The Doorknob Bromance
I first met Gilbert in seventh grade. We both played the trumpet and ended up sitting next to each other in band class. But that is not how we became friends.
Despite having a father who was a superb athlete, sports was not my forte. It is not that I was nerdish or awkward or lacking in ability. I just did not have that athletic drive that is considered to be a prerequisite of being male. And when it came to basketball I was profoundly ignorant. As a seventh grader I had already played baseball, softball, football, soccer, golf, bowling, badminton, dodge-ball, ping-pong, darts and horseshoes. And I held my own in most of |
those sports (except football). When my seventh grade P. E. class took on basketball as its sport of the month I realized that I had never played basketball in my ‘entire’ life. I did not even know the rules.So I took the basketball that my parents had given my older brother and I pumped it up with the bicycle tire pump. (My brother was hopelessly nerdish, awkward and lacking in any sports ability whatsoever.) Then I took the basketball to the basket ball courts at the junior high school grounds so that I could practice ‘shooting hoops’ in hopes of not looking like a total ignoramus in P. E. class.
And that is where I ran into Gilbert. There were also several other boys there, some of whom were engaged in an actual game. I went to the court where Gilbert was practicing, said hi to him, and started trying to throw baskets. It did not take long before I realized that he and I were both pretty pathetic at basketball. After a while, Gilbert stopped his shooting and came over to me, asking, “Hey, you wanna go somewhere a little more private?”
“Huh?”
“I’ve got a net and backboard above the garage at my house. We can practice in private without all these other jerks.”
I said, “Sure.” What I did not know at the time was that that was the beginning of a very diabolical friendship.
And that is where I ran into Gilbert. There were also several other boys there, some of whom were engaged in an actual game. I went to the court where Gilbert was practicing, said hi to him, and started trying to throw baskets. It did not take long before I realized that he and I were both pretty pathetic at basketball. After a while, Gilbert stopped his shooting and came over to me, asking, “Hey, you wanna go somewhere a little more private?”
“Huh?”
“I’ve got a net and backboard above the garage at my house. We can practice in private without all these other jerks.”
I said, “Sure.” What I did not know at the time was that that was the beginning of a very diabolical friendship.
* * * * *
Gilbert’s house was just a couple of blocks away from the junior high — a couple of blocks in the opposite direction of the junior high from the one block away from the junior high where my house was. He did indeed have a basketball net and backboard over his garage that happened to be measured to be exactly as high as a standard net and backboard. While my own house only had a single-car driveway leading to the single-car garage, Gilbert’s house had a double garage and a double-car driveway, which allowed for proper basketball.
Two players cannot truly play a game of basketball. It takes five players on each side. But there is a basketball game designed specifically for just two players and it is called, ‘HORSE.’ After flipping a coin to see who goes first, the first player shoots a basket and if he makes it, the second player has to replicate the shot. If I remember it correctly, if he makes it then he scores a letter, ‘H.’ If he does not make it then the first player scores a letter, ‘H.’ Whoever scores a letter then makes another shot that the other player has to replicate…. and so on. Whoever first spells out, ‘HORSE,’ wins.
I had never heard of this game but I willingly and joyously played it with Gilbert and he won that first game. Bouncing the ball, he looked at me and asked, “You wanna play again?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, but this time, instead of playing, ‘HORSE.’ let’s play, ‘DOORKNOB.’
Huh? I counted the letters and realized that, ‘DOORKNOB’ was a slightly longer game than, ‘HORSE.’ So I said, “Okay.”
Gilbert won that first game of, ‘DOORKNOB,’ but I won the second game. I never bothered to ask why he chose the word, ‘doorknob,’ but, with time, I came to realize that Gilbert was almost pathologically obsessed with that word. He used it a lot and managed to slip it into conversation in the most bizarre and laughable ways. I started laughing every time he used the word and began using myself — but only in conversation with him. The word was only funny between the two of us.
Two players cannot truly play a game of basketball. It takes five players on each side. But there is a basketball game designed specifically for just two players and it is called, ‘HORSE.’ After flipping a coin to see who goes first, the first player shoots a basket and if he makes it, the second player has to replicate the shot. If I remember it correctly, if he makes it then he scores a letter, ‘H.’ If he does not make it then the first player scores a letter, ‘H.’ Whoever scores a letter then makes another shot that the other player has to replicate…. and so on. Whoever first spells out, ‘HORSE,’ wins.
I had never heard of this game but I willingly and joyously played it with Gilbert and he won that first game. Bouncing the ball, he looked at me and asked, “You wanna play again?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, but this time, instead of playing, ‘HORSE.’ let’s play, ‘DOORKNOB.’
Huh? I counted the letters and realized that, ‘DOORKNOB’ was a slightly longer game than, ‘HORSE.’ So I said, “Okay.”
Gilbert won that first game of, ‘DOORKNOB,’ but I won the second game. I never bothered to ask why he chose the word, ‘doorknob,’ but, with time, I came to realize that Gilbert was almost pathologically obsessed with that word. He used it a lot and managed to slip it into conversation in the most bizarre and laughable ways. I started laughing every time he used the word and began using myself — but only in conversation with him. The word was only funny between the two of us.
* * * * *
For the rest of my two years of junior high school I spent all the time that I could get away from my own house over at Gilbert’s house playing, ‘DOORKNOB.’ We must have played thousands and thousands of games of ‘DOORKNOB,’ and we got to the point where each of us won about fifty percent of the games. We each significantly increased the others’ basketball skills and we became very competitively equal in those skills.
But, more importantly, while playing that silly boyhood game, we became very close friends. We talked as much as we played. And we learned that we had a lot in common.
