people missing from your life than those who remain.

Curt was my best friend from the third grade on. He and I stopped speaking back in 2002 when he got involved in serious drugs. We were in our forties at that time, and playing Russian Roulette with chemicals was getting to be dangerous. He pulled a gun on his brother in law, his son disarmed him and they fought him, and a deputy arrived. Curt attacked the deputy and wound up in jail. He called me to bail him out and I wouldn’t. His wife called me and asked me to give her time to serve papers and get rid of the guns.

Someone called me in 2013 to tell me Curt had lung cancer. When I went to see him it was already in the later stages. In January of 2014, Curt died with a cigarette in his hand.

The man was an excellent guitar player. He played twelve string and six string, sang some, but I remember when he was thirteen or fourteen years old he was good. He was good with people, effortlessly, they seemed to know there was some sort of magic surrounding Curt, and I was the one who women came to in order to meet him. We dated sisters at one point when we were roommates, and one night he suggested we switch women and both girls agreed to it. Their mother had a fit. It didn’t stop us, nothing ever could, until Curt got connected with the wrong woman and the wrong drugs.

Curt was a good chess player, taught his oldest son to be even better at chess than he was, or for that matter, even better than me. At one point I was really good, but that second generation Curt raised was awesome. Curt knew how to hunt, fish, and even play golf. But we both started smoking early in life and eventually, that killed him.

I still remember being outside. It was cold as hell, and I had gotten a good fire started. I sent Curt a photo of the fire and a few minutes later his nephew called me. Curt was dead. The funeral was good, inasmuch as one can be, and a lot of people I hadn’t seen in decades arrived to see him off. We buried Curt beside his mother in a small cemetery next to a small church. The road to the church was paved now, and that was a shock to me.

It’s been a dozen years now. His oldest son has a son, and I hope he becomes a guitar player and learns chess. It hurts in a way that I cannot put to words Curt won’t know this kid. And worse, the child will not know Curt.

Let’s take a break this week from what’s going on outside in the world, and remember the people we’ve loved, and lost, but will never forget.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – A tale of Greg

by

Greg and I were friends in high school. Several things about Greg were strange, but after all, he was a drummer in a band. I dated a woman who had known him most of his life, and was good friends with his family, and she thought Greg was a little odd, but so where most of her friends.

I was the best man at his wedding. His new bride was eighteen, he was twenty-four, and they seemed to be a happy couple. Two years later she left him.

Greg started dating a woman older than he was, and she had a twelve year old daughter. They went on vacation and Greg’s beach photos were mostly of the little girl in her swimsuit. I began to feel uneasy about Greg and the girl, but shortly after the beach trip, her mother broke up with him and left.

When I left the Army I moved to Valdosta Georgia and Greg had disappeared. A few years later he called me looking for a character witness in a trial. It seems that a computer virus had infected his computer and downloaded a lot of child porn. I told Greg I was the last person he wanted in that courtroom. If summoned I would have told the truth.

He had called a mutual friend and that friend called me, and we began to compare notes. Greg never had a girlfriend in high school, never dated, and his wife, Kim, looked a lot younger than eighteen. The photos of his girlfriend’s daughter made us stop and wonder. There was only one conclusion to come to about Greg. He was a pedophile. All the clues had always been there, but we, and everyone else, never put them together.

Last I heard, Greg had served five years in a prison in West Virginia on the child porn charge. Where he is now, I have no idea.

Greg and I were good friends. We drank together, we talked a lot about music and life. I was a roadie once for a gig he played at a Country Club where a woman got on stage and stripped. We went to concerts, the beach, and hung out a lot. I wore my dress green uniform at the wedding and somewhere there’s photos of us together. Greg and I were close.

Child Porn is a red line for me with Greg or anyone else. Sexualizing children is abhorrent. I was more than willing to disregard the good times years of friendship in order to preserve my own values. I would do the same with anyone I have ever known.

I will, without hesitation or regret, cut ties with anyone who has anything to do with sexualizing children. There is no acceptable degree.

Take Care,

Mike