While I was writing the essay about a recently-made close friend who died, my brain did one of the weird-things-it-does by recalling a teenage friend who died when I was still a teen. I don't think my brain does this because of my Asperger's. It probably behaves this way as a result of my decades-old drive to exercise my memory, which has over-time become a force-of-habit. Maybe everyone's brain does this to some extent (only yours doesn't tease out every detail, write about it, or create art because of it).
Although—between 1972 and 1976—Bret and I attended the same schools in Peru, Indiana (go tigers) and lived very near each other in Parkview Heights (referred to as, by everyone we knew, a "development" or a "sub-division" rather than a neighborhood) we were as opposite as two teenagers could ever have been.
Add—on top of this abnormal constant-uprooting (step-father's job transfers) and the abnormal disparity in classmates ages—that my authoritarian mother forced me to always wear 'school clothes' when jeans, t-shirts, and "sneakers" were the norm; to always cut my hair short, when long or shaggy was de rigueur; and she, routinely, restricted my freedom ("grounded") whenever I was caught playing with a neighbor's toy from her ever-changing and illogical list of verboten items, which included: plastic toy guns, BB guns, bicycles ("two-wheelers"), GI Joe ("action figures"), and minibikes.
This snapshot is the environment which molded me into a shy, introverted, twelve year old (with an inability to make friends) when Bret sat down next to me on the school bus wearing his brand new, flesh-toned, starter mustache. I'd been riding the bus to school for weeks and I'd never seen him before (on the bus or anywhere). 1970s-kid protocol was: high-schoolers didn't exchange pleasantries with junior high kids so I didn't talk to him because I assumed he was the former and learned from him (years later) that he had a personal protocol: never initiate conversations with anyone. Ever.
My next memory of Bret is when it was already sweater-weather. I was standing outside the school waiting for the doors to open, talking with no-one (new kid protocol), making eye contact with no-one (kid-who-always-gets-bullied protocol and Asperger's trait). Regardless, one of the Tully twins decided it was time to pick on me—I never learned if it was Tim or Tom—he said something derogatory, laughed, and slapped the books under my arm to the
sidewalk (why didn't anybody use book-bags back then, and, why didn't I use my Boy Scout back pack after this?) Tully got a jeer of encouragement from other-Tully and a few more from the crowd, I dropped to the sidewalk to collect my homework before it blew away, and some of the feet around me began to step back (space-to-fight protocol) as a low voice said, "Leave him alone." One of the Tullys started to reply, "Mind yer own...," but was interrupted by an arm with a fist at the end of it. Stand-turning, I noticed blood coming from a Tullys mouth and blood on Bret's knuckles, who immediately turned and walked away without looking back. I might have shouted a thanks at Bret's back, but that feels squishy, like a false memory.Years later, I asked Bret about it and he said that he definitely didn't recall me being there, and was 'definitely not coming to anyone's aid.' He said that 'those fuckin Tullys' had always 'rubbed him wrong' and that he just saw an opportunity to punch a Tully and took it.
It was strange to hear then (and weird to think about now)—Bret had the mind-set, in eighth grade, that some people were always deserving a pop in the mouth, and accordingly, he was going to be the person on the look-out for an opportunity to deliver it. He'd seen a Tully causing a kerfuffle (didn't matter to whom) and popped that fuckin Tully in the mouth.
Bret and I slowly became friends and, by senior year of High School, we were close enough that we ate lunch together on occasion, shared a study hall, and worked as primary designers on the Senior class homecoming float. I learned that he was three-or-four years older than me; he'd been 16 with a driver's license (and a starter mustache) in eighth grade! He was "held back" several times in Elementary School, because of "poor performance". His older brother (whom I never met) died young and his mother died our Junior year. There were many months that I never saw Bret (stories of "juvy-hall" abounded) but I never asked where he'd been when I eventually ran into him, and he never offered an explanation, which may have been why we got along.
I have a vivid memory of walking up to him after a lunch in twelfth grade, and, as we stood talking about nothing, he looked at me and said, "hey, stand up." Which caused me to look down then look him in the eye, and I recognized in-that-moment he had actually thought I was so short that I couldn't have been standing. He laughed at his mistake in judgement so hard his eyes teared up, and that laughter was so contagious, my eyes teared as well. For months after that 'hey-stand-up' was our inside-joke catch phrase.
Two years later, sometime in 1978, I learned Bret had died of the same disease that killed his brother and his mother. It made me wonder if the months he was allegedly in some juvenile detention facility were just something (promulgated by Bret) to cover for some health treatments as well as improve his bad-ass street credentials. Again, I'll never know.
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