DIED 2016
ONE OF THE PEOPLE I idolized at college was a genius boy from Westchester with a motorcycle and a well-stocked quiver of left-wing ideas. When I showed up in the fall of ’75, he was on his way out west to attain biodegradable nirvana. One of his glamorous qualities was his charismatic older brother, who had arrived in Providence a few years ahead of us. This guy had ruled his prep school in Princeton and had taken over here, as well. He was already launched on what looked like a career in Rhode Island politics, while also managing a big local band and finishing his degree. This was a time when there was a lot of cocaine everywhere, including Wall Street and Hollywood, and his connections in that regard only added to his sparkle.
Then he crashed into the wall of a very serious bust that even their well-connected family could not completely fix, though the Golden Boy did no jail time. He never graduated, either. Instead he tumbled into a far-from-golden cycle: bailout, rehab, job placement, recovery, then just a little, why not. His little brother watched from a distance as his parents buckled under. He kept a list of beautiful, wrecked cars: GTO, Corolla, Tempest, Mustang, Fiat.
The last time he saw his brother, both were in their mid-fifties. By now my friend was a city planner, a proud father, a golden man, stopping in Florida on his way back from a tour of Cuba. He found an ancient-looking wreck with a rotating cycle of slurred, self-aggrandizing stories, nonetheless still able to rob you while telling you how much he loved you.
Some years later, he received a few boxes of personal effects gathered from the room where the Golden Boy had taken his last breath. A file of their mother’s recipes, a vast collection of AA and NA paraphernalia, a framed story about him from a local magazine. And a scrapbook containing old black-and-white photographs of two little men, mugging for the camera in their overcoats, their suits and ties, the big one with his arm wrapped protectively around his smaller brother. As moved as my friend was, he found he could not remember those times at all.