Today I will write about my closest friend during my high school years: Darron.
I first met him when I arrived at Saint Academy as a Freshman, and to me he seemed like a wise-ass. He wore small wire-rimmed glasses and had a perpetual, seemingly sarcastic smile on his face. He was a big guy, with parted black hair that reminded me of “evil Superman” from Superman III. He was loud, arrogant, and brash. I remember thinking he was friendly despite all this, but I didn’t really spend any time with him. I hung out with Frank when I first arrived, and to a lesser degree Bill. (I’ll write about them later.) No, my friendship with Darron didn’t really begin until my Junior or Senior Year, when we started talking about our… doubts.
We both began questioning the Faith of our Fathers at about the same time, and it was due to the influence of Al DeLarge, who introduced Darron to the Existentialist Philosophers, from whom the writings passed to me. In combination with an alt.atheism newsgroup I had been reading on a local BBS, as well as my destroyed faith in my actual Father, I was on the verge of losing my Faith anyway. But it was conversations with Darron about the contradictions and hypocrisy we both witnessed in Christianity that my doubt fully matured. Eventually I became an atheist, a rather angry one, as a reaction to my upbringing, just as Al had.
Another subject that brought Darron and I together was sex. He was the first person who openly admitted to self-pleasure, and he matter-of-factly informed me that it was just a fact of life for male teenagers. Before that, since the subject had never been discussed in my family, I thought I was some kind of disgusting Sinner and Pervert because I did it. But Darron talked openly about that as well as other sexual topics, and it was under him that I began to develop an appreciation for the double entendre as well as other Worldly pursuits.
Sex and relationships eventually became a source of strife between us, though. As I mentioned in a previous entry, we both developed an infatuation for Carrie, and I told myself that I was going to “step aside” so that Darron could have his chance with her – and I felt mighty noble for doing so. (Never mind the fact that a guy like me never had a chance with her in the first place.) In addition, Darron, as the captain of the Basketball Team, was desired by most of the girls in the school. I remember he showed me a thick stack of envelopes from his desk drawer one time and said, “Would you look at that?” I asked what they were, and he said, “Love letters from girls at school.” I never felt more jealous of him than at that moment. The jealousy would blossom as my fascination with Andrea grew… I began to believe that Darron, Carrie, George, and Andrea were part of a conspiracy to form a clique which excluded me… and I wrote copiously in my journal about these Paranoid theories. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have that material anymore – it would just embarrass me to read it.
Once the ice was broken, hanging around Darron smoothed me in to a more well-adjusted state of living than complete Christian Indoctrination, and I began to appreciate things like R-rated movies and non-Christian rock music. I remember he bought me the first compact disc I ever owned – Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy. (I don’t particularly care for Pearl Jam anymore.) I began to curse because of the foul language Darron used. Darron’s parents were Christians, but they weren’t as heavy on it as many parents of the school. (Mama Frida, his mother, would watch R-rated movies, for example.) He was always encouraging his friends to engage in activities that the parents and teachers of the school would consider “sinful.”
Another fact about my “bromances” is that, typically, I latch on to a more friendly and outgoing person, who in turn introduces me to a wider variety of friends. (This happened later on with Christian, whom I need to write about also.) Darron was friends with nearly everybody at the school, and whenever I was with Darron, I felt like I fit in. You could almost say that Saint was the first school I ever felt that I was a part of the student body, instead of outside it… and Darron had a lot to do with that. It never really got me girlfriends or anything like that, but it did help me assimilate more with others and not seem to be such an oddball.
After high school, Darron and I became room-mates in Lexington for our abortive attempts at continued education. I’ve written about that time in a previous entry, so I won’t go into it here. At the end, our relationship had soured somewhat and we didn’t part ways on the best of terms. Later I would do something so nutty and bipolar that it basically guaranteed we would never be Close Friends again… but I’ll talk about that at a more appropriate time.