A friend

During much of the 70s, Mark Wallace was in my inner circle along with George Hey, Steven Brenner, my brother, David Belcher, and the Mael brothers. We hung out daily. Played a ton of sports. Street hockey. Ice Hockey. Football. Water-skiing. Snow skiing. And basketball too.  Mark was a really good athlete–he was strong, persistent.

The Hey family

The following is mostly true embellished with a bit of my imagination. Upon entering the doorway, Joe Hey was seen strewn out on the low-lying sofa at the far end of the living room. The worn-down brown carpet was blanketed by empty coffee cups, smoked out cigggeetttes, chipped china, old newspapers, and a mostly empty

It was the stage upon which we played out our youth …

It was the privilege of youth sometimes to just do exactly nothing. It wouldn’t last this nothingness, but we reveled in it while we could. The world lay out there just beyond our understanding. And just out of our reach. Blackness from here to adulthood. Someday we would have grown up houses, cars, and families of our own,