When I moved to Washington, PA, at age 13, I arrived pre-hated, as the boys and youths in the area had heard tell of my father, in advance, hunting up a boxing coach for me. That would be Reds Foley at the local YMCA. I had never boxed other than with a bag.
One morning, on the first day of school, my brother was friendly with other kids at the bus stop, which was the driveway of a big house at the bottom of the hill on Locust Avenue at Moger Drive.
I was at the cusp of manhood, 5’ 8” 143 pounds and could clean and jerk 155 pounds. This much bigger kid, 5’ 10” 180 pounds, a kind-faced redhead, walked up to me as I stood aloof, “So you’re the new guy, the boxer.”
I shrugged my shoulders and/or grunted.
“You know they hate you already.”
Having already had to fight one the night before as the older boss youths looked on, and realizing I was in line to fight the 17-year-old varsity football player, I warmed up and grunted more meaningfully.
The kid said, as he traced a C on the asphalt with the toe of his sneaker the cold March morning, “That’s okay. They hate me too—don’t even talk to me, and this is my driveway.”
I looked at the woods, where I had already run a lap on the local kids’ motorcycle trails that morning at dawn, “You have a dirt bike?”
“No, man. My step dad hates me.”
“After school, I’m going to rip up the bank turns and go to war with them—we can hunt them in the woods. I’ll make a spear…”
Eventually, after the Moger Drive Brat/Punk Treaty, we would all be friends, that is, until each by turns gained a girlfriend or an addiction and was taken from the bachelor pack into the sloe-eyed herd. As an adult, Rick was the only one I kept in contact with. Rather, he renewed contact about once every ten years, me being the less human of the two.
In July 2018, on my way west, I met with Guru Rick. The Brickmouse had commented on my big gut, and expressed a fear that I might die while sparring with him one day, especially since I didn’t seem to get tired. He suggested a fast on the train. I had not eaten anything for a day and a half when I stopped in Pittsburgh to visit Rick, where he was regrouping after his arrest by the DEA for running a LEGAL Nevada grow.
He had this terrible pet, a parrot that perched on his shoulder, clinging to the shoulder strap of his wife-beater. On the way to the pet supply store, he was smoking a blunt from the driver’s seat of his land rover, which had no floor so he could drop his smoke while being pulled over by the pigs. I looked up at him, “Rick, you look great—you’re still ripped. Congrats.”
He looked down at me, and at my gut, and said, in his deep voice, “I never figured you for an eater.”
“Well, two years ago I was only 185, but tore my hip…”
“Bro, I love you. You don’t have to make any excuses for me. Besides, our decadent civilization selects for your DAD body type.”
“You’re killing me bro! Just tell me what not to eat.”
“It will be easier to tell you what to eat. It’s only fourteen things.”
Within 3 months I went from 231 to 174.
I since went down as far as 139, and have been walking around mostly in the 160s.
But since Rick passed the week after his 62nd birthday in August 2025, I have lost my discipline. I had arrogantly thought I was using my will to enforce Rick’s dietary guidelines. But since his passing, I have been walking around closer to 180 than to 160. I have a gut that wants to grow. Rick does show up in my dreams, sitting in his mother’s plush scallop chair, in a red bathrobe, his black leather and red flame biker boots propped up on her little felt ottomon, his arms crossed, looking across the dream space at me, shaking his head.
Rick’s approval/disapproval meant that much to me.
I need some strength, which has waned again since I am no longer allowed to fight by Sean and the other men, who have grown sick of beating me down. Bereft of physical purpose, every woman in my life tells me, “You look great,” at 178, and shake their heads at the declaration that I need to lose ten or twenty pounds, “Oh no—you’d look emaciated…”
“Rick, save me!”
I have taken a radical measure. Not having adopted the supplication posture of smartphone use affected by most as they worship at the social media altar, I might have a shrine like use for this device. Mister Gray was kind enough to send me some pictures of Rick I took with the old flip phone and sent to him. This morning, as the Brickmouse, looks at me and says, “I’d say you have a 26.5 BMI—not bad for an AMERICAN,” I will ask him to take Rick’ place, and ask his darling tech Queen to place Rick’s likeness as my screen saver. In that way, every time I eat, I can place Rick upright to look upon me and indict. If she could print, “EATER!” on the screen saver, maybe that will set me on the svelt and narrow.
-8:14 AM
Ghost Girl One did as I asked, with a picture of Rick, shirtless at 61, mounting his Harley on his drive to chemotherapy, which he let no one transport him to. The time shores up over his face. EATER! Shows up in red in five places around his image, making a fitting shrine for my altar of the metabolic stoic.
-3:41 PM
Good Bless Guru Rick. He cared more about us than we usually do about ourselves.
