It is four thirteen in the morning
And I cannot sleep again.
I have scored another touchdown.
They are all there, my teenage friends,
Nezgod, Levine, Garcia, McElroy, McCluskey,
All except for David.
He moved away when he was thirteen,
Byron, his father, forcing his peripatetic life
As an oil executive
On Dottie, the nurse-wife,
Judy and Nancy, the two teenage girls
I learned about sex
From watching them pet
With their boyfriends in cars,
And David.

My father tried to kill me
For the first time, after David was gone,
Because I had left the bowl
From my nightly serving of coffee ice cream and pound cake
In the sink rather than carefully placing it,
Crumbs, drippings, and all,
In our brand new, super-cleaning dishwasher.
It was one thirty in the morning
And I awoke to my door exploding open,
Fingers clutching my throat,
And those same incoherent ramblings
I would become used to over the years.
As suddenly as it began
It was over, and I was left, alone,
Sprawled on steamy sheets,
Rasping for air as if I’d just had an orgasm.
The next afternoon I carefully etched
“Wally sucks” in the outer face
Of the thin plywood of my bedroom door
As a protest, barely perceptible
Unless you knew to look for it.
The words remained twenty years later
When my parents sold their house
To move to a nearby town to have a new life.

David became my best friend
When he wandered into our playroom
Looking for something interesting to do
At sunrise one Sunday morning when he was six.
Both our fathers were angry men,
His in silence, mine in shouts.
David taught me how to defy,
How to get into trouble,
And how to have fun.
We roamed the neighborhood
Like a wolf pack of two,
Searching for the best adventure or prank.
In fall we collected acorns by the thousands,
Carefully counting them
And placing them in labeled, numbered shopping bags.
After dividing them up evenly
We then stood ten yards apart
To have our yearly war,
Whipping the acorns at each other
Until large, thick welts
Covered our faces, arms, and bodies.
Once again, we carefully gathered up our acorns,
Counted them, labeled them, put them in shopping bags,
And left them in our garages
Until spring, when our fathers threw them out.
Our mothers were overprotective
And hated these fights.
Our fathers were angry,
His in silence, mine in shouts.

I remember that David defended me
From the other boys in the neighborhood
Who didn’t want me hanging out with them
Because I was three years younger.
David showed them I was tough enough
By bouncing me off the concrete sidewalk
And hitting me with a baseball bat.
I didn’t even flinch,
Until after he had turned
And smiled at the others
With superiority and triumph.
He never asked if I was okay.
He didn’t have to,
We were best friends.
From then on
Me and Crystal and Rothman and Bonds
Traveled as an uncertain pack
When it wasn’t just David and me.
The faces of the others my age
Showed envy that I’d been accepted by the older boys.
The day I almost lost my front tooth
On the top of Rothman’s head while wrestling,
Without crying or complaining,
The day I said it was my fault
As my hysterical mother swooped me up
To take me to the dentist to have my bloody face wired,
Was the day they finally fully accepted me,
And was the day I heard David taunt them
With “I told you so.”

When I was thirteen and Bar Mitzvahed
And officially became a man
David was no longer there.
Three years before
He had left behind tree climbing,
Playing William Tell
Through the Woodrow’s open living room window,
And hiding from janitors and teachers,
And our fathers,
On the roof of the school across the street,
For a family house in Guam
And then, almost immediately,
For a father enforced U.S. military school.
We said we’d write,
We said we’d see each other at holidays,
We said we’d remain best friends forever,
As children often do.
But, of course we never did.
And, to this day, I find myself,
In each and every friendship,
Still searching for David.