Hanging with the Pink, as in Floyd

By the time the line started ringing, I was already second-guessing myself.

Did I really want to do this?

Then he picked up.

“Floyd House,” he said.

It was his work phone.

He sounded busy.

I took a breath and launched into another spontaneous cold-call to a high school friend I hadn’t spoken with in 45 years.

“Hey, Floyd, “ I began. “This is a windy blast from your very distant past.”

For weeks, I’d been on a jag of sorts, one many might think ill-considered. I was letting my fingers do the walking, reaching out to people from my distant boyhood.

They were the bad boys I went to school with, party buddies with whom I shared my first beer, my first tentative toke off a blunt, my first arrest.

Guys who were there as I made my teenage rite-of-passage, while they were making their own.

So, why was I doing this?

I can’t really say why, and perhaps that’s why I’m writing this post, to help me understand my motives.

For me, those old times were not glory days, far from it.

They were more like awkward days, marked by experiences I’d either repressed or forgotten.

I hadn’t had the urge to reach out to any of these guys for years, but suddenly there it was, gnawing at me.

Now I just had to talk to them.

There was Chris, who had always wanted to become a priest, before life intervened, and who now was about to be ordained as a Roman Catholic deacon. Back in the day, I listened as Chris talked about a girl in his class on whom he'd had a serious crush.

And Dave, who was a year younger. He helped me with my paper route for nothing and we later hitchhiked cross-country together.

I was there when he bought the 45 “The Pusher” by Steppenwolf and his mother made him take it back because of its subject matter and profanity.

Now Dave lived in Connecticut and his oldest daughter was a cable TV celebrity.

And there was Pete. He played lacrosse. I was on the golf team. We dated two sisters and used to bump into one another when we went to pick them up.

But Floyd was different. 

We were friends, but also major competitors. 

Frenemies, you might say. 

I liked him, but I never felt I could trust him.

Floyd and I competed at everything, from grades to girls. We bagged groceries at the same supermarket. Floyd was super cool, in a way I could never be, in an “Oh, wow man!” stoner kind of way, with his wild Brillo hair and glasses. 

The older guys at the store called him “Pink,” as in “Pink Floyd.”

They didn’t call me anything.

Floyd made everyone laugh. He made me laugh.

He could borrow his Mom's car for our escapades -- a Cadillac. I showed up driving my mother's yellow Ford Pinto.

We smoked a lot of pot, which we called 'mierda."

In ninth grade, we’d done earth science projects for a teacher named Mr. Vessley, both wanting to score higher than the other.

Every time I saw Vessley in the hallway, I’d ask, “Did you grade those papers yet?”

One day, he swung around,

“You know, Glionna, you’re just like House,” he said. “You’re both a couple of burdocks!”

As a junior I got dumped by a girl named Meg.

Floyd was sympathetic.

“If you want,” he offered, “I could talk to her.”

“You’d do that? I said.

The next day, a Saturday, I was bagging groceries when Floyd waltzed in.

“Sorry man,” he told me. “It’s a no-go. But you know what? She’s a great kisser!”

Ah, Floyd.

All day, I stewed, until one store checker named Jayne whispered to me.

“I know how to get back at Floyd.”

He’d briefly dated her younger sister, Joni, and was still hung up on her.

“Ask her out,” Jayne said. “She’ll go. And it will drive him crazy.”

Well, I figured all was fair in high-school love and war.

That night, my pulse raced as I called Joni. I’d never met her, but knew she was way out of my league, the runner-up junior prom queen.

I was a stoop-shouldered kid with zits on my back.

Jayne was right. Joni was delighted to help me get back at Floyd. We went out, and actually started seeing each other after that.

Right after that first date, Floyd showed up at my house.

“How could you do this to me?” he said.

Well, paybacks were indeed hell.

I still hung out with Floyd after that, but we went our separate ways in college.

He went to culinary school.

I blundered onto my own path.

So that day on the phone, I wasn’t sure if he’d want to talk to me.

Or even remember me.

Forty-five years is an awfully long time.

His reaction was stunning.

“John! It’s so great to hear from you! I was just talking about you yesterday!”

Say, what?

Floyd was still a chef but now he also taught young culinary students. I shared my memories of how competitive we were, about grades and friends and girls we’d contested, like Joni.

About being frenemies.

Floyd didn’t remember it that way.

“Those were the best years of our lives,” he said. “Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll!”

Yes, it was all that.

I told Floyd something rather peculiar that day.

That I loved him.

“For so long, you were so important to my life. You helped shape me.”

I told him I was jealous back then that I could never be as cool as him.

Floyd reciprocated. He was so competitive about grades because he’d always felt inferior, that I was simply smarter than he was.

Which was hardly the case.

Still, it’s funny how memories work, or don’t, how selective they are. As I spoke to my old pals in recent weeks, some recalled stories that I’d completely forgotten.

Or, like Floyd, remembered the same experiences in a vastly different way.

When I apologized to Dave for being a jerk and taking apart his bike one day, he seemed nonplussed.

With another, named Tom, I lamented for throwing up on the coats during a long-ago college party he threw in Buffalo.

He didn’t even remember.

“That was a wild night,” he said. “Didn’t I wake up the next day wearing your pants?”

Still, I was ashamed of my behavior on that and other nights.

“I was a handful,” I said.

Tom paused.

“Yeah, you were.” 

The other night, I told a Vegas friend named Frankie, a former New Jersey boxer who’s always been a tough guy, about calling my old pals.

“That’s a good idea, John,” he said. “Sometimes, you just gotta reach out to those people in your past. To tell them you’re sorry.”

So maybe that’s it.

Maybe I called all those guys to give them a Last Confession of sorts.

To apologize for being that wild, juvenile, loudmouthed, inconsiderate version of me.

At least, that’s how I remember it.