We both had recently moved into that neighborhood. And we both were military brats. Gilbert’s father had been in the navy and my father had been in the army. We both were second children who were expected to live up to an older sibling’s accomplishments (and we both failed miserably at this). We both were not popular in school but at the same time we were not unpopular. We lived in that no-man’s land in the middle. We both felt a need to rebel against our lot. We both felt a need to make a statement.
But we could only make those statements between ourselves. No one else understood. We shared (almost) everything in our hearts and in our minds. We told each other everything (almost).
And then junior high school ended. I never played basketball ever again; not with Gilbert nor with anyone else.
As a freshman in high school I had the distinct pleasure of making the A band. Gilbert did not. He only made the B band. And we did not have any classes together. We drifted apart. We never played any sort of basketball game together again. We became lost to each other.
Then, in our sophomore year, Gilbert made the A band and suddenly we were sitting next to each other in band again just like we had four years before.
And soon we became partners in crime…..
But, more importantly, while playing that silly boyhood game, we became very close friends. We talked as much as we played. And we learned that we had a lot in common.
We both had recently moved into that neighborhood. And we both were military brats. Gilbert’s father had been in the navy and my father had been in the army. We both were second children who were expected to live up to an older sibling’s accomplishments (and we both failed miserably at this). We both were not popular in school but at the same time we were not unpopular. We lived in that no-man’s land in the middle. We both felt a need to rebel against our lot. We both felt a need to make a statement.
But we could only make those statements between ourselves. No one else understood. We shared (almost) everything in our hearts and in our minds. We told each other everything (almost).
And then junior high school ended. I never played basketball ever again; not with Gilbert nor with anyone else.
As a freshman in high school I had the distinct pleasure of making the A band. Gilbert did not. He only made the B band. And we did not have any classes together. We drifted apart. We never played any sort of basketball game together again. We became lost to each other.
Then, in our sophomore year, Gilbert made the A band and suddenly we were sitting next to each other in band again just like we had four years before.
And soon we became partners in crime…..
* * * * *
As we got back together and updated our lives to each other I told Gilbert that I had just spent the previous summer living and traveling across Europe.
Gilbert had spent the summer visiting and living with relatives in Northern New Mexico and Colorado. We both had left our hometown. We both had gone out into the world we had known.
Squinting his eyes and looking sideways at me, he said, “Yeah, but I got turned onto something really cool this summer.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, man. I got turned on to pot, man. I got stoned for the first time and I absolutely love it. “
Bells rang in my noggin. At my new teenager restaurant job I had recently been turned onto pot and had been thoroughly loving getting high. Once we both realized this the only thing left was to get high together.
And that was the beginning of the demise…..
Gilbert had spent the summer visiting and living with relatives in Northern New Mexico and Colorado. We both had left our hometown. We both had gone out into the world we had known.
Squinting his eyes and looking sideways at me, he said, “Yeah, but I got turned onto something really cool this summer.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, man. I got turned on to pot, man. I got stoned for the first time and I absolutely love it. “
Bells rang in my noggin. At my new teenager restaurant job I had recently been turned onto pot and had been thoroughly loving getting high. Once we both realized this the only thing left was to get high together.
And that was the beginning of the demise…..
* * * * *
I was never a prankster but Gilbert was. The only pranks I ever pulled were in retaliation to Gilbert’s pranks. Once we started smoking pot together we started to out-prank each other. We spent a couple of years together simply trying to out-prank each other.
One day, I had excused myself from a class at school to go the bathroom. On my way to the bathroom I passed the open door of the classroom of the French class that Gilbert was taking. (I took Latin.) I saw that Gilbert had his head down on his desk sound asleep. Looking around me, I saw that the doors leading out of the hallway I was in were only a very short run away. I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Gilbert, wake up!” As I heard the classroom erupt in laughter I bolted for the doors and escaped before being caught.
When Gilbert found out that it was me he soon retaliated when I had my head down on my desk sleeping soundly during Latin class. These innocent pranks continued and escalated. One day, I awoke to find out that someone, in the middle of the night, had opened the hood to my very first car and had stolen the battery. Very soon thereafter I found a stack of stickers at the fast-food hamburger joint where I was working part-time. They were simply pictures of hamburgers with a peel-off sticky background. I stole a stack of about 50 of these stickers and, in the middle of the night, I peeled the back off these stickers and stuck them all over Gilbert’s car. Of course, it was not Gilbert’s car but rather his father’s car which Gilbert drove in the evenings and on weekends.
Gilbert was beyond pissed off. According to him, it took him all of five hours to peel those stickers off his father’s car.
We endlessly pranked each other but at the same time we were going beyond puberty into adolescence and before long our friendly and loving competition turned to….. girls.
During my sophomore year I went on my first date. It happened to be a double date. Gilbert was a few months older than me so he got his learner’s permit before I did. He had the use of his father’s car (this was before all the hamburger stickers). We had talked together about all the girls we lusted after and he told me that he had finally asked his favorite girl out on a date. He needed some support, though, so he asked me to ask the girl I was interesting in out and then we could go all go out on a double date. Since I did not have my learner’s permit yet and had no access to a car I jumped on the opportunity. My first date happened to be a double date with Gilbert and his date.
I happened to get about a third of the way between second and third base with this girl on that date but then we immediately broke up — even though we were never officially dating. Gilbert also immediately stopped seeing the girl he had asked out on that date. Soon thereafter I began dating the girl that Gilbert had broken up with. He was slightly pissed but he didn’t really care because he was already on his next girlfriend.
I soon realized that Gilbert had a “way with women.” Of the two of us, I was definitely more handsome but I was awkward and he was sinister. He had a wicked sense of humor and a devilish way of seducing girls and a teddy bear cuteness that was irresistible to females. I could never figure out his mojo. He was like a very young Charlie Harper.
