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Back in about 1989, 1990, somewhere around there, I hung around with this kid named Jesse. Jess got me into hip-hop. Jesse got me into gang culture. He got me into smoking, and alcohol (even thought I never drank any), and he got me into fights. He stopped going to school, and would take the bus from Wallingford (where there were no roughnecks) to the Rainier Vista (where there were lots of roughnecks) just for something to do. Jesse taught me gang signs. Jesse taught me how to dip snowballs into water to make them freeze, and then chuck them at cars. They caused more damage that way. The first time I kissed a girl, I was with Jesse. We double dated - the date consisted of his mom driving us down to some apartment in Burien, where we met up with two girls that neither of us really knew. We watched bad movies and made out sloppily with our respective girls. Jesse was pissed because I got the cuter one.
What days.
I was the only friend of his that Jesse's mom liked. All of his other friends were good for nothing low lifes. His mom liked the fact that I might do something with myself. She probably thought that I might be a good influence on her son.
I apparently wasn't. At least not in the way she hoped. But I must have made an impression on him.,
About three years ago, my roommate got a phone call from the state pen in Monroe. It was Jesse. He was looking for me. Patty talked to him for awhile. She told him I was at work (which I was).
The last I had heard of Jesse, he had been involved in some sort of gang shootout in South Park (yes, there is a South Park right outside of south Seattle, and it has nothing to do with Cartman). They all got shot, and one of them died.
How stupid I thought when I heard that.
Now he was calling me from jail.
He had seen me through lots of shit. Not that he had the slightest idea as to what to do. He was around when my mom died. He didn't know what to do. He had his own traumas to deal with.
Ack. I wonder sometimes where he is. He was the proverbial bad influence on me. I was the good influence on him. I'm loving life. Last I heard, he was rotting away in a jail cell.
Funny how that works.
Hey man, if yr out there, find me.
I'll forgive you for making fun of me for wanting to do something with my life (which you did).
