2004-11-12 - 5:11 a.m.
GO-JUNKIE. That�s my phone number. Okay, technically that�s one character too long. You can leave off the last �E� for E, or something. I didn�t request it. But when I first got a cell phone before I started back at college, I noticed the number had no 1s or 0s and wondered what I could spell. I-N-L-V-� No. G-O-L-U-M� hmm. Oh. G-O-J-U-N-K-I. Someone recently pointed out that a �Go junkie� could be someone addicted to the Japanese boardgame. But, having received the number before starting school again, I think of it as a tribute to Josh.
I never knew Josh, never even met him. He was a friend of my sister, an older-than-usual-age student in Columbia College�s General Studies program. When I first started considering going back to school, my sister brought up her friend in GS. She noted that there are many people who�ve started down other paths, bloomed later, or reinvented their lives. If I felt there were now things I wanted to learn about in college, there were lots of others who�d taken that route.
Josh was apparently a bright young man gone awry. Really, it seems like he spiraled downwards into a haze of drugs and destitution. I don�t understand the specifics; it�s not really my business and it�s not the point. But one day he woke up in the sand on a beach and had a profound realization: �Hey, wait a minute. I�m a junkie!�
With this understanding, he set out to rediscover the smart kid he�d been. A self he�d always been, but had been occluded recently by strung-out beach-sleeping. He cleaned himself up. He got off junk. He went to community college. He did well in his classes. He applied to Columbia. He graduated in 2001. He got a great job trading bonds at Cantor & Fitzgerald. You may recall them as a firm based in the upper floors of the World Trade Center. Josh is no longer with us.
So. If you get it in the end, what did everything you did before mean? What if you set yourself straight and do the right thing, but some nitwit drops a plane on your head? Or what if, by analogy, your immune system scrambles your own neurons for some reason? Does it matter how you�ve lived?
You�re goddamn right it does.
Go, junkie.
� 2004 Geoff Gladstone
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