The Path of Thought

You have to think positively. You can’t let your mind drag you into a dark place of inaction and self-pity. Everything that you say and think carries with it a vibration that starts building your material reality, bit by bit. That was Manny’s rap lately. And it just wasn’t sinking in with Gregorio, it wasn’t resonating, and meanwhile Manny saw Gregorio walking through life like a paranoiac enveloped in a brownish haze, waiting to be bitten or stabbed.

As much as he tried, Manny just couldn’t relate. He and Gregorio had been friends for many years, since childhood practically, and Manny thought he knew Gregorio better than anyone else, but as of late, Gregorio’s precipitous fall into depression was leaving Manny at a loss, and he wasn’t comfortable with losing. So he kept trying.

Gregorio and his dad moved three houses down the street from Manny’s and within a day or two, Manny’s mother, Anna, made him come with her to deliver a tray of cookies to welcome the new neighbors. Gregorio wasn’t home presently but his dad mentioned to Anna that he had a thirteen-year old himself and wouldn’t it be nice for them to meet so Gregorio could start making friends in the neighborhood. “I got it covered,” said Anna, winking. The next Saturday, she hosted a barbeque for friends and neighbors and Manny invited Gregorio to his room and showed him the Guns N’ Roses poster he had up on the wall above his bed, one where they’re all sitting on the floor and Slash is holding a bottle of Jack Daniels, and he also let him play a few riffs on the Fender Stratocaster he kept always plugged in and hooked to the amp. They became friends on the spot.

Gregorio was intelligent and precocious, ahead of boys his age when it came to trying and knowing things, but not applied as a student. His mother had died when he was five but he had hardly any memories of her, except some very early ones that had possibly been enriched and made vivid in his mind by his dad’s emotive retelling of those “most wonderful years.” Dad was more of a friend, a supportive older brother. They horse played, went to hockey games, built soap box cars, stayed up late watching movies on school days, and they also cleaned the house and cooked together.

At school, Gregorio knew how to talk, lie, or craft his way out of trouble - trouble that as he got older was increasingly underscored by girls and booze. And Manny was almost always there with him, by his side, enjoying the thrill of mischief from the periphery, from a safe distance, so that he too wouldn’t get in trouble, and he rarely did. Manny loved music, Rock and Roll especially, and when he wasn’t riding his bike around town with Gregorio (and later riding in Gregorio’s 1976 Tercel), he was in his room, playing his guitar along to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath records. He never got good enough to be in a band, never could write a tune of his own or memorize tabs.

Gregorio didn’t show up to graduation. He had gotten drunk the night before and didn’t attend the ceremony or even the party that Anna had prepared for him and Manny. He later told Manny that at the mall he had run into Laura McDonough, the sluty redhead who had told them at homeroom that she was going to become a stripper to pay for college and was going to be set for life by twenty-five, with a big house and a college education. She and Gregorio had gotten drunk at Laura’s aunt’s house where they spent the night and had sex. He had been too hung over to wake up in time so he spent the day sleeping, vomiting, and ransacking the aunt’s refrigerator. Manny remembered seeing Laura at graduation and feeling something like sexual nostalgia, like an unpleasant, cold tingling in his groin and his chest, knowing he’d never again be in the same classroom with Laura where he could busy himself making out the shape of her breasts through her jersey or picturing a gig with his imaginary band and spotting Laura cheering him on from front row. Manny had never shared these fantasies with Gregorio.

Manny went off to college in North Carolina and Gregorio stayed behind in Minneapolis, for a year and a half. Manny would call him;, write him letters, and later emails. The girls here are hot, I’m growing a goatee, me and some guys from the dorm put together a bluegrass band, I learned to play the banjo. C’mon man, I know you’ll like it here, you don’t have to pick a major yet, just come on down!

So he did. Gregorio applied and was accepted to North Carolina State and moved to Durham in the spring. Manny, Gregorio, Sandeep from India, and Doug from Mankato all rented a house near campus. Manny had hoped being in a town faraway from home, together, would be like being children again, exploring, bonding, playing but he didn’t account for the difference of their situation, for the different people they had become. Manny was even more serious about school than he’d been in high school and spent much of his spare time with the guys from the band. Still, he was jealous of the quick and easy bond that was forming between Gregorio and Sandeep and the good times they seemed to have - scheming, selling and smoking pot, owning the local college bar scene, partying with girls. In one semester, a shifty boy from Delhi had built with Gregorio what took him, a boy from the heartland, years to build, Manny lamented. For a year and a half, Gregorio and Sandeep were inseparable and it puzzled Manny how they managed to squeak through their courses – cheating, he assumed.

