[The following is not pretty. Don't read it if you're feeling down or sensitive. It's essentially a note I wrote to some friends a while back. I edited it to take out the personal references, but otherwise it's just as I wrote it - it's how my feelings came out of me.]

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I write the way some people cry. It's my way of dealing. Work through the feelings, cleansing, healing. And like tears, sometimes the words pour out, all by themselves.

Several months ago, this change came.

I got a phone call. It's one of those you dread. Like all the old movie cliches, it came in the middle of the night. It was from an old friend, someone I grew up with, haven't talked to in years. I was surprised he was able to find my number, since I've moved a bunch of times since the last time we talked.

His call was about Ricky. This friend called to tell me that Ricky was dead. I guess you would call it a form of suicide. Pills and alcohol. Nobody knows if it was accidental or deliberate. He didn't leave a note or anything. I don't know that the details are important, and they're a little hazy in my mind anyway. He was divorced, lived alone, had problems, criminal record, trouble with staying employed. I knew all that, vaguely, through other friends, but I hadn't kept up with Ricky.

It hit me hard. My brother died the same way, exactly the same. That's part of the reason. But it's him, too. Ricky was at one time my closest friend. He lived up the street, on the corner, and we used to sleep over together all the time, and we played youth-league soccer together, started at the same age. We went to the school property behind my house, explored the woods, that seemed so deep and mysterious when we were eight and had somehow shrunk to little groves when I was 16.

He was the kid I used to walk down to Dairy Queen in the summer with, when we had some change, and buy ice cream, and sit there and eat it with the stuff dripping on the pavement while we laughed at each other's jokes. We used to torment his little sister endlessly, telling her there were bugs in her green beans, selling her our unwanted baseball cards with unknown players by telling her that these guys are famous, you can't go wrong, this one's worth a dollar.

Ricky was the first boy I ever fooled around with, knowing consciously what I was doing. I showed him how to masturbate when we were eight. He was with me the day I found my three magic sex-education books. When we were 10 we got each other off, first time for both of us at someone else's hand, and the last time for him, I guess. We never did anything else after that. I know he felt ashamed about it in later years. It's partly why we quit hanging out together, as well as going to different schools and all that. I hope to God it's not one of the reasons things came to this point with him. I can't help feeling it was some kind of factor. He didn't really want to do what we did.

He wasn't the smartest or wittiest friend I ever had. Ricky was slow. But he was loyal and kind and not mean at all and a good kid and a good person.

It hurt like hell, getting that phone call. I remember every thing Paul said, every pause, every syllable, I remember what the coiled-up phone cord felt like in my hand. I hate this curse I have of total recall for memories, good and bad, whether I choose to or not, they show up like unwanted dinner guests and no matter what poison you feed them they clean their plates and ask for more.

I hate my past sometimes. I was such an arrogant little bastard. I thought it was so great, introducing all my friends to the miracle roller-coaster ride of sex, little Danny and his magic seduction, welcome to the thrill machine, kids, did you ever think about what your mouth can do besides suck on ice cream cones, wanna spend the night in the treehouse? BJs, just another thing on the boy-menu, after soccer and before swimming. Don't tell your parents. Shit.

I don't know what hell or heaven are like, really. I believe in heaven. Maybe this is hell, like Trent Reznor says.

Ricky had brown hair and freckles and he was a little on the heavy side but not noticeably so. He hated wearing belts. I never saw him with a belt except for church and Sunday school. He was a good soccer player, but I was better, and he always asked me to show him how to lateral-pass and thigh-trap and stuff. I did, a few times, but I spent more time trying to get him to strip with me. He was great at hearts and gin rummy, and I asked him to tell me how to void suit in hearts and shoot the moon, and he spent hours and hours showing me on his side porch with the screens and the rain coming down in the summer and fall while we played and forgot everything except the game and each other laughing. He was a nice guy. I never heard him say anything mean about another kid or adult, not even his older brother who was a Grade-A jerkwad. Never a mean word. They always say that about dead people, don't they?

I don't know where I'm going with this, don't even know where I started. I wish I could cry, but I write instead, and I don't know if either thing helps. It doesn't bring back your dead friends. They just stay dead.

And here I am, talking about me, me, ME, all the way through this thing I'm writing. I can't help it, lately. I'm lying prostrate on the ground, with a thousand open bleeding slashes, and the guy standing above me with the whip is me.

I spend all this time thinking about my past, nowadays, and whether it was good or bad. Ricky and Paul and Alex and Kenny and everyone have become part of my present, as I remember them and replay. I want them back, to do it over again, to say I'm sorry, I didn't know, I wasn't sensitive.

Last I heard, Kenny was on the West Coast, doing okay. I know where Alex is and I think he's doing great; I need to call him.

But the others. Where is Tim? What about D.J.? What about the kid I seduced in Florida when I was 12? All he wanted to do was play soccer, too. Where are they now, dead too? I don't know, can't tell, it hurts. And I know Ricky's gone.

My wife has a Ouija board. I don't know if it's a crock or not. No I'm not gonna try. But it's crossed my mind.

I have no idea how to end this. I don't know if I feel better or not. I wish I could cry. Instead I just peck at keys and watch while spellcheck fixes every other word. I re-read this and I see I wrote myself into a corner. I'll just sit here and wait for the paint to dry. It will. I always get better.