And then, a junior in high school, Gilbert “fell in love” with a freshman in college. She was breathtakingly gorgeous. What the bloody hell did she see in him? I kept asking myself. But whenever I saw them together I was amazed by how they simply could not keep their hands off each other. They radiated love and lust in extremely high decibel levels. Gilbert suddenly had no time for me.
But then she dumped him. Gilbert was heartbroken to his very core. He was suddenly my friend again and demanded every bit of my attention he could muster. I was very shaken by this and told myself that I would not put myself through this.
By this point in time Gilbert and I had become smoking buddies. We smoked an ungodly amount of pot together…. and we also drank a lot of booze together. Both of us worked in fast-food joints at the time and after work we would get together and drive out into the desert. We would leave the city and drive on old dirt roads out to places far out from civilization…. places where we were far enough out of the city where we could see the night sky. We would get out of the car and sit on the hood of the car and look up at the endless night sky while we smoked joints together and listened to Led Zeppelin and other bands blaring from the car stereo while we ate fried chicken and jalapenos.
That was something else Gilbert and I had in common. We both loved extremely hot spicy food. We once had a jalapeno eating contest. We flipped a coin to see who would go first. The first person would take a bite of a hot jalapeno and the next person would take a bite of hot jalapeno. No drinks or anything else were allowed. We kept taking bites of jalapeno until finally the first person would quit, at which point the other person would win. Gilbert, after more than a dozen jalapenos, won.
One day, I had excused myself from a class at school to go the bathroom. On my way to the bathroom I passed the open door of the classroom of the French class that Gilbert was taking. (I took Latin.) I saw that Gilbert had his head down on his desk sound asleep. Looking around me, I saw that the doors leading out of the hallway I was in were only a very short run away. I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Gilbert, wake up!” As I heard the classroom erupt in laughter I bolted for the doors and escaped before being caught.
When Gilbert found out that it was me he soon retaliated when I had my head down on my desk sleeping soundly during Latin class. These innocent pranks continued and escalated. One day, I awoke to find out that someone, in the middle of the night, had opened the hood to my very first car and had stolen the battery. Very soon thereafter I found a stack of stickers at the fast-food hamburger joint where I was working part-time. They were simply pictures of hamburgers with a peel-off sticky background. I stole a stack of about 50 of these stickers and, in the middle of the night, I peeled the back off these stickers and stuck them all over Gilbert’s car. Of course, it was not Gilbert’s car but rather his father’s car which Gilbert drove in the evenings and on weekends.
Gilbert was beyond pissed off. According to him, it took him all of five hours to peel those stickers off his father’s car.
We endlessly pranked each other but at the same time we were going beyond puberty into adolescence and before long our friendly and loving competition turned to….. girls.
During my sophomore year I went on my first date. It happened to be a double date. Gilbert was a few months older than me so he got his learner’s permit before I did. He had the use of his father’s car (this was before all the hamburger stickers). We had talked together about all the girls we lusted after and he told me that he had finally asked his favorite girl out on a date. He needed some support, though, so he asked me to ask the girl I was interesting in out and then we could go all go out on a double date. Since I did not have my learner’s permit yet and had no access to a car I jumped on the opportunity. My first date happened to be a double date with Gilbert and his date.
I happened to get about a third of the way between second and third base with this girl on that date but then we immediately broke up — even though we were never officially dating. Gilbert also immediately stopped seeing the girl he had asked out on that date. Soon thereafter I began dating the girl that Gilbert had broken up with. He was slightly pissed but he didn’t really care because he was already on his next girlfriend.
I soon realized that Gilbert had a “way with women.” Of the two of us, I was definitely more handsome but I was awkward and he was sinister. He had a wicked sense of humor and a devilish way of seducing girls and a teddy bear cuteness that was irresistible to females. I could never figure out his mojo. He was like a very young Charlie Harper.
And then, a junior in high school, Gilbert “fell in love” with a freshman in college. She was breathtakingly gorgeous. What the bloody hell did she see in him? I kept asking myself. But whenever I saw them together I was amazed by how they simply could not keep their hands off each other. They radiated love and lust in extremely high decibel levels. Gilbert suddenly had no time for me.
But then she dumped him. Gilbert was heartbroken to his very core. He was suddenly my friend again and demanded every bit of my attention he could muster. I was very shaken by this and told myself that I would not put myself through this.
By this point in time Gilbert and I had become smoking buddies. We smoked an ungodly amount of pot together…. and we also drank a lot of booze together. Both of us worked in fast-food joints at the time and after work we would get together and drive out into the desert. We would leave the city and drive on old dirt roads out to places far out from civilization…. places where we were far enough out of the city where we could see the night sky. We would get out of the car and sit on the hood of the car and look up at the endless night sky while we smoked joints together and listened to Led Zeppelin and other bands blaring from the car stereo while we ate fried chicken and jalapenos.
That was something else Gilbert and I had in common. We both loved extremely hot spicy food. We once had a jalapeno eating contest. We flipped a coin to see who would go first. The first person would take a bite of a hot jalapeno and the next person would take a bite of hot jalapeno. No drinks or anything else were allowed. We kept taking bites of jalapeno until finally the first person would quit, at which point the other person would win. Gilbert, after more than a dozen jalapenos, won.
* * * * *
And then came our Senior year.
Gilbert and I were still in the band together. In so many high schools around the country being in the band was considered the epitome of dorkyness. But the band of the high school I went to was, at the time, rated as one of the top ten high school bands in the nation! We had a legendary band director and we won every band contest we ever entered. We played half-time shows for National Football teams. We were the featured band in the Sun Carnival Parade each year and we played the half-time for, what was then called the Sun Bowl, for several years in a row. We were legendary.
