When I was in eleventh grade, the boy who sat next to me in jazz band killed himself one day after school. His mother had recently remarried, and he was rumored to be unhappy about it.

I didn�t really know him. He played tenor sax, I played baritone sax and we rarely spoke. This didn�t prevent me from going to his funeral, since any reason to skip school was good enough for me. The entire band went, and I managed to find a black skirt and blouse. His death effected my sister Alice more than me. She had a crush on that boy. I can�t even remember his name.

For me, the most memorable thing about his death was a conversation that happened about a week later, when some of my friends came to visit me while I was working at Subway. One of the girls told me in hushed tones that she had seen his family at the video store. �They were laughing and having a good time, like nothing had ever happened.� We were shocked. In our imaginations a great family tragedy like that was something that tore you up and hollowed you out for the rest of your life. How can there be any recovery when someone you love is dead?

I�m a little more mature these days, and I wasn�t surprised that we had a lot of laughs the week after Andrew died. Hell, just reminiscing about him is enough to give us all the giggles.

Our brother was a very different sort of a teenager. He was cool and self-confident and he had a lot of style. Pimp style. He was very into hats � from rainbow ski caps to purple velvet mushroom hats, and the occasional beret or fedora. For a couple of years his favorite coat was this yellowish, faux-fur, knee-length atrocity. It looked like he had skinned a dozen Benjis to wear to school. He grew his hair long, and then he decided to try dreadlocks. He had the same fine, straight hair as me and in order to achieve dreads he smeared a lot of nasty shit in there on a daily basis: wax, peanut butter, all kinds of weird sticky stuff. He would rinse it in the shower, but refused to use soap or a comb. It was very interesting.

Drove Mom totally nuts, of course. She was almost relieved when he was arrested for possession of a stolen gun and she was able to convince him to get all his hair cut off for his court appearance.

Mom wrote the judge letter after letter and called his office every day, explaining that Andrew found the gun behind a dumpster, he didn�t know it was stolen, he was just a naive kid who wanted to be cool for his friends, and he had never been in trouble before. The judge let him off with probation. He did get expelled from Niceville High School, though. They�re kind of uptight about gun possession at NHS. Mom started driving him out to Choctaw High in the mornings, about an hour out of her way. If I didn�t have to work I would pick him up in the afternoon. Some nights he stayed at our Stepmom�s house so he could ride the bus with Matthew and Nathan.

Andrew�s girlfriend, who was with him from junior high until a few years after they graduated, with a few breaks, was a drug dealer. Her main product was acid, but she got ahold of some cocaine once and gave a little to Andrew. He didn�t snort it, just showed it around to impress the kids on the bus, and he was expelled from Choctaw High School.

My Mom loves to tell the story of how he nearly got kicked out of the GED course for juvenile delinquents. He was telling the other kids about his penis piercing and they didn�t believe him. The girls kept saying �nuh uh, show it to us!�. So he did. He was hauled off to HRS and Mom had to leave work to meet with an agent and discuss the situation. She and Andrew were taken to a little office in the middle of a bunch of cubicles and the HRS woman lectured them on all the trouble he could have gotten in by sexually harassing those girls. �I guess I didn�t look mad enough� Mom says, �because she started glaring at me while she explained that they could have him thrown in jail. I figured I had better show her some outrage, so I turned to him and yelled �YOUR PENIS IS NOT A TOY! YOU DON'T JUST WHIP IT OUT AND SHOW IT TO PEOPLE!�" When they walked out an hour later past all the cubicles, people kept popping up to stare at them and Mom couldn�t figure out why until Andrew reminded her back in the car. Thank goodness he kept a straight face while they were in the office.

All week long people were marveling at how strong my mother was. She was more cheery every day. At one point she said �You know, I�m glad that he got in so much trouble. He did everything he wanted to and really lived. And he wasn�t meant to be around long enough to suffer the consequences.�

I don�t know that his arrest record would have really hampered his future in a significant way. He never did anything really terrible. The gun and drug possession were both while he was under age. His only arrests after he turned 18 were for trespassing on a construction site to climb a crane, and a couple of arrests for possession of drug paraphernalia. The cops were constantly pulling his girlfriend over and searching her car and though she was never dumb enough to have stuff with her, Andrew carried a pipe in his pocket a lot of the time. He was an incurable optimist. No matter how many times he got caught, he never thought it would happen again.

These days they�re talking about arresting people who surf during a hurricane or other red-flag weather, so I�m sure Andrew could have racked up a little more time in the back seat of a cruiser. That�s the only time for decent surf on the Gulf, according to my brother.