My Friend Mark

I haven't seen my friend Mark in 2 1/2 years. Before that, I generally considered him to be one of my best friends. A bright guy, we had study groups in high school; 5 of us around our text books and Mark playing "Doom" on my computer. He would barely look over if we asked him a question; and if he bothered to respond, he would get it right.

Mark got better test scores then us each and every time.

But, there was something a little peculiar about him; he read those sci-fi fantasy books with pictures of armored, big breasted Amazonian-types slaying spindly fire-breathing monster/dragon hybrids on the cover. His room was literally littered with them and he probably went through 2-3 a week.

They say you can judge a man by the company he keeps. I say you can judge a man by the company he keeps and the books he reads. Based on those books and the sincere fact that I was the company he kept, the odds were stacked against him.

There was a time in high school when I asked him to pass me a lighter. Mind you, I'm standing in the bathroom of a 17th floor Manhattan high rise. The window is open.

Me: Hey, Mark. Pass me the lighter.
Mark grabs the lighter, looks at it...and throws it out the window.
Me: Did you...? You just threw that out the window!
Mark: I know!
Me: I asked you to pass it to me.
Mark: Oh, I thought you said throw it out the window. That makes more sense now.

Of course Mark might have been slightly inebriated, which was always a hysterical occurrence. He would admit things like which girl he really wanted to have anal sex with, which girl he actually hooked up with, and one amusing time, which one of his sideburns was conducting electricity. It was his left one.

One time he visited me in college and I was hanging out with a group of hipsters. An 18-year old hipster girl and Mark smoked pot, the next day they saw each other again, and she was wearing an "IRONIC" Police Athletic League T-Shirt. It was by the collective will of me and 6 hipsters, but we managed to convince Mark that she was in the police force, despite the fact that she was an 18 year old creative writing major at NYU who he had smoked pot with the night before.

I saw Mark 4 months later and the first thing he said to me was "was that girl REALLY a police officer?"

Mark pops in and out of my life every few years. He's always been supportive of me, but he's also been a bad friend. I've called him about 10 times in the last two and a half years and he's never called back. Other of my friends have had the same experience.

Maybe it's because after high school he gained about 100lbs and lost all his hair. Whenever we went out, our nights would end at a 24 hour diner, me eating a salad and Mark eating a double bacon cheeseburger with fries and onion rings. He literally panted and sweat when he ate, and occasionally, when he slept over at my house, I was concerned that he would die on my couch of several clogged internal organs.

Anyway, I heard recently that one of my friends made contact with him, so I'm actually going to try to call him again this week and see if he actually picks up. I wonder if he still thinks that hipster girl is a police woman.