And then in our senior year a new girl suddenly appeared in the band. She had transferred from a local district to our high school in attempts to further her scholastic resume. She was a saxophone player who sat directly in the row in front of Gilbert and me. What I did not realize at the time was that she was also the daughter of the local district attorney.
This girl was incredibly, outrageously hot. On a teenager’s scale she exceeded ten. She was the epitome of every male teenager’s fantasy. She made Bo Derek look pathetic.
Gilbert, of course, immediately asked her out and she said no. I had already lusted after her like every other male in the school, but that is when I decided that I had to have her.
But I played a different game. I befriended her and talked to her incessantly but I never asked her out. “Why is this guy never asking me out?” she surely must have wondered.
I stood passively by while I watched close to a hundred different guys ask her out. Most of those guys were all the macho guys who made me look like a dweeb. She said no to every one of those guys.
Meanwhile I just continued to establish my friendship with her. And I never asked her out. Gilbert kept asking me, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I kept telling him that I was playing it slow.
He looked at me like our entire friendship had lost all its meaning.
I eventually asked her out and she said yes. She had said no to almost a hundred guys before she finally said yes to me. My ego shot into the stratosphere. I was suddenly the hottest dude in all the high school. I had accomplished what no other male could do. I was beside myself.
We went out a couple of times and I made it a third of the way from third base to home plate. We talked about it and agreed that home plate would finally be mine on Homecoming night.
Gilbert and I were still in the band together. In so many high schools around the country being in the band was considered the epitome of dorkyness. But the band of the high school I went to was, at the time, rated as one of the top ten high school bands in the nation! We had a legendary band director and we won every band contest we ever entered. We played half-time shows for National Football teams. We were the featured band in the Sun Carnival Parade each year and we played the half-time for, what was then called the Sun Bowl, for several years in a row. We were legendary.
And then in our senior year a new girl suddenly appeared in the band. She had transferred from a local district to our high school in attempts to further her scholastic resume. She was a saxophone player who sat directly in the row in front of Gilbert and me. What I did not realize at the time was that she was also the daughter of the local district attorney.
This girl was incredibly, outrageously hot. On a teenager’s scale she exceeded ten. She was the epitome of every male teenager’s fantasy. She made Bo Derek look pathetic.
Gilbert, of course, immediately asked her out and she said no. I had already lusted after her like every other male in the school, but that is when I decided that I had to have her.
But I played a different game. I befriended her and talked to her incessantly but I never asked her out. “Why is this guy never asking me out?” she surely must have wondered.
I stood passively by while I watched close to a hundred different guys ask her out. Most of those guys were all the macho guys who made me look like a dweeb. She said no to every one of those guys.
Meanwhile I just continued to establish my friendship with her. And I never asked her out. Gilbert kept asking me, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I kept telling him that I was playing it slow.
He looked at me like our entire friendship had lost all its meaning.
I eventually asked her out and she said yes. She had said no to almost a hundred guys before she finally said yes to me. My ego shot into the stratosphere. I was suddenly the hottest dude in all the high school. I had accomplished what no other male could do. I was beside myself.
We went out a couple of times and I made it a third of the way from third base to home plate. We talked about it and agreed that home plate would finally be mine on Homecoming night.
* * * * *
At this time in our Senior year Gilbert and I had a routine. We got together twice a day to get stoned. The first time was our lunch hour. We shared the same lunch hour and we would meet in the parking lot to get in the pickup truck that Gilbert’s father bought for him and then go to a local fast-food place to pick up some lunch. Then we would drive out into the desert to smoke a joint and then eat our lunches before heading back to school. It was a daily thing.
The second time of each day that we would meet to get stoned was after work in the evening. I already described that routine.
In our Senior year Gilbert and I shared the same lunch hour. My new extremely hot girlfriend had the opposite lunch hour. Since I could not have lunch with her I had lunch with Gilbert. Almost every day we would drive to a local fast-food joint to get some lunch. We would then drive out into the desert to eat our lunch, smoke a joint, then go back to school.
It was a routine. But when it came to Homecoming Day we were both completely out of pot. We had both placed numerous phone calls to no avail. We ended up meeting for lunch and going out into the desert stone cold sober.
Part of my daily routine had been to come back from lunch with Gilbert and to meet my extraordinarily hot girlfriend in the hall before we attended our next class. Pushed up against the lockers in the hallway, my girlfriend and I would stick our tongues as far down each others’ throats as we could. We didn’t care who saw us while at the same time hoping everyone saw us. We were beyond horny.
When the bell rang she would go into her class and I would venture onward to my class where I would be consistently late and where I would put my head down on my desk and take a nap to sleep off the lunchtime high.
The high school vice principal hated my guts. He was after me. He knew that I smoked pot and drank alcohol and proudly broke every rule in the book. But he had never caught me in the act.
The high school I went to allowed students to smoke cigarettes but only in designated areas. This was way, way back in the early Seventies. They allowed students to smoke but there was a school-wide rule that forbade kissing in the hallways. Kissing, and more specifically, French kissing was banned within the school buildings but was allowed out-of-doors, just like smoking. It was an archaic rule that had never been enforced. No one to my knowledge had ever been busted for kissing in the halls.
And there I was on Homecoming Day French-kissing my extraordinarily hot new girlfriend in the hallway, stone cold sober without smoking pot or drinking beer on my lunch hour like I normally did, when I felt a finger tapping my shoulder. I withdrew my tongue and turned around to see the vice-principal. He emphatically said, “Come with me.”
