Fly Boy

Sometimes you just have to sit back and take it all in.

He was obsessed with flying since he was a kid after reading some book about a boy who had magical powers and could fly. The boy genie flew around the world doing random acts of kindness. Saving this person, rescuing that dog, that kind of thing. Real popup book stuff with cutouts of places from all over the world. The Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, that leaning tower. He would say the leaning tower of pizza and all of a sudden you couldn't help yourself from imagining a stack of pizzas; pepperoni, olive, green peppers, sausage, ham and pineapple tall enough to reach the sky. To hear him tell it, the clouds were nothing but cotton candy anyway. What a vision, his vision.

He knew one day he would fly. He swore to all of us that time in the dugout during a rained out baseball game. We never got a hit or made it to first base, at least not until we started dating. Our coach was some effeminate dad who was trying to prove something. That summer we never won a game, but coach taught us all to appreciate good music and how to dance. Something that came in handy when prom time came around in high school. Got me laid. Got fly boy laid as well.

Friends for life. He made me swear to it on an autographed picture of Chuck Yeager. You can make those promises when you are a kid. We did. And now he's dead. Jumped off a bridge wearing some fancy costume with bat wings. The police call it suicide. I call it pursuing a dream. He's gone. Nothing but a sack of bones all pumped up with chemicals, laying back like he was asleep waiting for one of us to shake him awake. I miss him already. I try and pretend that he didn't mean that much to me.

I watch from the back as others that knew him, give their condolences to the family his mother, his father and his daffy sister with the large breasts. I wonder if he knew I slept with her one night after bringing him home drunk. She was having one of her spells and sat there on the couch heavily medicated in a pink ballet tutu watching TV without the sound. She asked if I wanted to sleep with a ballerina. She didn't say sleep and I didn't say no. I snuck out after she fell asleep and began to snore. I think the whole episode meant more to me than it did to her.

Trying not to cry, I took another drink from a bottle I had hidden in my jacket pocket. Some old friends stopped by and sat for a while. I barely recognized their faces. They introduced their wives and girlfriends. We share stories. Laugh about the summer we learned to dance, but failed to get a hit on the baseball field. Everyone talks about how he loved to fly.

He went crazy the summer after high school. One weird foggy night riding through the Poconos toward Jersey to buy booze we stopped to take a piss. Four ways flashing in the fog like some alien spaceship. All of a sudden he took off running through a field by the side of the road. Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was the pot. Maybe it was the little yellow pills. He ran around yelling that he could fly, flapping his arms like some strange bird’s wings. We had to tackle him, landing in the wet grass. All of us laughing, laying on our backs staring up in to the fog.

He was never the same. His eyes lost that dreamy look, his spirit seemed crushed. He drank too much and gained weight finally looking like some old guy with a gut hanging over his belt.

He fell in love. She was junkie and just as crazy as he was. She would get arrested for prostitution and call him begging him for bail and forgiveness. One night she never came home, just disappeared. He forgot her in a week.

I had lost touch, moved away, my life was filled the usual excuses and then I moved back about a year ago. One afternoon in one of those dollar stores, in the household aisle we ran in to one another. We stood there laughing, talking about growing up. He needed to bathe and put on clean clothes. I invited him out, but he begged off. Swearing that he didn't go anywhere anymore. He was a homebody. I should come around some time to see his garden and share some beers. His parents would love to see me and did I know his sister was recently divorced?

The crowd was thinning. I sat up on the back of the chair and watched as people, family, friends streamed by. They mingled for a while talking, laughing, crying and then left. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine flying. Soaring through the blue sky bouncing off of clouds, mocking birds and aircraft. Reaching up toward the envelope, that place where the sky becomes space and if you look just right you can see the sunrise as it peaks around the curve of the earth. I felt a tug at my sleeve and opened my eyes. His sister sat down beside me. I offered her a drink and we drank a toast to him, to fly boy. She told me that I was the only one allowed to call him that.

She grabbed my arm pulled me close to her. She was trying to be the strong one of the family. We sat there in silence watching the last few mourners leave and watched as her parents collapsed in their grief. She turned to me and whispered, “Did you ever sleep with a ballerina?”