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[Error: unknown template qotd] My first crush that mattered was Mitch Barnhart. I met him at an artsy summer school class after sixth grade. He was two years older than me and helping out my teacher. He was everything I was ready to look for in a man: shiny black wavy hair, intense dark eyes, ironic manner, and he praised my poetry.
Later I found out he was the little brother of a friend of my big brother's. He played blues harmonica outside bars at night and guys coming out would give him tips and compliments. He wrote wild, ecstatic, adolescent boy poetry and worked on the little magazine "Advent" my brother worked on as well,which also printed one of my poems. He showed up late at night with his brother drunk and hungry: thrilled to see him in my own house, I made him food and he called me a gentlewoman and a scholaress. By then I was almost thirteen and he was almost fifteen. He was at Central High School and I was at Philadelphia High School for Girls, brother and sister schools sharing a subway stop. Sometimes the lot of us would buy bunches of daffodills and play outrageous games with them on the subway train.
One winter morning I was making Christmas cookies with my mother to send to my father who was spending the winter on Pine Ridge Reservation i South Dakota. My brother came grim into the kitchen and said he was inclined to blame the principal of his school for Mitch's death. "What are you talking about?" I said. "Mitch isn't dead." I had seen him days before, drunk and beautiful.
"He's dead. Last night he jumped out his window," my brother said bluntly.
All of Mitch's friends had to go and be interviewed by the narc squad, but not me. I was the little sister and didn't know anything. I didn't go to parties even. All of his friends went to Mitch's funeral, but not me. I don't know why I wasn't allowed to go. I think someone thought they were sparing me.
For several years I would see some insultingly wrong reference to Mitch's death, usually in articles warning against the use of LSD. They would say that he "thought he could fly" because he had taken LSD the night he died. But he had taken a lot of things besides LSD and who can know what he thought? He didn't say anything to anybody. He said goodnight to his mother, went in his room, and then -- he was on the street, dead. I think he didn't intend to die: I think he was mooning about in the window, teasing himself with the idea, and lost his hold. I have no reason to think it. I just do.
Until the day I learned he had died I wanted to be everything Mitch was. I wanted to be as good a poet as him, I wanted to be as smartassed and smart as him, I wanted the romantic intensity he had. The only thing he was that I didn't want to be was dead at fifteen.
Later I found out he was the little brother of a friend of my big brother's. He played blues harmonica outside bars at night and guys coming out would give him tips and compliments. He wrote wild, ecstatic, adolescent boy poetry and worked on the little magazine "Advent" my brother worked on as well,which also printed one of my poems. He showed up late at night with his brother drunk and hungry: thrilled to see him in my own house, I made him food and he called me a gentlewoman and a scholaress. By then I was almost thirteen and he was almost fifteen. He was at Central High School and I was at Philadelphia High School for Girls, brother and sister schools sharing a subway stop. Sometimes the lot of us would buy bunches of daffodills and play outrageous games with them on the subway train.
One winter morning I was making Christmas cookies with my mother to send to my father who was spending the winter on Pine Ridge Reservation i South Dakota. My brother came grim into the kitchen and said he was inclined to blame the principal of his school for Mitch's death. "What are you talking about?" I said. "Mitch isn't dead." I had seen him days before, drunk and beautiful.
"He's dead. Last night he jumped out his window," my brother said bluntly.
All of Mitch's friends had to go and be interviewed by the narc squad, but not me. I was the little sister and didn't know anything. I didn't go to parties even. All of his friends went to Mitch's funeral, but not me. I don't know why I wasn't allowed to go. I think someone thought they were sparing me.
For several years I would see some insultingly wrong reference to Mitch's death, usually in articles warning against the use of LSD. They would say that he "thought he could fly" because he had taken LSD the night he died. But he had taken a lot of things besides LSD and who can know what he thought? He didn't say anything to anybody. He said goodnight to his mother, went in his room, and then -- he was on the street, dead. I think he didn't intend to die: I think he was mooning about in the window, teasing himself with the idea, and lost his hold. I have no reason to think it. I just do.
Until the day I learned he had died I wanted to be everything Mitch was. I wanted to be as good a poet as him, I wanted to be as smartassed and smart as him, I wanted the romantic intensity he had. The only thing he was that I didn't want to be was dead at fifteen.
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