Holden

Did we ever go deep into Marlboro Country, you and I! But only one of us made it back. The bridges I burnt to get to where I am are still smoking, ha ha. Are you? Probably not. Your health and all. ### The branded Coleman Thermos you were closing in on every day with each walk to campus, each run to 7-11. “I’ll buy, you fly,” you used to say. And how I flew. I never knew the value of money in those days: it came from my father and went up in smoke. But Big Gulps and Combos- that was real currency. And when Lisa Bonet from the Cosby Show got her own spinoff? With the dorm room full pizza boxes and Evian bottles? That’s supposed to be college?” we’d say. “Where are the slices and the Big Gulps?” ### I never understood why you always had a job. Your folks gave you as much as mine did every month, why did you need to work? I think I understand now. But you were always so smart. I guess I was too in my own way, but you had what they call a good head on your shoulders. Me, I always felt like I was missing the instruction manual for my life but you were born to make sound decisions, to accomplish. No less a Wildman than you were an executive, but you always knew when the party was over. Who got higher and sloppier than you? But then, for you, the fun would be had and there was work to do. Work to do! How familiar you were with the concept. I figured as long as I waited for something to happen, then everything else would take care of itself. ### We christened the Thermos twice, to make up for you and I both never having been. Remember our joke: it’s really more of a circumcision, two guys, foreskins. Speaking of ‘Skins- it was at RFK stadium, former and home of the storied and beloved Beltway gridders. Grateful Dead, Summer tour, electric Kool Aid the exact same color of that red plastic, the same taste too. Then, the same potion a couple nights later at JFK Stadium, historic host of the Army Navy game, in Philly, our hometown. Or my hometown: you came from the suburbs and to there you have returned. ### The old stadiums now gone the way of the Kennedys, of Jerry Garcia, of Homecoming. What happened to the Redskins and why do they keep moving the Army-Navy Game? Do people with lawns and dependents and retirement portfolios ever wonder about these things? Were those splendid freak-outs, under the JumboTronic dancing bears and the jellybean ice cream moons, was that the time you mapped out the course, step by sound decision, of the progress of your successful future? Because that’s when I had a vision of my future self: twirling in the misty redwood sun, beaded bands in my shaggy hair, a batik skirt wrapped around my skinnier, ecstatic loins, hungry and lost. And a year later, that’s where I was. Maybe I should have chosen a different major. ### Why did I take it? Could I have wanted to ensure that would be the last time I ever saw you, because I didn’t like what I realized about myself when I looked at you? Maybe because I got a sense accomplishment when I helped you search for it after it came up missing, a feeling I had seldom known, a feeling of victory: you will have everything one day and be the worthy steward of your full and rewarding life but I win this moment. I stole your five hundred Marlboro Mile, three hundred and fifty dollar thermos, my brother, and now I’m helping you search for it, my friend, sucker. I guess you could say that the two of us have measured out our lives with different spoons. The silver one I was born with, I sold for scrap. You were always so good with money: you earned and spent it with such grace and confidence, the ease of somebody who just knew they’d always have plenty. One hundred packs of cigarettes it cost you and I only needed ten bucks but Flacco up the way would only give me five. So I had to do whatever. Get creative; I was a Liberal Art’s major for God’s sake.