The vice principal had dreamed of busting me for pot or alcohol consumption and he thought that he had finally reached payday. The only problem was that I was stone cold sober. He had me breathe on the school nurse and the principle and various other school officials, all of whom said that they could not smell any alcohol or pot odors. They all said that the only thing they could smell was the lingering smell of jalapenos.
The vice-principal then called the band director who said that I was a worthless piece of crap who was an alcoholic and drug addict and that I should be expelled from school. I didn’t know this, of course, at the time. The vice-principal then walked around his desk and stuck his face right into mine. He said, “Nothing you say stands up. Is there anyone who can corroborate your story?”
I was sweating. I was desperate. I realized that my only hope was to name someone who could corroborate my story. I suddenly blurted out that I had lunch with Gilbert. I immediately realized what a mistake that was.
The vice-principal smiled and then went back behind his desk. He picked up his phone and made some phone calls. The next thing I knew both me and Gilbert were suspended from school for a week. I felt like shit for ratting out my best friend and Gilbert got suspended without ever having a chance to defend himself. I don’t think he ever forgave me for that and I never forgave myself for betraying my best friend.
The weird thing is that I was not suspended for marijuana intoxication or alcohol intoxication; the things the vice-principal had been waiting to bust me for. He simply had no grounds to suspend me for this. And Gilbert got suspended for no other reason than being associated with me. I ended up being suspended from high school for the nefarious infraction of kissing a girl in the hallway. I became the very first student in the history of our high school to be suspended for the infraction of kissing a girl in the hallway.
And so it came to be that my greatest achievement in high school was being kicked out of school for kissing a girl in the hallway. For a virgin like myself this was like winning an Oscar. My young ego exploded like an Hiroshima bomb. No one had ever been expelled for sticking their tongue down a girl’s throat before. I was the first.
Sadly, my irresistible new girlfriend was the daughter of the local county’s district attorney. There was no way that he would allow his glorious daughter to be associated with a scumbag such as myself. His reputation was on the line. When I called her she said that it was all over; that she was not allowed to come near me. Any chance of reaching home plate had evaporated in the wind.
So in one fell swoop I lost my girlfriend and, through being an unwitting snitch, I lost my best friend, Gilbert.
I felt like shit.
My very upset parents thought that Gilbert was a bad influence on me and told me to stay away from him. Gilbert’s parents though I was a bad influence on him and told him to stay away from me. We both were pretty normal kids, though. It was only when together that we got in trouble. (We got in a lot of other trouble that I haven’t even mentioned.) We soon graduated from high school and went our separate ways.
The second time of each day that we would meet to get stoned was after work in the evening. I already described that routine.
In our Senior year Gilbert and I shared the same lunch hour. My new extremely hot girlfriend had the opposite lunch hour. Since I could not have lunch with her I had lunch with Gilbert. Almost every day we would drive to a local fast-food joint to get some lunch. We would then drive out into the desert to eat our lunch, smoke a joint, then go back to school.
It was a routine. But when it came to Homecoming Day we were both completely out of pot. We had both placed numerous phone calls to no avail. We ended up meeting for lunch and going out into the desert stone cold sober.
Part of my daily routine had been to come back from lunch with Gilbert and to meet my extraordinarily hot girlfriend in the hall before we attended our next class. Pushed up against the lockers in the hallway, my girlfriend and I would stick our tongues as far down each others’ throats as we could. We didn’t care who saw us while at the same time hoping everyone saw us. We were beyond horny.
When the bell rang she would go into her class and I would venture onward to my class where I would be consistently late and where I would put my head down on my desk and take a nap to sleep off the lunchtime high.
The high school vice principal hated my guts. He was after me. He knew that I smoked pot and drank alcohol and proudly broke every rule in the book. But he had never caught me in the act.
The high school I went to allowed students to smoke cigarettes but only in designated areas. This was way, way back in the early Seventies. They allowed students to smoke but there was a school-wide rule that forbade kissing in the hallways. Kissing, and more specifically, French kissing was banned within the school buildings but was allowed out-of-doors, just like smoking. It was an archaic rule that had never been enforced. No one to my knowledge had ever been busted for kissing in the halls.
And there I was on Homecoming Day French-kissing my extraordinarily hot new girlfriend in the hallway, stone cold sober without smoking pot or drinking beer on my lunch hour like I normally did, when I felt a finger tapping my shoulder. I withdrew my tongue and turned around to see the vice-principal. He emphatically said, “Come with me.”
The vice principal had dreamed of busting me for pot or alcohol consumption and he thought that he had finally reached payday. The only problem was that I was stone cold sober. He had me breathe on the school nurse and the principle and various other school officials, all of whom said that they could not smell any alcohol or pot odors. They all said that the only thing they could smell was the lingering smell of jalapenos.
The vice-principal then called the band director who said that I was a worthless piece of crap who was an alcoholic and drug addict and that I should be expelled from school. I didn’t know this, of course, at the time. The vice-principal then walked around his desk and stuck his face right into mine. He said, “Nothing you say stands up. Is there anyone who can corroborate your story?”
I was sweating. I was desperate. I realized that my only hope was to name someone who could corroborate my story. I suddenly blurted out that I had lunch with Gilbert. I immediately realized what a mistake that was.
The vice-principal smiled and then went back behind his desk. He picked up his phone and made some phone calls. The next thing I knew both me and Gilbert were suspended from school for a week. I felt like shit for ratting out my best friend and Gilbert got suspended without ever having a chance to defend himself. I don’t think he ever forgave me for that and I never forgave myself for betraying my best friend.
