If there’s a brotherly love that can happen between men, I felt it most for my old Cajun friend Myki. And I think about him every Fat Tuesday when the Mardi Gras music starts, and wonder what he’s up to. The fact we fell apart doesn’t matter much. He moved back to Louisiana and stopped returning my calls. Another friend said he left town under bad circumstances but I don’t want to know that story, I’ll keep to mine.

Myki was a cellist studying classical composition at a school in Pittsburgh. We met in the cafe where I worked on Carson street, where he’d sit by himself at a table by the window smoking. He was clearly from somewhere else with his long hair and scarves, the hooped earrings, and trench coat. And he cultivated that mystique, with the Louisiana accent I think he sometimes embellished. We were all just trying to figure things out. And it was hard for Myki, the music part, because he knew what an audacious thing it was to compose, and he grappled with it when he told others what he did. For him to say I’m a composer was as hard as it was for me to say I’m a poet. The words didn’t sound right, though we both wanted them to.

In this way Myki and I became brothers in our own wild pursuits. We grew up together, though in a sense we were already fully grown. Myki had a professor named Carl who owned a rental property and offered a room to Myki. There was another unit off to the side facing the street, and Myki offered that one to me.

Carl would come by once a month to pick up the rent and fiddle in the garage and when he did the place would smell like weed but Carl was an old hepcat himself, often loaning me poetry collections or talking classical music with Myki.

It was winter in Pittsburgh, a cold one, and Myki and I would trade stories about walking to and from work or campus since neither of us had a car and the buses never went where we wanted them to. Myki made a show of shaking off his trench coat in the hallway, often claiming his scarf had frozen to his goatee. And we would warm up in my place or his, on the floor by the gas heater, sharing a drink.

Myki being Cajun, he was a big fan of canned fish, beans and rice. Neither of us had any money to speak of. Sometimes we’d split a bag of weed or a bottle of vodka, as I learned you could get a large one for under ten bucks.

And so we got drunk and Myki cooked dinner, and offered me his hand-rolled cigarettes. This is the way it was the first night he got out his cassettes and put on The Slider by T. Rex, and said it was one of his favorites.

Later that year I got a place with my girlfriend Shana and moved up the hill to the south side slopes. Not long afterwards we moved to Seattle. Shana and I called it quits in November and on our last Saturday night together, looking out the window from a bar in Seattle’s university district, we saw Myki walk by. We’d lost touch with him and had no idea what he was doing there. It was a joyful scene, to be back together after a couple years apart—but bittersweet too, as Shana and I were splitting up.

Just like that Myki and I were best friends again, both of us single, trying to find a mate. Myki had moved out to Seattle on a whim, was living in some shady artist commune by Boeing field, a small airport. It was loud. He was working odd jobs as a carpenter, shooting pool at a bar called The Zoo, drinking more. He’d cut his hair and looked younger. Wasn’t writing music or playing cello. Looked sad and far away when I asked about it.

After some time Myki saved enough money to buy some shit car he nicknamed Goat, a little hatch back just big enough to fit his chop saw and tools. Myki helped me more than once (like a half dozen times) move from one place to another, happily giving up his weekend, saying we’ll just load up the Goat.

Not long after Myki and I first met in Pittsburgh, my mom remarried and held a small ceremony at her house one September. Myki and Shana came with me, Shana drove, and Myki played cello after the wedding. My mom’s new husband John was a musician too and had played during the ‘60s folk scene in London, with countless stories about other musicians and artists from that time.

Myki let John know he was a T. Rex fan and John told Myki about the letters he’d once gotten from Marc Bolan, how John wished he’d saved them because they’d be worth a lot of money now, how Bolan was so fragile and full of self-doubt, which didn’t square with how confident he sounded on his records. Myki seemed mesmerized by the thought this rock icon may have wrestled with his own demons too. I think it gave him hope he could overcome his.

But the more I knew Myki, the more I watched his dream of writing music recede. We both felt it, and I struggled to hold on to my dreams, too. It’s not just Mardi Gras that reminds me of him and our time together, it’s anytime T. Rex comes on. I’m transported back to that little Pittsburgh rental, the sound of the gas heater, that wooden floor. And the look of Myki with his hair tied back and his eyes closed, nodding in tune.

It’s funny, but on that T. Rex album cover there’s a hazy shot of Marc Bolan with his top hat and curly hair, looking a bit like Myki with the same dark, solemn eyes. And you have to wonder by the way he’s looking if he was grappling with self-doubt or kind of owning it. Like Myki’s story there are many versions you could believe. I think he owned it.

Categories: identity, Memoir, writing

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, identity, Music