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I have always been a very sensitive and emotional man, but never as much as when I was a teenager. The challenges of that developmental period, in conjunction with the hormones coursing through my veins, were difficult enough; when you add that to the fact that I was prescribed Prednisone for a health condition, you get a much clearer picture. Prednisone is a corticosteroid that will generally cause mood fluctuations in normal people. Given to an emotionally strained teenager, it is a sure recipe for disaster. I could hit dangerous lows at times.
Music and the musicians in high school that I befriended, seemed to quell a lot of this tumult inside of me. One of my friends, Joe, used to talk about his incredible brother all the time. He explained that he was a genius and was in the United States Marine Corps Band. I listened to him with all the sympathy a 15-year-old boy could muster, but I had little idea of how magical Patrick was until he came home on leave and I finally met him. Within minutes, I found my hero.
He was a multi-instrumentalist, but his chops on a bass guitar (and on any guitar really) were beyond anything I had seen in life or on MTV. In addition to this, he was eccentric and a little crazy and so much fun to be with. He had about a year left in the service at that point and we would write to each other as I patiently waited for him to be discharged from his military duty.
When he finally arrived back on Long Island from his stay on Parris Island, we were simply inseparable. I would drive the twenty minutes to his apartment at every given opportunity. It was there that I learned to compose and record my first songs on a Fostex multi-track recorder. I remember one of the first songs I wrote, Patrick tried so hard to get me to record the guitar part “in time” and I just couldn’t do it. When it was all over, he recorded my guitar part, his lead guitar, a bass part, and the drums. The only thing I recorded was the vocal but it didn’t matter. I still left with this cassette tape of an incredible song that I sort of wrote.
I have many heartwarming stories about Patrick that rivaled this one, but there was one day when I believe he may have saved my life. Since we lived on Long Island, one thing we used to do when we just needed to get out and do something was to go to the beach. If memory serves, I believe the incident I am recalling took place when summer was turning to autumn because this was when I used to suffer from my darkest low points. Patrick was excited to get out and walk the windy expanse of the shoreline; I, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than to lay down and die.
I was literally paralyzed with sadness, depression, and grief—and I could not even see the possibility that anything would ever improve. I was convinced that I was wholly unpalatable to the opposite sex and would be for all eternity. I am not afraid to admit that suicide was becoming a real serious consideration for me at this point.
Without any warning, Patrick picked me up like I was an infant and carried me effortlessly down the beach for hundreds of yards. Tears started streaming down my cheeks because, for the first time in my whole childhood, I felt a sense of connection where someone really loved and cared about me. I had no idea that this is what I needed so badly to turn my life around, but somehow Patrick was able to intuit it.
Thinking back, I can say with honesty that I have never, before or since, ever felt so connected to another human being—man or woman—in my life.
We live in a strange society here in America. As I recount this event, I can feel this gravitational force; this need to have to explain that there was nothing homosexual about this moment. Nor was it the anemic and homogenized anomaly that we generally refer to as a “bromance”. It was pure and unfettered love between two human beings. It was nothing short of a heroic act. An older boy saving the life of a younger boy. A moment so beautiful that it lives clearly in my memory some thirty years later.
It’s been posited that beyond even diet and lifestyle, our relational connections determine our longevity and it makes me so happy that Patrick is still a friend of mine to this day. He has stayed by my side during times when my ego got so out of hand that I didn’t deserve to have someone like him in my life. He has seen me through marriages, divorces, substance abuse issues, recovery, and now, middle age.
Even though romantic love is a thing that has always alluded me—seeming to continually enter and exit in my life like the wind—I will always have Patrick and that moment to draw on forever. That moment where I knew what real connection felt like; and that has made all the difference.
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