The weird thing is that I was not suspended for marijuana intoxication or alcohol intoxication; the things the vice-principal had been waiting to bust me for. He simply had no grounds to suspend me for this. And Gilbert got suspended for no other reason than being associated with me. I ended up being suspended from high school for the nefarious infraction of kissing a girl in the hallway. I became the very first student in the history of our high school to be suspended for the infraction of kissing a girl in the hallway.
And so it came to be that my greatest achievement in high school was being kicked out of school for kissing a girl in the hallway. For a virgin like myself this was like winning an Oscar. My young ego exploded like an Hiroshima bomb. No one had ever been expelled for sticking their tongue down a girl’s throat before. I was the first.
Sadly, my irresistible new girlfriend was the daughter of the local county’s district attorney. There was no way that he would allow his glorious daughter to be associated with a scumbag such as myself. His reputation was on the line. When I called her she said that it was all over; that she was not allowed to come near me. Any chance of reaching home plate had evaporated in the wind.
So in one fell swoop I lost my girlfriend and, through being an unwitting snitch, I lost my best friend, Gilbert.
I felt like shit.
My very upset parents thought that Gilbert was a bad influence on me and told me to stay away from him. Gilbert’s parents though I was a bad influence on him and told him to stay away from me. We both were pretty normal kids, though. It was only when together that we got in trouble. (We got in a lot of other trouble that I haven’t even mentioned.) We soon graduated from high school and went our separate ways.
* * * * *
While Gilbert went off to college I got a management position at the restaurant where I was working. My parents had sat me down and explained that they only had enough money to send one of us kids to college and since my brother made better grades than I did they invested their money in him. It was suggested that I try to get a job with the phone company or electric company or maybe the railroad; something I could work at for forty years and then collect a good retirement. The very thought of spending my life like that utterly horrified me.
I told my parents that I wanted to be writer and that I wanted to go to college. They laughed.
“We’re trying to be serious here,” my mother said. “A writer? Who reads books anymore with television? You need a job. Writing isn’t a job.”
“Plumbers make good money,” my father threw in.
My mother continued, “And if you want to go to college you’ll just have to pay for it yourself.”
So I decided to stay at home for a year and work full time, trying to save as much money as I could. Then I went to college.
The money, of course, did not last very long. I ended up having to drop out and come home. I got a job and an apartment and tried to resuscitate my financial situation while figuring out my next move. This is when I ran into Gilbert again.
I was surprised to see that he had gained about 30 or 40 pounds. I was also surprised by the news he had to tell me.
It turned out that Gilbert had also dropped out of college but not because of money but rather because he had grown bored with it. He had just recently broken up with his most recent girlfriend and one night after the breakup he had gotten extremely drunk and stoned and was driving through a residential neighborhood when he passed out at the wheel. His vehicle went up over the curb, across the front lawn of a suburban home and then crashed into the house. His vehicle ended up inside a little girl’s bedroom, who thankfully was not hurt but who surely was traumatized for life. As with all his previous car wrecks — and he had several — Gilbert walked away with just a few scratches.
“I was arrested and I ended up having two choices. I could go to jail or….” he looked down at the ground.”
“Or?”
Taking a deep breath, he looked up at me, “I joined the Navy.”
I slapped my forehead in disbelief. Both of us having had military dads, we had talked often in the early years about how much we both hated anything military. Looking into his face I could see that he was not happy about his fate.
“So anyway, I leave for basic training next week. You’ve got a car, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, why don’t we go up to the mountains for the day. We can catch up and I can have some fun before I have to leave.”
I had a day off from work two days later so we made plans to drive up to the pine forest covered mountains north of town. We had gone up there many times on weekends back in high school once we were old enough to drive. We usually brought girls with us.
This time it was just Gilbert and me. On the drive north he pulled a baggie out of his pocket and rolled a joint. We smoked and talked and talked and talked. Once we arrived up in the mountains he pulled a small envelope out of his pocket and asked me, “Wanna drop some acid?”
I laughed, “Sure.”
We spent the better part of the day tripping on LSD as we hiked forest trails. We had done this before and it was a great way to commune with nature. Eventually we came to a lookout point near the top of the mountain. We had found that spot years ago. We sat down on a boulder from which we could see all the way down the mountain and across the huge desert valley towards the mountains over a hundred miles away on the other side of the desert valley. It was one of the most incredible views I’ve ever experienced.
Our ongoing conversation quickly stopped. We sat there on that rock for probably half an hour just staring out at the incredible beauty of the vista before us. Our altered state of consciousness left us in a condition of pure joy and appreciation and reverence.
And then finally at some point we both simultaneously turned and looked at each other. That is when Gilbert softly uttered just one word. That word was, “Doorknob.”
We both immediately fell into a state of uncontrollable laughter. We laughed hysterically for a very long time. The word, ‘doorknob,’ in and of itself is not necessarily a funny word. Out of context it simply has no reason to illicit a long uncontrollable laughing fit. Of course, when one is tripping on LSD anything, and I mean anything, can be funny.
More importantly, that word was our special word; our secret code, the one word we first bonded over so many years ago shooting baskets on that childhood driveway. For years Gilbert had used that word obsessively and somehow managed to work it into our personal conversations in strange and humorous ways. He never used that word with other people; only with me. But it always seemed to eventually show up in our dialogue. That one silly word represented our friendship, our bond.
After our hysterical laughing session finally ended we headed back to the car to go home. As we drove down the mountain a strange prophetic sensation came over me. I felt like Gilbert and I were coming to a Y in the road. He was headed one way and I was headed the other way. I only later realized how true that was. Gilbert was headed back to his life of booze, drugs, sex and rock and roll but I was headed towards the very opposite of that. I didn’t know it at the time but I was headed towards a life-long quest for knowledge, self-realization, spiritual enlightenment and very sober clarity of mind. Eventually, that road took me to a place where I abhorred drugs of any kind. Nowadays I won’t even take an aspirin. I am rabidly anti-drug.
