I:I

I could never understand what Erick was trying to tell me. I’ve known the guy for almost five years and he still bewilders me. It’s hard to even describe how he talks. He doesn’t always use philosophy or metaphors, but sometimes I think he’s just saying whatever sounds good to him. I mean, I can understand a little bit of what he says, it’s not like he’s speaking Chinese, some things are easier to understand than others, like yes and no. Take for instance when we first met in the seventh grade:

Erick was that “weird kid” that no one really talked to other than to cheat from time to time. I saw him on most days just sitting on a bench behind the school reading, doing homework, drawing, etc., until one day when he was sitting there and I sat down next to him. I didn’t sit with him because I felt sorry for him or I saw his neat drawing, I was extremely mad at that particular time and I was trying to cool off. My group of friends hung out behind the school also and I had some beef with one of them. So, I sat down, Erick didn’t look at me and didn’t look at him but I did tell him my situation.

“Can you see that fucking asshole with the blue shirt and the blonde hair?” I asked him trough my teeth. I just saw Erick’s head rise. “Well, he talks a lot of shit about my friend, he stole my watch and now he is hitting on the girl I like. I tried to tell but he talked his way out of it. Should I kick his ass?” We were silent, Erick still looking at the blonde guy.

After a moment Erick said very sternly, “To the gallows.” It could be that I just wanted that to mean yes or that Erick had no idea what I was talking about, but I jumped up, ran over there, and punched that asshole in the eye, and when he fell, I got on top of him and beat him until someone pulled me off. Most of my friend just stood there assuming I had some just cause.

I can’t exactly remember the events that followed but I know Erick and me talked a lot after that. At first I thought he was trying to be weird with the way he spoke, but I later realized that it’s like being a mute for him. No one talked to him because they couldn’t understand him. No, I don’t mean like he is some tortured soul, I mean they literally could not understand what he was saying. If you asked him what he liked, he’d have to show you. It was almost like an involuntary disorder. Once, we were playing video games and he said to me, “It must run, plummeting like doves in a sea breeze, and cascade past long lived mountains of coal.”

I took it in for a minute and got a little angry, so I said, “What the fuck does that have to do with your favorite flavor of ice cream?” Erick thought I was the funniest kid on the planet so he started laughing… hard. His laughter always cheered me up so I got over it pretty fast.

Here we are now, sitting in my car, out in what could be called a desert, waiting for our friends. I suppose I liked hanging out with Erick because I was with someone I liked and we never had to speak unless it was important. If he spoke, I listened, if I spoke, he listened. Mostly it was quiet, which was fine. We had a lot of time to kill so we smoked a joint and put on a CD. We were waiting…