Three weeks into the Fall semester, Gregorio and Sandeep announced to Manny and Doug that they would be moving to California in four weeks. “What about school?” asked Manny and they said they were dropping out. Gregorio explained that he and Sandeep were joining Mari-O-B., former DJ at a popular Durham dance club, and together they were starting a company to sell music over the Internet. “The gold rush of the nineties” chanted Sandeep. Manny’s face was red and without looking at Gregorio in the eye, said “good luck guys, send us a postcard,” and headed up to his room. He did speak with Gregorio two or three times before they left for California and even helped him to pack his belonging, not without expressing his disapproval of the idea. “Worst case scenario, I’m back here in a year,” was Gregorio’s response.

For nine months, Gregorio, Mari-O-B, and Sandeep spent day and night cooped up in the decrepit warehouse they used as an office. Mari-O-B had assured them they would be able to turn it into a cool loft slash office in no time and hadn’t they noticed how so many abandoned warehouse districts were becoming the hippest parts of so many towns thanks to the dot com bonanza? But their venture flopped. Mari-O-B wanted to take the hefty offer a major record label had made to buy them out but Sandeep threw his weight around and reminded them it was his family’s money that had kept them going all these months and didn’t they realize that the record label wanted to take them over because they felt threatened? Within six months, ten or fifteen groups of brilliant young people like themselves, not to mention record labels and computer makers, had come up with the same idea as they and their business withered and died.

When Gregorio moved back to Minneapolis, he was broke and broken and his father was very ill. He and his father went for daily walks by the lake and talked about Gregorio’s mother and what a beautiful firecracker of a woman she had been and how she wanted Gregorio to grow up to be a racecar driver or an actor. Those walks, the love of his father, and those accounts filled with love and nostalgia slowly healed Gregorio and made him believe that life could be good again, like it had once been for his father and mother.

Manny and Anna came to the funeral. Hundreds of people came to Lakewood cemetery to pay their respects, and many came to greet Gregorio and to tell him how much his father had appreciated having him so close on his last days.

Anna started having Gregorio over for dinner at least twice a week and with less frequency, Manny would come too, though he often had to work late and lived almost an hour away. Manny had moved back to Minnesota after graduation almost two years ago and Anna beamed when she spoke of her son’s determination and accomplishments in the short time he had been working as an accountant for an investment firm. “Manny has gotten so many offers from New York but there’s just so much he can do here, so much potential. And close to me, which I love!” she bragged of her son. When Manny and Gregorio coincided at dinner, Manny tried to downplay his professional success though Anna was often sure to bring it up in conversation. “Manny can probably help you get a job at the firm, Gregorio,” she would suggest, “and with your experience running your own company and all…” she would add and this last part felt like a badge of merit given out of pity.

“Gregorio, when you’re ready, you know I’m here to help you, even if you just want advice,” Manny would say, though he knew the last thing in Gregorio’s mind was to sell his soul for a low-level white collar job.

Manny met Diane at work. She was a tiny brunette with hazel eyes and high cheekbones. She had left her Peruvian mother and Irish-American father in Chicago to go to college in Minnesota, where she decided to live permanently. Diane and Manny met in the back row of a conference room where together they made fun of the human resources woman that was giving them orientation on some benefit or another. Diane was lovely and open, warm like an afternoon in June, and she loved Manny very much, though she made great efforts to get him to lighten up. She also came to love Gregorio, like a little brother.

To introduce Diane to his mother, Manny thought it would be a good idea to also invite Gregorio, fearing Diane’s outspokenness and disdain for convention might put off Anna, and Gregorio would be a good reminder of how one can love a person whose ways one doesn’t agree with. Dinner was scheduled for eight o’clock at Anna’s house and it was a complete success by both Manny’s and his mother’s expectations as everyone got along grandiosely, especially Diane and Gregorio. The two of them monopolized much of the evening’s conversation with talk about childhood anecdotes, the most amusing to Diane being Gregorio’s retelling of Manny’s stuttering at the sight of Laura McDonough’s breasts when she flashed Manny and Gregorio in the school gym while their parents were at a PTA meeting one Friday night.

“I love Gregorio,” said Diane on the drive back to Manny’s apartment. “He is so much fun, and he clearly loves you”.

Manny nodded and then added, “I just hate to see what he’s doing with his life. He’s doing nothing, really, you know?” he said, now looking at her. “He is feeding this gray cloud around him that’s keeping him stuck, stagnant”.

“Baby, you can’t measure other people’s success by your standards” she said sweetly, caressing one side of his face. “He seems perfectly content to me. He’s probably perfectly happy having his dad’s house and he himself said he’ll get a job when he runs out of money, when he feels like he needs it,” she added.

