The Fountainhead of My Delinquency

Gabe– I just got your letter yesterday. Damn it’s good to hear from you, man. As you might expect, I don’t get much word from anybody these days, so when I finally do get a letter, especially from someone that I actually respect, it really makes my day. With all the time in the world here I spend a lot of it reminiscing about those golden older days, when you and I used to get into all that trouble…I’ve often thought about writing a book about it, since time is something I’m not short on, sort of like a Tom Saywer and Huck Finn kind of novel, but who would want to read about a couple kids stealing cigars, destroying deer blinds, and breaking into people’s houses? Tried having sex with Vicci during her last visit, but the guards jumped on me before I could even get my hands into her shirt, and they put me in the hole for a month. Fucking bastards. It was only supposed to be for a week, but the warden decided that I was "dangerously manipulating the guards," and a "threat to the infrastructure of the facility," which is bullshit….

Blake Harris; named after one William Blake, by his school teacher mother, and literature professor father, grew up on a horse farm out in the rolling golden hills of northern Harbor Springs. Though both of his parents were well educated and revered (his father in particular, who served as a member of the city council, and taught classes at the college), they lived a very grounded and earthy existence, far removed from the town. His father had a penchant for horse riding and pipe smoking, and as a child I never had the slightest inclination that he was anything other than a hardened working class cowboy in the purest spirit of Clint Eastwood. His mother was meek, and pretty, and significantly younger than his father, and they had a small living room with a piano that she used to frequently play to her twin daughters (often, when Blake thought he was alone, he would start hammering out Beethoven, though he adamantly denied knowing how to play the piano for quite some time). The kitchen had an old wood stove with a beautiful shiny and spacious hard wood floor with high ceilings. The entire house radiated coziness, and smelled deliciously of cherry pipe tobacco, as his father would always have a pipe in the living room when he returned home for the evening, watching the news on the modest antenna-only three channel TV set. The man was very serious, and frightening to me as a child, but at the same time commanded a very strong amount of respect. His rewards were sparse, but extremely potent as a result.

Blake and I became friends when we were ten years old. He told me he latched on to me because I was "popular," which at the age of ten was synonymous with "had the best toys," and over the course of our friendship through all of our formal schooling, that popularity shifted slowly and completely…mine dwindling and dissipating after befriending the school nerd (forsaking the practice of humiliating and belittling those who did not fit in), and his climbing to all time highs by his uncanny ability to charm his way into any situation, and his merciless and acutely witty assaults on anyone the majority deemed an outcast. A true masochist, he seemed to relish being a notable possession of the crowds, and took a masked pleasure in any form of ridicule that came his way. He behaved and looked like anyone else, but would periodically lay down ingenious sentiments off handedly, almost accidentally, which would often attract some form of ridicule, or in my case spur copious amounts of laughter and amusement. Once such a reaction came about, he was quick to hide his astute perception under a blanket of menial commentary, or self desecration.

Nearly every time I got into serious trouble with authority, it was largely his fault. And well beyond the many instances that I was dragged under the scrutiny of the higher-ups, he caused his own trouble, or dragged others into some form of it. Theft. Vandalism. Breaking and entering. I could go on and on with entertaining anecdotes, but the main point is quite simple–despite being graced with abnormally high intelligence, Blake was very much a "bad seed." If he wasn’t supposed to have it, he wanted it…and if he wanted something, he would get it, by any means necessary, often at a high cost. This carnal impulse to perpetually want what he could get, but wasn’t supposed to have, was a seed that found root in my mind as well.

By the time he turned twenty one he had an old fashioned gangster empire built on the foundation of cocaine trafficking, and the inevitable was only a matter of time. He was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, disowned by his family, and just this last year suffered the news that his father had passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack.

He now spends his days reading Shakespeare and Hemmingway, biding his time in Kinross..