If You Can Count Your Friends On One Hand...

A story of true friendship

The first time Gina made out with me, her boyfriend Tony was waiting for us in his car in the parking lot. He drove us to Time Square Stores in Sayville, NY to buy a new album. I think a more well-adjusted kid from a better home might’ve seen this behavior for what it was, but as one who struggled intensely with self-esteem, I loved every minute of it. I was 15 and Tony was 20, so it made me feel important. 

I always saw social situations as mathematical certainties. “If he’s 20 and has a car and she’s cheating on him with me, I’m cooler than a 20 year old with a car.”

Needless to say, I had a lot left to learn.

When Gina and I would talk on the telephone late into the night, she always used to tell me about her older brother and biggest hero, Sean. She said he was in the Marine Corps Band and beat out hundreds of other guys to get there. She told me he was an eccentric genius and was sure we’d become the best of friends. After hundreds of these conversations, I couldn’t wait to meet him.

I had my chance when he came home on leave the next year. I will never forget the moment I first laid eyes on him. He was in Gina’s apartment by himself recording a new original composition into a four track Fostex, his jarhead haircut grown in about two weeks, a white Marlboro Light 100 dangling from his mouth, and an ashtray of spent ones overflowing on the coffee table. He sat with rapt concentration as he waited for the punch in spot and when it came he stomped on the record foot switch and proceeded to play note for note over one of the fastest guitar solos I ever heard—one solo a step and a half higher than the other. It sounded mad and diabolical and utterly juxtaposed to the mischievous smile he was wearing as he listened to the playback. 

It was right then I decided he needed to be a lifelong friend. 

And so it came to pass. Within a month of Sean’s honorable discharge, he took me to Village Music so I could buy my own four track recorder. He helped me record my first songs. He got me an Octave pedal to record bass tracks with my guitar and  a reverb that made the drums on my Casio keyboard sound monstrous.

After work, I’d go pick him up and we’d drive to Sound Beach and play our new songs for each other on his massive boombox. As the waves crashed off in the dark distance, we’d walk and talk about what made us write what we wrote, how we liked each other’s songs and ideas for the future. The one thing about Sean that was unlike any other person I had ever met, was the fact that he did not critique my creative output against his super advanced acumen. He would tell me almost everyday that I possessed a genius quality that was unique and didn’t rely on technique or study. “You are tapped into your emotions so completely–that’s not easy for a lot of people,” he assured me.

It’d be difficult to explain how badly, at that point in my life, I needed a champion like Sean. My parents, like a lot of the baby boomer generation, seemed to be earnestly invested in making sure I never felt too good about myself. It was as if they were convinced that that would get me to try harder or something. It didn’t. What it did do, obviously, was make me a depressed kid that left home as soon as the opportunity arose, never to come back again. But I digress.

One night, when I was 17, I drove over to see Sean and it turned out he was working a double shift. Gina invited me in. At that point, she and Tony were no longer together. After getting me a coke, she started making out with me. I was getting mad excited just like any other 17 year old would. Before I knew it, she took my pants down and tried to put me inside her. 

This was the moment I had daydreamed about all day since I was ten. Losing my virginity. But I panicked. Nothing was working. We tried for 45 minutes–but it may as well have been 12 years.   Anyway, I wound up going home and before I even got a mile down the road, everything started working perfectly again. I vowed to myself that I’d go back the next day and prove myself as a man. 

All day long at work, I ran the movie in my head of me and Gina having the greatest sex and how it would feel to not be a virgin anymore. I raced over at 6 o’clock and knocked on the door. What I experienced in the next three minutes was nothing short of life-changing. 

This 22 year old guy answered the door, hair messed up, no shirt on.

“Who you looking for?”

I could hear Gina call out from the bedroom, “Who is it, Vinny?”

I drove home unsuccessfully fighting off the realization of every boy’s worst nightmare: that I wasn’t man enough to satisfy her. That she went and found someone else who could. The movie played incessantly. That day. The next. And the next.

A few days later, Sean showed up at my front door with his boombox.

“Let’s go to the beach.”

I told him I really didn’t want to. He insisted. I held my ground. He responded by getting really funny and silly. I couldn’t help but laugh. We got to the beach and he opened the car door. I just sat in the seat staring out the windshield. Sean put the boombox down and opened my door. He pulled me out and put me in a fireman’s carry. He walked probably a half mile down the beach holding onto me like that. The waves crashed and tears ran down my cheeks. Not a single word was said. It didn’t have to be. He was telling me that no matter what life did to me, he'd always be by my side and if I couldn’t even walk anymore, he'd carry me.

It was the first time in my life I felt so loved by another person. And when that comes from your hero, the guy you look up to more than any other person in the world, the feeling is indescribable.

We are still friends today.

And yes, a couple months later, I finally lost my virginity.