Manny sighed. “Well, that’s what he’s telling you now, but I know him better than you, he’s wasting his youth” he said before turning the radio on.

Diane tried to bring Manny and Gregorio closer together. It was her way of honoring the lovely memories and the old bond she so enjoyed hearing about. She hosted get-togethers, invited Gregorio to parties with people from hers and Manny’s work, set Gregorio up on dates. “He’s practically Manny’s little brother,” is how Diane would introduce Gregorio to people.

Manny’s concern for Gregorio continued to grow and he earnestly tried to impart his positive thinking methods and techniques to Gregorio, who humored him by taking the books Manny offered to let him borrow and sometimes even reading them, but little change came to Gregorio’s life style.

“You have to think positively. You are in charge of your own experience, you write your own destiny with your every thought, your every word,” went Manny’s credo, to which Gregorio learned to nod and let his mind drift, thinking of something else, or nothing at all. “Gregorio, you can have what I have. You can have the job, the house, the girl, I imagined all of this and now I have it!” was Manny’s promise and exhortation.

“Give the guy a break,” Diane would plead with Manny. “That mental mumbo jumbo is not for everyone. I for one find it scary, cult-like” she joked.

Gregorio was chosen as best man at Diane’s behest, not Manny’s. Had it been up to him, Manny would have asked Eric from work, a friend that was close enough, lived close enough, and a good person to have “in the family” for practical and professional purposes. Diane, offended by this attempt to desecrate her life’s most sacred and happiest day, pushed back and won.

“Thank you for being here, my friend. No, my brother,” said Manny to Gregorio from the top step at the altar. “This is the culmination of a very concerted process of planning, thinking, and dreaming. I’m truly blessed, and I love that you’re here with me,” he continued and then embraced Gregorio, sincerely.

Manny and Dianne sat in the balcony at their hotel room in St. Thomas. They had arrived two nights ago and had practically exhausted their stamina in a sexual marathon that kept them in the room for the entire first day. Now they were beholding a majestic orange sun beginning to set behind grey and green waves in the horizon. Manny stood up and looked down to the street five stories below them, where fruit vendors were starting to close their stands for the day.

“You know? I’m starting to fear that Gregorio’s negative energy is going to get contagious. I almost wanna start keeping him at a distance, especially when we start a family,” said Manny solemnly, like someone announcing that they’re quitting smoking.

Diane looked hurt, offended.

“Baby, don’t be arrogant, I don’t like it” she said, expecting an answer.

“I’m not being arrogant. Why do you defend him so much?” asked Manny, defensive.

“He is fine the way he is and I just think you should learn to appreciate him, that’s all” she said.

Now they were both standing, looking down at nothing in particular.

“You’re always defending him. You’ve always had a thing for him, haven’t you?” asked Manny jokingly and he perceived immediately that his comment had not been taken as lightly as he had intended it.

“You really are an asshole some times, do you know that? You patronizing jerk, preaching about the power of the mind and thoughts and your dreams and all that nonsense!” Diane’s dilated pupils were daggers piercing Manny’s own eyes. “Do you know why I’m here right now, huh? Do you?”

Manny was confused and ashamed, sheepish. “What are you talking about, baby? I was just joking!”

“For all your plotting our perfect little life, envisioning your perfect little job, your perfect house, your perfect wife, you owe this moment to your poor pathetic sap of a friend! Did you ever notice, ever saw me become weary of your metaphysical baloney? Did you notice I cried at the company party when you told everyone about how we were going to have a boy and a girl and were going to live in Blaine and retire in Costa Rica? I was dying. I loved you but that was the last straw for me, I was ready to end things. I just don’t live like that; I don’t plan my life forty years in advance like that. It was Gregorio who talked you up. It was he who went to great lengths to explain your love for me, to justify it. You were a strict but loving big brother to him, especially in college. He made me see how meaningful it was that an uptight square like you was willing to make room in his life for the chaos of a free-spirited partner. And how introducing me to your mother and the way you looked at me, puppy-eyed during the dinner while I was likely embarrassing you, was such a clear intimation of your commitment to me and the risks you were willing to take just to be with me…you don’t deserve him!”

Manny wiped the tears from Diane’s cheeks with his thumbs and kissed her gently. “I’m sorry,” he said before embracing her.

Next Monday, Gregorio received a postcard in the mail. The front read “Greetings from Charlotte Amalie Harbor” and showed a picture of a dark blue night over a brightly lit beach whose streets snaked through darkened hills of undetermined height. On the back, a note from Manny: “My dearest friend, Just thinking of you and sharing with you this dream come true. Soon, Manny”. Gregorio smiled and placed the postcard on a cabinet, atop an overflowing pile of bills and unopened mail.