ХуЛите - The Builder of Towers

So many people have passed through my life. Some are like a breeze – pleasant, but gone in a blink. They just stir the air, and later even the memory of them is pale. Some rage through like a summer storm - thundering and lightning, pouring rain, and blasting wind. When they are gone, I would pick up the broken branches and torn leaves. I’d learn my lesson and forget all about them.

However, there are those who leave marks. They would go through my life and dig deep scars or build tall towers. I’ll remember these people forever, because I still have scars deep in my heart to nurse and towers to look from beyond the horizon.

At the age of sixteen, I was on my way to higher education. I was just out of high school and not quite grown up yet. Mostly everyone was older then I was. I didn’t know many people. I was away from home for the first time, and I was scared. My mom said, “I believe I brought you up right, and I know you’ll make the right choices.” And I wished to God I was as sure as she was.

I rented an apartment with a girl I knew from my hometown. The life in the University was wild and appalling to me. All those young people were bursting with energy and ideas about the world, politics and the universe’s structure. It was incredibly fascinating.

One evening, my roommate managed to convince me to go to a party with her. She was fine arts major, and most of the people there were from the same department. All the way to the party, I was complaining how I had to spend the evening with overly sensitive art people. Little did I know that I was about to meet my best friend, one of those very few people who built the tallest towers and left the deepest scars.

He was an attractive man. The ash blond sea he had for hair always had a mind of its own. When I saw him for the first time, he was sitting quietly in a dark corner and drinking. Except that once, I looked in his eyes, there was nothing quiet about him. He was a lonely tree in the middle of the desert – strong and terribly lost.

He was the most talented person I have ever known. At age of 26, he was a well-recognized sculptor with dozen of exhibitions underneath his belt. His work was in fashion among those who buy art, and he had won a major project from the city.

He was very talented and very aware of it. He had that arrogant air about him. By the time we met, I had no idea who he was, and I wasn’t in a state of mind to tolerate some stranger with an arrogant attitude. I completely ignored him all night.

On the next day, he came to me and sat at my table in the coffee house. “Hi,” he said, “my name is Peter.” “Hi,” I said, “I don’t care.” “Well,” he made himself even more comfortable, “That might be.” Yeah, he was the most talented, arrogant, and charming person I’ve ever known. Peter charmed his way in to a conversation that lasted for more than four hours. I felt like I had known him my whole life, and very soon I was able to share anything and everything with him. It was just the way he shared with me. Peter became my best friend, and the gender didn’t seem to matter.

We would sit on the floor in my room, just beneath the skylight in the dark with pack of cigarettes and a bottle of wine that we would pass to each other and talk about everything. “Would you like to go there?” Peter asked me while pointing to the sky. I looked up and didn’t answer. “I would,” He said, “All that space and the quiet…” “And none of your fans, you know,”I joked. He looked at me with that huge worm smile reserve for close friends only. “I’ll find my self a bunch of hot extraterrestrial chicks,” and he started to laugh. We would laugh away the night or dip in to some philosophical topic, and we would be happy.

Other times he would ask me to sit as comfortably as possible in the only armchair in his room, and he would sketch for hours. We wouldn’t say a word. I’d lose myself in my thoughts as he would in his, and we would be happy.

He became my art mentor. He would take me to an exhibition and tell me all about the technique that the artist was using, about the style, and all the art terminology and facts. Then, when the “lecture” was over, he would look at me and say, “And as I’ve told you already, love, none of what I’ve just said to you means a thing if it looks to you as a bunch of lines, because the only way you see
art is with your heart.”
Sometimes we would just go out and have a drink. Peter was drinking way too much.

Every time I said something about his drinking, he would go, “Don’t worry my friend, I’ll be fine.” Then, when he got drunk, he would lay his head on my shoulder. “Tell me a story,” he would say. “I don’t have any.” “ Yes, you do.” He would turn and kiss my head. “Let your imagination fly”

Peter became my anchor in this new world. He was always there for me. I loved him more than I loved my own brother. He believed in me, and he helped me to believe in myself. Every time I would say, “I can’t!” Peter would look at me with disbelief and say, “Yes, you can. You just don’t know it yet.” And depending on the situation, he would let me find my way out of the problem, or he would lend me some help.

During the summer breaks, we would literally let each other go. We were inseparable during the school year, but once the summer started we wouldn’t even call each other. Then when the new school year started, we would spend days telling one another everything that had happened.

I will never forget the night of July 29, 1999. It had been three years since I had met Peter. My phone rung at three in the morning. I picked it up. I was sleepy and annoyed that anyone would wake me up at that hour.

“Tell me a story, love.” I shot fully awake. Peter’s voice sounded somewhat weak. “Peter! What’s wrong?” “I’m in a hospital. I haven’t been feeling well lately.” “ What’s wrong?” I asked again, and I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. “I’ll be fine, love. Will you tell me a story?”

I wish to God I could remember the story I made up for him. Sometimes I would wake up in the night trying to remember, but I cannot.

Hour and a half later, a nurse told me he had fallen asleep and hung up the phone. One hour later, I was on the first train heading toward Peter’s home.

However, I was too late. He never woke up from that sleep. When I got to the hospital, the doctors were waiting for his parents to make the decision to stop the life-support. He was already gone.

Due to the alcohol, the doctor said, his liver couldn’t take it, and he had gone through hepatitis without knowing it. That, the doctor said, had finished him.
His parents took me in to their house. The best friend of their son was the last part of him they got to keep for a little longer. He had asked his mom to give me some of his work, all of his diaries, and some other souvenirs he had collected since his childhood.

Peter had known he wouldn’t make it through the summer. I could bet that he was ready to go. “The ultimate adventure!” He would have said.

After the funeral, I couldn’t go home. I went back to the town where Peter and I spent 3 years and roamed the streets for hours. Everything seemed so empty and foreign. When the night came, I went back to my room, sat on the floor in the dark room, just beneath the skylight, and got drunk for the last time in my life. I cried. I laughed. I remembered. And, I vowed never to forget.

Yes, Peter was the most talented, arrogant, and charming person I’ve ever known. He was also my best friend. When he went, he left the deepest scar in my heart. One that still hurts and bleeds sometimes. Nevertheless, he was the one who stretched the borders of my horizon almost infinitely.

I will always have him in my heart!