Eulogy: To the Delinquent Sky
Thirty floors up, and in every direction, snow-dusted Boston below us. Fences, alarms, security systems all of which we ducked at ground level, before scaling thirty long, half-done stairwells, and climbing, hands and feet, the tall, looping ladder of the crane. We made it up at last, crouched besides the operator’s booth, and sucked in lungfuls of that sweet, thin, mid-winter, thirty degree air. And up our 360-degree perch in the night sky, we relished in the view. We had done it. We had made it to the top. No use traipsing across the arm of the crane in fact we didn’t dare. That blinking red light might look so romantic flying into the city at night but for once we seemed to know our limits and that was the one risk we refused to take. Above us was the American flag, limp and flopping around in the high-altitude wind…then simply stars. Everywhere below us: glimmering Fenway, Longwood, Kenmore, Boylston Street slinking out from just under us, out into the Back Bay, towards the downtown beyond. The Hancock, the Prudential, and the hard-angle jumble skyline beyond it — that was all there was to challenge our supremacy. Us: delinquent giants; briefly reigning over our city at least so long as the wee hours of New England morning lasted. Holding on to the bars of the ladder, mesmerized by the view, basking in the glory. Almost oblivious that we were up there in the cold-wind-whistling, the snow-dusted thick of a Massachusetts winter. Only two types of people ascend to heights like that: the ridiculously rich…and juvenile delinquents. To this day, old college friends of mine tell the story like they were right there with us. They weren’t. It was only the two of us there. It was only Diego and I.
When I reflect on my Primo I realize that half, if not most of our finest memories were spent appreciating music, doing something highly illegal, or some crazy concoction of the two. These last few years, in the days we’d spend together, didn’t matter license or no license out we’d cruise straight across Boston with his subwoofers booming. Music, whether playing it or appreciating it, was a cornerstone of our relationship. Diego being a man of few words and me sometimes too many, music early on emerged as the medium through which we truly spoke. He exposed me to Busta Rhymes and Del the Funkee Homosapien and when we’d bump it, lurking so-stoned, late into the night I could feel through it the trouble that brewed inside. I hipped him to Zapp & Roger and Isley Brothers and funk and oldies and in later years I’d catch him looking very seventies with his floral shirts on his long black hair and I would be glad to know I was rubbing off on him too. He’d scoop me in JP many an afternoon, and we’d sail out maybe to conspire with the homies for a cookout, or to go to the old jam spot in Framingham, or finesse our way into luxury gyms. When the weather was good we’d hike Blue Hills or the cliffs of the Quincy Quarries, or middle of the night sneak over fences and dive into ponds. But usually what brought us together, up into our last days, was one of us ringing the other up, with a vague plan, to simply ‘jam’.
There’d be moments, the two of us riding west towards Dedham, when all around me felt like a heavenly dream. Roaring and speed-racer-like he’d drive us westward, under the ripe light of the golden hour when the evening would turn to night. From the shotgun seat I’d stare out silent, staring at that westward sunset to see it so cotton candy-like and expansive and yet so fleeting and delicate. And I could be convinced, at a moment like that, that Boston, Boston, had the most immaculate sunsets in the world. And although they have had their moments they are nothing like the ones out in Arizona or Florida or southern California where my Primo and I last shared our time. And I’d ruminate there, with him besides me, trying to make sense of this youthful, beautiful, mischievous connectedness that I felt we uniquely shared but I know that with his peers too I was not special in feeling. All of us romantically out-of-control and living too fast. Not outcasts, just never really the type to want anything to do with the ‘incasts’; that was not what we wanted of life. I’d take quick glances at the portrait of his face and feel that lust-for life, free-flying travieso energy that existed between us. And then I’d realize that it was not really the sunsets that possessed in me that holy, cozy warmth inside…It was to be there listening to the music I loved, riding into the sun besides the truest friend, most spiritually-entwined hermano I’ve ever known. It was the feeling that I could look in every direction and feel if just for a few fragile moments that it all…feels…right.
In Diego, me Julian Diego, him Diego Enrique — I had the mortal privilege, for twenty-two years…to live…not as just one man. He was the most burning fearless — the most tender dreamlike souls I knew; my Primo Diego.
