James was a friend of mine from ages 11 to 16. He came from a mixed marriage; his mother was white, while I’m unsure of his father's race, though I believe he was black. James had black hair and deep brown skin, and he was about my age. He loved coming over to my house and was always very polite to my parents, whom I think he respected. I was never invited to his house, which should have seemed strange, but it didn’t. I was invited to very few of my friends' homes for several reasons. One of my best friends had an alcoholic father who berated him terribly. Other friends had someone in their home they were embarrassed about, and some lived in run-down, cockroach-infested apartments that they didn’t want me to see. Additionally, as the minister's son, many of my friends' families had things they didn’t want to get back to my father.
James and I used to play baseball in the parking lot and basketball in the church gym together. He was a slightly better athlete than I was. Occasionally, he would put me in a semi-friendly chokehold, which I hated. When I was 11, we played on the same baseball team; he was at third base, and I was at second. The team consisted of local kids coached by my friend Tony's father, who I suspected was an alcoholic, or at least a rough-looking guy. This was the only team I would ever be on, as I missed most of the season when I went to be the assistant cook at church camp. Before I left, we played softball, and I excelled at hitting and catching. They used to call me "the vacuum" at second base. When I returned from camp, they had switched to hardball, and I couldn't hit a thing. I had also slowed down quite a bit after eating all the carbohydrate-filled meals at camp. I remember one day being sent in as a pinch runner on first base because they remembered how fast I was. The batter was a big, chunky fellow who could hit hard. He smashed the ball, and as he followed me around the bases, he almost caught up to me by the time I reached home plate.
Back to James: he was one of the smartest boys I knew, which meant a lot coming from me, as I was considered the smartest boy my age in the neighborhood. James had a crush on my sister, Margaret, and whenever he came over, he would badger her about going out with him, but she just laughed it off. He was quite the ladies' man, having been involved with a Filipino girl named Justy, whose strict parents often beat her and disapproved of James. He even tried to set me up with her younger sister, Jovi, but that never worked out.
As we approached high school age, I attended an inner-city public school called Cass Tech that required testing for admission, allowing only the top percentage of Detroit students. James received a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in the suburbs called Kensington. However, he lasted only one year before losing the scholarship due to behavioral issues. Once, he invited me to spend a Saturday night at the school. As it got late, he offered me half a hit of acid. Having never tried it before, I assumed that a small amount wouldn’t hurt, so I took it around 10:30 PM. Within half an hour, my heart was racing so fast it felt like it would jump out of my chest. I spent the entire night sweating, with a pounding heart and overwhelming paranoia. I couldn't tell anyone because I felt out of place at that elite school.
While James was not a burnout, he knew how to get drugs. A year later, we were alone playing pool in the basement of my father's church when he pulled out a chunk of hash. We lit it up and started getting high when my father, the church minister, began walking downstairs. We panicked and ran right into him. I knew he smelled the hash, but he never mentioned it; instead, he got really mad and told James to go home.
Years later, I learned that James had been raped by a neighborhood child molester. When I saw him again after graduating from college, he was selling pots and pans in a parking lot in the city.