Victor lived on 30th Street a block and a half from my house. He was, for a short time, my best friend. He was a smart, good looking kid and he was proprietary. He was self-possesed. I learned rather early that when he said no, he meant no. Like most of the children in my life as a child, he possessed something I wanted but did not have. In this case it was a small electric keyboard made by a company called Emenee. He also had bongos which I was not so interested in. I insisted that he had more bongo skills and even if I had very few piano skills, it would be better for the music if he played the bongos. So we practiced together and came up with a funky song, perfected it and played it for his father. We were cool. Now that I think about it, freaky as it may sound, I think the name of our song was 'Egyptian Strut'. That was around 1972. After we tired of that song, Victor decided he should play the Emenee from then on, and no meant no. I wasn't interested in bongos. So I said no, too.
The early 1970s was a very interesting time for our neighborhood. We got a McDonalds. We lost a go cart track. We got a Dodge Daytona Charger at the dealership on Crenshaw and 29th Street which spun on an elevated circular stage in the showroom. We got a Datsun dealer. We got what had to be the first Taco Bell on the planet, complete with firepit and something called a 'Bellbeefer'. It took the place of the Lonnie's Go Karts where the local narcs told us to beware of teenagers selling amphetamines and 'bennies'. Victor's dad got a 260Z. Faster than the 240Z. Victor bet me that it could do 60MPH in second gear. I didn't believe him. I lost the bet.
Victor and I drifted apart for reasons I cannot remember but may have something to do with a girl named Anita. More likely it was that I shipped off to Jesuit school. By the time I was 17 and had dropped out of college, I was surprised to see Victor working at the local Boys Market. Or perhaps it was a bit earlier because he was proud of a job I couldn't imagine anyone being proud of. I ended up doing similar work for a lot less money at Fedco in 1979. Teamsters made less money than Retail Clerks when it came to bagging groceries. I didn't spend enough time at Fedco to work the warehouse. In 1980 my life changed again. It would be a long time before I ever thought of, or found Victor again.
A few weeks ago, he showed up on Facebook.
Victor is a bike nut, and that doesn't surprise me. I could sense early on his capacity for hard work. I knew his father. It's kind of interesting that we have cycling in common although I never got as serious as Victor evidently is. He's clearly a successful businessman and has what look to be awesome kids. I'm happy for him. And I wonder who he is and where he has been.
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The rest of this is about me as I have been doing some introspection and much more writing lately. I remember discovering about two or three years ago that my IQ puts me in the 98th percentile or thereabouts. The idea floated into my head yesterday as I consider how difficult it has been over my lifetime to find and keep friends. Not because I am anti-social but because I have become accustomed to being the only one I know who thinks about what I think about to the lengths I think about them. This very essay will be about the 9300th thing I've composed for this blog, much of which is dedicated to thinking about why people think the way they do. I think too much, I take my thoughts too seriously. That's what people tell me, so I let them be right and I try not to tell them they are boring to their faces. It doesn't make me anti-social, I keep saying, but I do deal with the distance, dissonance and dislocation.
The smartest man in the world told me that there's something about bloggers that he's known that make them roll down the hill to hell and suicide a bit faster than the average bear. That's not good. I have more than enough ego to survive in splendid isolation. But I've done so, I think as Victor has done so, because we understood that we had to work ourselves out of a hole and become whole. And that's about all I have to say about that, other that Victor is named well.
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