The Death of Adam Ford

This is the story of two boys. One boy was from snow-covered Vermont. The other boy was from sun-drenched California. The boy from Vermont was born on a shining day and the California boy was born during a night-time thunderstorm. They met in Detroit, Michigan when they were both teenagers.

The boys were all each other had. They were perpetually in need of something new, so they came up with their own ideas: campfire-esque stories, cheap thrills, masculine adventures, and girly dances. The best idea they ever came up with started by climbing their favorite tree and jumping from the highest branch and ended with the Vermont boy breaking his leg. They did everything together. They shared a favorite hobby, writing poems. They liked to call their poems “creations,” like they were gods up above. They could write a deep, brooding poem darker than night:

“The Man had dreams of fortune, but now they are shattered like a sharp rock through glass. When He sleeps and shuts his heavy eyes, He sees black. Not a calm, smooth black, but a hateful black. A black that rapes and kills, maims and tortures. A black that strikes at his callused soul. This black is cold and uncaring, no different than a winter storm chafing his sunken face. The Man knows this black will never abandon his crestfallen spirit.”

And they could write a Valentine’s Day love poem brighter than the sun:

“This wouldn't be a Valentine poem without a question,

But first, may I give you a small suggestion?

I suggest that if you say yes, I'll never recover

From the joy and happiness brought on by you, my lover.

Will you be my Valentine?”

They were never anyone’s Valentine, but it didn’t bother them. People didn’t understand the boys and the boys didn’t understand people. People would sometimes say things like “God hates fags” or “Get a room, queer.” Oh, how they wanted to understand why others would bother them about being different, but those feelings quickly faded as they expanded their horizons together.

They loved each other. The chemistry between them was intense; they didn’t have to tell each other awkward affirmations like “Hey, man, I care about you. You know that, right?” That would be too weird for their tastes. They knew the air was electric between them so they didn’t have to pretend it wasn’t there. They knew their emotions.

Their hopes inspired one another and they took strides to achieve them together. The California boy’s favorite quote was from the epic poem Beowulf: “Fame comes to the men who mean to win it and care about nothing else.” The fame they were after was fame in their minds, not anyone else’s. And they did care about other things in their quest to attain fame. They cared about family, it just wasn’t a priority, which leads to another of the California boy’s favorite quotes, this one by his Romantic-era hero, Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write ‘Whim’ on the lintels of the doorpost. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.” They would drop everything if it meant getting together and having a good time. Sometimes a good time meant going to the local punk hangout where they’d listen to new bands and shout at the drummer for no legitimate reason. Other times it meant going to the park, lying down on the gentle hill near the fountain, and sleeping or talking or saying how cool one another was.

The boys grew up but stayed in the same city, always in contact. The California boy was low on money and couldn’t afford to pay the month’s rent, so the boy from Vermont invited him to live in his paltry one-bedroom apartment.

“Are you serious?” the California boy asked.

“Yeah, I’m serious. Come live with me and we can be awesome all the time,” the boy from Vermont replied.

“You’re the coolest, thank you.”

“No, you’re the coolest.”

“No, you are.”

“No, you are.”

They were two very cool friends.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The boys lived together in happiness. They shared food from the refrigerator, imitated end zone dances while watching Monday Night Football, and recreated the “Say hello to my little friend!” scene from Scarface using squirt guns and ketchup.

One night the boy from California said, “Let’s go get some food.”

The Vermont boy, knowing full well he didn’t have any plans, said, “Wait, I might be busy, I’m going to check my to-do list. Okay, no plans, let’s go.”

The boy from California looked at him, flashed a grin and said, “Too cool.”

The boys walked three miles to McDonald’s and ordered two burgers and two colas. They ordered from the Dollar Menu, of course. They ate as they walked home, absorbing the sounds of the highway next to them and squinting against the cars’ passing lights. The night-time sky growled and threatened to rain but they welcomed any weather, as always.

When they got back home, two men jumped out from behind a fence, put guns in the boys’ faces and ordered them to unlock the house door. The boy from Vermont fumbled with the keys as one of the men pressed the gun into his ribs. He unlocked the door and the boys were forced inside at gunpoint.

A man waved his gun and said, “Get on your fucking knees, this is a robbery.” Both boys dropped down to their knees with their hands raised above their heads. One of the men searched around the room while the other had his gun muzzle pushed into the soft spot in the back of the California boy’s head.

The boys quickly glanced at each other and, not wanting to glance for too long, looked away. The boy from Vermont thought of what his options were and how he could make it through. He knew he had less than sixty seconds to live before they were shot execution-style, but for the moment there was no gun pointed at him and he thought, “Maybe we can give them some money or the television or the” BANG! A gunshot went off.

The two gunmen ran out the front door and the Vermont boy ran out the back door after he swiftly looked back at where his friend was. The boy from California lay on the floor in a gory heap. He didn’t die like someone in a movie; he was shot in the head and it exploded and he crumpled to the ground. No witty one-liner and heroic struggle for life, just a boy on the ground in an expanding pool of blood.

The boy from Vermont ran to a payphone, dialed 911 and said, “I live at 187 Peace Park in Detroit, Michigan. My friend’s been shot, please help me.” He ran back to the house and paced back and forth in the front yard, not wanting to go in.

Three minutes later a police car screamed down the street and a cop jumped out and yelled, “Get on the fucking ground!”

The Vermont boy dropped to the ground like he did a few minutes earlier when the gunmen commanded him to. The cop put him in handcuffs and sat him on the street curb. A few other cops pulled up and he heard them make fag jokes. An investigator asked him what his boyfriend’s name was and he said, “My boyfriend? No, my friend’s name is Adam Ford. Two men shot him and I want to know if he’s all right.”

The investigator walked away without answering the boy’s question so he asked another cop how his friend was. The investigator said, “Oh, he’s dead.” They took him to the police station for further questioning and he was released after an hour.

He took a taxi ride to the park and slept on the gentle hill near the fountain as a night-time thunderstorm raged down on him.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The past three months have been really hard. They’ve been rough and I’ve struggled my way through each day. Sometimes I think of suicide. Just end it all, get it over with. Then I think of life and what it means to be alive. Keep living the way I would as if it never happened. Keep improving and gaining a hold on life little by little each day. I choose life over death because I have nothing else. There’s no afterlife. I step on a bug and it dies. I shoot you in the head and you die. And there’s no coming back, that’s why there’s no time to inhale poisoned Marlboros or drink toxic Jack Daniel’s. There’s no time to get high or hang myself. There’s no time to believe in people who promote hate and train you to be an ignorant moron. There’s no time for any of that. As bad as life gets, life is awesome and living strong is the coolest thing I’ll ever do.