I told my parents that I wanted to be writer and that I wanted to go to college. They laughed.
“We’re trying to be serious here,” my mother said. “A writer? Who reads books anymore with television? You need a job. Writing isn’t a job.”
“Plumbers make good money,” my father threw in.
My mother continued, “And if you want to go to college you’ll just have to pay for it yourself.”
So I decided to stay at home for a year and work full time, trying to save as much money as I could. Then I went to college.
The money, of course, did not last very long. I ended up having to drop out and come home. I got a job and an apartment and tried to resuscitate my financial situation while figuring out my next move. This is when I ran into Gilbert again.
I was surprised to see that he had gained about 30 or 40 pounds. I was also surprised by the news he had to tell me.
It turned out that Gilbert had also dropped out of college but not because of money but rather because he had grown bored with it. He had just recently broken up with his most recent girlfriend and one night after the breakup he had gotten extremely drunk and stoned and was driving through a residential neighborhood when he passed out at the wheel. His vehicle went up over the curb, across the front lawn of a suburban home and then crashed into the house. His vehicle ended up inside a little girl’s bedroom, who thankfully was not hurt but who surely was traumatized for life. As with all his previous car wrecks — and he had several — Gilbert walked away with just a few scratches.
“I was arrested and I ended up having two choices. I could go to jail or….” he looked down at the ground.”
“Or?”
Taking a deep breath, he looked up at me, “I joined the Navy.”
I slapped my forehead in disbelief. Both of us having had military dads, we had talked often in the early years about how much we both hated anything military. Looking into his face I could see that he was not happy about his fate.
“So anyway, I leave for basic training next week. You’ve got a car, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, why don’t we go up to the mountains for the day. We can catch up and I can have some fun before I have to leave.”
I had a day off from work two days later so we made plans to drive up to the pine forest covered mountains north of town. We had gone up there many times on weekends back in high school once we were old enough to drive. We usually brought girls with us.
This time it was just Gilbert and me. On the drive north he pulled a baggie out of his pocket and rolled a joint. We smoked and talked and talked and talked. Once we arrived up in the mountains he pulled a small envelope out of his pocket and asked me, “Wanna drop some acid?”
I laughed, “Sure.”
We spent the better part of the day tripping on LSD as we hiked forest trails. We had done this before and it was a great way to commune with nature. Eventually we came to a lookout point near the top of the mountain. We had found that spot years ago. We sat down on a boulder from which we could see all the way down the mountain and across the huge desert valley towards the mountains over a hundred miles away on the other side of the desert valley. It was one of the most incredible views I’ve ever experienced.
Our ongoing conversation quickly stopped. We sat there on that rock for probably half an hour just staring out at the incredible beauty of the vista before us. Our altered state of consciousness left us in a condition of pure joy and appreciation and reverence.
And then finally at some point we both simultaneously turned and looked at each other. That is when Gilbert softly uttered just one word. That word was, “Doorknob.”
We both immediately fell into a state of uncontrollable laughter. We laughed hysterically for a very long time. The word, ‘doorknob,’ in and of itself is not necessarily a funny word. Out of context it simply has no reason to illicit a long uncontrollable laughing fit. Of course, when one is tripping on LSD anything, and I mean anything, can be funny.
More importantly, that word was our special word; our secret code, the one word we first bonded over so many years ago shooting baskets on that childhood driveway. For years Gilbert had used that word obsessively and somehow managed to work it into our personal conversations in strange and humorous ways. He never used that word with other people; only with me. But it always seemed to eventually show up in our dialogue. That one silly word represented our friendship, our bond.
After our hysterical laughing session finally ended we headed back to the car to go home. As we drove down the mountain a strange prophetic sensation came over me. I felt like Gilbert and I were coming to a Y in the road. He was headed one way and I was headed the other way. I only later realized how true that was. Gilbert was headed back to his life of booze, drugs, sex and rock and roll but I was headed towards the very opposite of that. I didn’t know it at the time but I was headed towards a life-long quest for knowledge, self-realization, spiritual enlightenment and very sober clarity of mind. Eventually, that road took me to a place where I abhorred drugs of any kind. Nowadays I won’t even take an aspirin. I am rabidly anti-drug.
* * * * *
It was soon after Gilbert left for the Navy that I very suddenly got married. I very suddenly got divorced two years later. It was after the divorce that I left my hometown for good. I did not tell anyone (including family) I was leaving and I did not tell anyone where I was going. I was officially disappearing. I just threw a few things in my car and hit the highway, never looking back.
For seven years I wandered across America, never staying in one place for too long. I was searching for myself. I was searching for understanding and wisdom and purpose and experience and spiritual enlightenment. As a writer, I was searching for my voice. During those seven years I never once communicated with Gilbert (or anyone else).
The seven years of my disappearing act came to a close when I suddenly got married again. And then had a baby. It was after the baby came that I got the urge to drive my new wife and child to the hometown where I grew up. I wanted her to see all the things I had been telling her about. I didn’t want to, but I felt it was important to introduce her to my mother. I also wanted to visit my father’s grave. He had died while I was out on the road and no one had any idea how to contact me with the news. I didn’t find out about his death for a long, long time afterwards.
I also wanted to find Gilbert so that I could introduce my new bride and baby to him. He was the only old friend that I cared to introduce her to. It took a while but I finally located him and called him. We set up a time then the wife, baby and I drove over to his apartment. Upon seeing him I was immediately stunned by how much weight he had gained. He was now HUGE.
