Mumbles

We are separated by life and death...i can feel you pressed up against my reality...I see you and I hear you...I feel protected...I may cry but it is still funny to me...frustrated you are so close...I know your waiting...keep calling my name...I will find you...you are never lost...

My best friend Michael Cox also known as Mumbles was the closest person to me. We hung out everyday when we were in our twenties.

We girl chased from Atlantic City to Studio 54. I owned bars and a club in Philadelphia and I was secretly going to Parsons and FIT and eventually Germaine school of Photography. I used Mike for allot of my assignments, he reluctantly obliged.

He had a rough life, his father died when he was young, his brother was one of the first in our neighborhood to die of AIDES.

Mike was a raging alcoholic and the funniest person I ever met and he treated me like gold and had my back. He had a girlfriend who was afflicted with the same drinking problem.

One night while standing on a corner waiting for the bus, they argued, the bus was coming and she spitefully stepped in front of the bus, dying in Mikes arms.

Every night when he finely would get drunk he would re-live the horror of that night crying, arguing and eventually mumbling to himself until he would black out and sleep it off.

Not long After Mike died in a house fire from leaving food in the oven after passing out drunk.