Johnny Boy Marketing

(Editor’s note: Welcome to Living Eulogies. All recollections are accurate in the author’s mind only. Apologies in advance to everyone who has different recollection of the same events. Send all complaints to Jessica Simpson. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and allow six to eight weeks for delivery.)

Someone had to be first, and in the circle of my closest friends, it was me. Our Fox Lane journeys had ended a few months before, and it was nearing the time for all of us to go our separate ways for college and whatever lay beyond.

I, by far, was traveling the greatest distance. For a few very good reasons, I needed to get as far away from everything I’d known growing up to continue my life, so the next day I was heading out to start the 1,100 mile drive from Pound Ridge’s golden-brick streets to the farm fields of Des Moines, Iowa, and Drake University.

It was time to say goodbye.

That day had been hard. One by one, friends had stopped by for final goodbyes that had been building all summer. No one wanted to talk about what was coming during those early summer days. We just wanted to make as many memories as possible before everything changed.

Deep down, I think we all knew things were going to change significantly.

There were lots of words at the time talking about how we were going to remain in touch, how we’d see each other often, but I think we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. We’d try, sure. And we did try. Some more than others. But it was never going to be the same as it was that summer, as it had been the previous few years.

The last of the goodbye visits was going to be the hardest. Somehow, toward the end of junior year I’d managed to thread a very difficult needle and remain best friends with the kid I’d grown to rely on as my ride-or-die mate while simultaneously dating his little sister. Yeah, I know. It should have been impossible or, at best, super awkward, but it wasn’t.

When the Gray family showed up in my driveway to say goodbye, one by one they came in the house to do the difficult thing. First, it was Mrs. Gray, who had been in every way like a second mother to me during a time when I desperately needed that kind of maternal love. From the outside, my family life might have seemed idyllic, but the few who got a glimpse at the real inner workings knew appearances could be deceiving. Mrs. Gray was a consistent presence of love and care in my late high school life, and I am forever grateful for how she opened up her home and her heart to me when I needed a place to be that wasn’t my own house.

That goodbye was hard. The next was harder.

Jami and I had dated for more than a year and a half at that point. That she wasn’t the last goodbye that day says something about how strong my relationship with her brother was. Jami and I said our goodbyes, knowing that the whole “see other people” thing would eventually lead to “not see each other anymore,” I believe. It’s not surprising that that’s what ultimately happened.

And then came the hardest goodbye.

I hated Lindy. Lindy hated me.

That might be a bit too strong, but not all that much. When Lindy arrived with his family from Texas in middle school, I was asked by the powers that be in West House to show him around, to give him a person to hang out with as he got acclimated. We did not like each other. He saw me as brash and arrogant and a typical East Coaster. I saw him as a too-quiet hick from Texas. As soon as it was acceptable for me to stop showing him the ropes, we went our separate ways.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but sometime early in our high school years, we found ourselves running with a similar crowd. At first, it was nothing special. We tolerated each other. Then, somehow, these two kids who couldn’t stand each other started to become friends.

It certainly helped that we dated girls who were friends. If we were going to hang out with them, we had to hang out with each other, and that was a fine price to pay for female companionship.

Over those first few years, we had this disturbing trend of changing girlfriends and dating a person the other had previously dated. Yet it never was awkward. It just sort of … happened. Until I started dating his sister.

Checkmate, Tex.

But even before then, Lindy and I started to grow as friends. It’s not that we had a ton in common. We didn’t. Maybe it was that we were equal in levels of smart-assery and had similar tendencies to let our mouths get us in trouble. Whatever it was, we found solidarity in each other, to the point that all it took was one conversation in which he threatened to kill me if I hurt his sister to start dating Jami with his blessing.

From there, our friendship blossomed into what it truly was — brotherhood. When he started dating Michelle Nahigian, the four of us became the Four Musketeers. Yes, we had a wider group of people with whom we’d hang out, but the times the four of us had together were the best.

What was really cool about the situation was that I would be over at the Gray house hanging out with Jami, and Lindy would come home from wherever he might be and say, “Wanna go do something?” and he and I would head out in the Blue Bomber (Lindy’s super-unreliable car that we ended up pushing or repairing on the side of the road more than once) to Elmsford to shoot pool or the Jefferson Valley Mall to make fun of girls with super-hairsprayed hair that extended a good foot above their heads.

It was a great life in the midst of what otherwise was chaos for me growing up.

Lindy and I did a lot of stupid shit together, whether it was following each other in our cars on dirt roads driving way too fast or boxing in front of his house. We had this habit of making fools of ourselves in public, like the time Lindy decided to get up from our table at a restaurant and go around to other tables asking patrons how they were enjoying their meals.

Then, there was this secret part of Lindy’s life he wanted no one to know about. At some point, Lindy decided to get into acting. He had professional headshots taken, and I remember when he landed a gig. That it was for one of those cheesy “Kids, now don’t go having sex” videos made it something I could endlessly make fun of him for. If there’s a copy of that video somewhere, I’d give a kidney to get a hold of it and screen it at a high school reunion.

Lindy and I went through a lot together. He was there for me when I suffered my first concussion and was struggling bigtime the next day in school. Two weeks later, he got his head slammed into the mat at wrestling practice, and I was there for him as he battled his own concussion. He was there for me the day a really good childhood friend who’d moved away was killed by a drunken driver while in college at Holy Cross while crossing the street. Lindy wasn’t an emotional guy — he’d probably tell you back then that he didn’t have emotions — but he knew how to be friends with a dude whose life seemed be governed by super-strong feelings.

The end of high school wasn’t kind to Lindy. He and Michelle broke up, and his next relationship brought its challenges. Yet he and I didn’t drift apart in those final months at Fox Lane and remained close throughout the summer.

And then it was time for me to leave.

The goodbye Lindy and I shared was special and remains special to this day. It was a side of Lindy I’d never seen. We cried. We hugged. We told each other we loved each other and called each other what we were: Brothers. And then he was gone. The next day, I left.

Things never were the same. Time has changed all of us, I would put forward, and Lindy and I grew apart. What I knew would eventually happen between Jami and I actually happened, and I understood why Lindy was upset with that. She is his sister. His loyalties rightly should have been with her.

A few months after I went to college, my parents announced they were moving to South Carolina. Within a year, there was no home for me to return to in New York, which further led me to drift away from everything and everyone I’d known back then. The advent of Facebook brought us back together in some way for a time, but it was evident to both of us that things had changed. He’d seen his share of stuff in the Navy. I had changed in lots of ways too.

I haven’t talked with Lindy in more than a decade … probably longer. I know he moved to Florida, that he went into the contractor business with his dad. I believe he runs the company these days, but I’m not sure.

I have never had another friend like Lindy. Part of me wonders if it’s because I won’t let anyone get that close to me again. I know how it feels when those relationships end. I remember how it felt that day we said goodbye, and that hurt quite enough, thank you.

I’m blessed to have the memories Lindy and I share, and I look back on them fondly and frequently. I feel like my wife and my boys know Lindy. They’ve heard so many tales that start with, “This one time, Lindy and I were …”

My hope is that everyone at some point in their lives has a friendship like what Lindy and I shared. That we started out truly disliking each other and went from there to being like brothers is something hilariously special.

So let’s all raise a glass to Lindy Gray … the kid from Texas, my last and greatest best friend.

UP NEXT: Danny

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