We sat and talked for a couple of hours. I noticed that his pupils were dilated and his eyes were glazed over. His speech occasionally slurred. He was not the jolly teddy bear that he used to be. When asked about his life, he shrugged his shoulders, “I go to work. I come home from work and get stoned then I go to work again the next day…. and so on.”
An empty hollow feeling radiated from my solar plexus. Where was the Gilbert that I knew?
When he asked me about my life I related some of my adventures during the seven years I had wandered the country. He soon was looking at me with contempt. I could tell that he was pissed off. There was little laughter and not once was our secret word uttered. We left.
And that was the last time I ever saw him.
For seven years I wandered across America, never staying in one place for too long. I was searching for myself. I was searching for understanding and wisdom and purpose and experience and spiritual enlightenment. As a writer, I was searching for my voice. During those seven years I never once communicated with Gilbert (or anyone else).
The seven years of my disappearing act came to a close when I suddenly got married again. And then had a baby. It was after the baby came that I got the urge to drive my new wife and child to the hometown where I grew up. I wanted her to see all the things I had been telling her about. I didn’t want to, but I felt it was important to introduce her to my mother. I also wanted to visit my father’s grave. He had died while I was out on the road and no one had any idea how to contact me with the news. I didn’t find out about his death for a long, long time afterwards.
I also wanted to find Gilbert so that I could introduce my new bride and baby to him. He was the only old friend that I cared to introduce her to. It took a while but I finally located him and called him. We set up a time then the wife, baby and I drove over to his apartment. Upon seeing him I was immediately stunned by how much weight he had gained. He was now HUGE.
We sat and talked for a couple of hours. I noticed that his pupils were dilated and his eyes were glazed over. His speech occasionally slurred. He was not the jolly teddy bear that he used to be. When asked about his life, he shrugged his shoulders, “I go to work. I come home from work and get stoned then I go to work again the next day…. and so on.”
An empty hollow feeling radiated from my solar plexus. Where was the Gilbert that I knew?
When he asked me about my life I related some of my adventures during the seven years I had wandered the country. He soon was looking at me with contempt. I could tell that he was pissed off. There was little laughter and not once was our secret word uttered. We left.
And that was the last time I ever saw him.
* * * * *
About 20 years later, newly divorced with a daughter who had already graduated from high school, I was watching a movie one day when one of the characters in the movie used the word, ‘doorknob.’ I don’t remember what movie it was or what context in which that word came up in. But it immediately made me think of Gilbert.
It had been 20 years since I last saw him and my curiosity was aroused. So I got on the computer and commenced searching. I wanted to find out what he had done with his life and I wanted to tell him how my life turned out so very differently than I ever could have imagined. I wanted to tell him that I was a writer with a couple of novels under my belt. I then realized that I had never told him that I wanted to be a writer. We shared everything but that was the one thing I was not confident enough to share with him. I then realized that he had not ever shared with me what he wanted to accomplish in life. How could we have not shared these things being such close friends?
I searched and searched but after a couple of hours I found nothing. It was like he didn’t exist. But then I finally found something…..
…..I found his obituary.
It turned out that he had died around 18 years before — just a couple of years after I last saw him. He had been dead all that time and I never knew it. How could that be?
I only uncovered two salient points regarding his death. First, he had died in an automobile accident (his luck had finally run out). The other fact was that he was buried in the very same military cemetery as my father, in fact his grave was only about 30 feet away from my father’s grave.
I was shocked yet not terribly surprised. What bugged me the most was that he had been dead all that time and somehow I did not, on some level, know it. After all, so many decades ago, we had been best friends; best buds, best bros. One would think that with the close intimate relationship that we had that I would somehow sense his passing. But I did not.
In those 20 years between the last time I saw him and when I found out about his death I did not think about him a whole lot yet I still thought about him on a semi-regular basis. Now, in the dozen or so years since I found out about his death I haven’t thought about him all that much either. But the truth is that I simply cannot go too long without thinking about him.
Why? Because I simply cannot help but think about him whenever I hear the word….. ‘doorknob.’ I don’t think I will ever be able to hear that word without thinking of Gilbert.
It had been 20 years since I last saw him and my curiosity was aroused. So I got on the computer and commenced searching. I wanted to find out what he had done with his life and I wanted to tell him how my life turned out so very differently than I ever could have imagined. I wanted to tell him that I was a writer with a couple of novels under my belt. I then realized that I had never told him that I wanted to be a writer. We shared everything but that was the one thing I was not confident enough to share with him. I then realized that he had not ever shared with me what he wanted to accomplish in life. How could we have not shared these things being such close friends?
I searched and searched but after a couple of hours I found nothing. It was like he didn’t exist. But then I finally found something…..
…..I found his obituary.
It turned out that he had died around 18 years before — just a couple of years after I last saw him. He had been dead all that time and I never knew it. How could that be?
I only uncovered two salient points regarding his death. First, he had died in an automobile accident (his luck had finally run out). The other fact was that he was buried in the very same military cemetery as my father, in fact his grave was only about 30 feet away from my father’s grave.
I was shocked yet not terribly surprised. What bugged me the most was that he had been dead all that time and somehow I did not, on some level, know it. After all, so many decades ago, we had been best friends; best buds, best bros. One would think that with the close intimate relationship that we had that I would somehow sense his passing. But I did not.
In those 20 years between the last time I saw him and when I found out about his death I did not think about him a whole lot yet I still thought about him on a semi-regular basis. Now, in the dozen or so years since I found out about his death I haven’t thought about him all that much either. But the truth is that I simply cannot go too long without thinking about him.
Why? Because I simply cannot help but think about him whenever I hear the word….. ‘doorknob.’ I don’t think I will ever be able to hear that word without thinking of Gilbert.
* * * * *
Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved.