My Best Enemy

Sitting in front of me was a blond haired curious young fellow. His hair resembled that of my hero Morrissey. Then I saw this kid in front of me was wearing a trench coat as if he was a 60 year old man. I kept peeking over his shoulder to see what he was doing, because whatever it was, it wasn’t school work. He had a journal and his walk man and a mix tape. The title said Elvis Costello. Elvis? This guy stole his name from the King of Rock?! I think I had heard the name but it was all fuzzy. It must have been somewhere between my Motley Crue to Morrissey switchover. It wasn’t the smoothest transition. I kept peeking over enough for the kid to finally stop what he was doing. He turned back to me and - wow was he a special looking guy. His golden hair flamed up and out the sides much like the actor I had just discovered. Christopher Walken. His eyebrows were blond too. He had the face of a literary figure. Soft and pale. Almost out of a painting. A romantic, golden tone surrounded him. His collared shirt was decorated with purple flowers and covered by his green trench. What the fuck was this kid doing here? What was he hiding? It was like he had secrets for me. Magic tricks to show. He clearly belonged in a think tank on Venus. He was like a little prince amongst peasants. I just felt from the first moment I met him that there was something special there. Something alien, new and exciting and I would not be disappointed.

His name was Mason. Mason Lucia. Lucia. Even that sounded royal or saintly or poetic. He was a young man with a flowing mane of energy both polished and raw at the same time, that I was attracted to right away. At the risk of sounding gay, like I have many times in this memoir, I could have fallen in love with him at that moment and I may have. I wanted to take all my lessons from him and blast The Smiths floodlights down on the two of us. The two of us, hatching schemes and dreams and plans. I was at least smitten. A crush. A non sexual man crush. I could see at that moment why so many would come to love him and why I would someday hate him.

But for now, for purpose of story, if that’s what this is - I will stay the course. Steady. Strong. Weary. Alone.

I wanted to be friends with him or something. Anything. I wanted to follow him around with a tape recorder and magnifying glass and soak all that he exuded. Carry behind with a bucket. Everything that his mind and energy possessed. I wanted it to transfer from him to me. To let it all in and roll all over me. I wanted to be him and this was something that, as much as I hid it and denied it, knew it the very moment I laid eyes on him.

Not all friendships or relationships are the same. Not all are normal or dull or boring. Some are adventerous and made of the caliber that only applies to the great works of art. Some carry great drama and tragedies are reached. This was and would become one of those. Mason and I would become like comic book heroes and villains. Our stage was Medford and we would battle and also support one another for the entirety of high school.

Together we would lay about in the flourescent Smiths album sleeves and pour over comics and old volumes of books that I never read. We wore sweaters on warm afternoons and listened to AM radio with the shades down.

Mason and I started hanging out together on an everyday basis. This was due in part to me not leaving him alone. Believe me, he would have rathered have not met me. I was so fucking intrigued by him. He was everything I always wanted to be and he was good at it too. He was good at looking cool. Sounding smart and sexy. He was confident. He knew he was smart. He knew he had a different look. He was so far ahead of me, the school and anyone I had ever met. Any adult or kid older than me that I once thought was cool, that all went down the shitter when I met Mason Lucia. He was my Tyler Durdin. He read what I wanted to read. He listened to the music I wanted to listen to. Saw the films I wanted to see and wrote like I could never - and still haven’t been able to write. He was the mad man in the woods. He roamed the streets salivating for anything he write about. He was a literary warrior, stripping down and breaking apart everything I thought I knew was right and cool. He was the neighborhood beat. The suburban Burroughs. He broke it down and reshaped it right in front of my eyes. He taught me about Elvis Costello, Tom Waits and opera. He told me to accept avant garde films and that GoodFellas was as much an art film as Cocteau was. He taught me about Oscar Wilde and Jean Genet and the excitement of books. I found out who Duchamp and Manray were from him. How they felt, smelt and made you powerful.
Mason took me into his world and walked me through his process one step at a time. He cloaked me under a dark cape that I refuged in like a wet dog.

The first day I went to his house we yelled and screamed and sang at the top of our lungs to music and then ate like pigs and then passed out. It was primal. A change from the usual Friday night drinking marathons I shared with other classmates and pals.

Together we were a tender force to be reckoned with. I became un afraid of being sensitive and lathered myself in a whole new form of rebellion. The intelligent kind.

Late at night we walked through the town cemetery. He did this often. It would creep me out at times but there was a real peace to it as well. He showed me that it wasn’t so much scary as it was tranquil and quiet. I had never seen anything like him. Nor did the city we lived in. He was a strange little bird amongst vultures and pigeons.

We lived in a hockey jock town of Italians and cops and snow plows. This was your typical New England city scape. Keggers. Girls with rake hair styles that all sounded like Fran Drescher.

Thing about Mason though - he knew how to deal with them. He made them like him and respect him somehow. I think anywhere or anyone else they would have strung him up on the flag pole but Mason went the opposite route. They feared him in a sense, like he was the kid from Powder or something but they loved him like Rocky Denis.

See it was a known fact that he was a genius. He had a high IQ than most of faculty so it was ignored when he would not show up to class or retreat to his study room. He and some of the other more intelligent kids, not being me, would hang in this room called the "writers room." They would actually write too, not just talk about it like I did.

The class was run by a haggard old English teacher who was on the fringe of the staff himself. You could tell he was a former nerd or misunderstood poet/student himself back in his day. The kids in the writers room were protected by him. The had their own little world in there that the rest of the school was not allowed to see or be a part of. I'd get an occasional pass in because of my friendship with Mason. They even had their own literary magazine called Shakespeare and Co. It was a monthly compilation of work done by them and their fellow outsiders. How I longed to be a part of it, alas I had nothing to contribute but I was excited nonetheless every time an issue came out.