The Ships Friends Build

The year was 1996. Fred was staring up at the ceiling in his room at the Pennsylvania

Hospital, trying to figure out how he ended up in a mental ward. Stress from college, financial frustration, and another missed opportunity at love; all of these things contributed to a mental overload, which led to Fred running into his neighbor’s home, cursing and shouting.

It was not that Fred couldn’t get a woman, because he was liked by enough women. It was just that he wanted to love a special type of woman, one who for one reason or another didn’t see Fred as the ideal mate. His problem was after his first marriage failed, he, like many people in this situation find themselves, was waylaid and unable to function, or afraid to emotionally. He had traded his dreams for a wife. It seemed like a fair trade at the time, but when you put your total happiness in the hands of another human, this is an unfair burden for anyone to carry, which Fred soon learned.

So now he was in a race against time, trying to catch his dreams like a dark horse at Belmont. Because of a hotel restructuring, his job was cut from full time to part time. So rather than hit the job market again, he decided to try and get some more skills. So he enrolled in the Temple University adult college program and continued to work part-time at the hotel. For the first three years, he was getting along fine, but in his last year, the classes were getting harder and he needed more time to study, so he quit his hotel job. He worked out a deal with his landlord to work his rent off as a property maintenance man. However, the odd jobs that he would do to keep him afloat were coming slower now. His gas had gotten cut off and now he was taking cold showers and cooking with a hot plate. His phone was about to be cut off and Spanish II seemed like an impossible class to pass. So now here he was in his thirties, going to college on a financial tightrope, angry at himself about the time he wasted and hoping that when he is finished, all his good years won’t be gone. He was determined to prove to himself and others his value as a man. Then maybe he could love the woman of his dreams. Fred didn’t know that love was a game like life is a game. You have to learn the rules fast and play it well if you expect to win. But if Fred didn’t know, who would teach him?

            So on that day when his mind jumped ship, Fred’s subconscious took over and took him to one of the sources of his complex emotional and metal quandary. He ran into Billy’s house.

            Fred had been a friend of Billy’s for about five years. Billy had also had a nervous breakdown. However, when Fred came running up his stairs, cursing and shouting, Billy’s first instinct was to defend his house. So Billy beat Fred down and was choking him to death. Thank God, Billy’s oldest daughter came in the room shouting and crying, which distracted Billy for a minute. (Otherwise there was a really good chance Fred might have been DOA.) Fred then managed to bite Billy’s arm. He relaxed his grip just enough so Fred could breathe. Billy spoke to this intruder, dressed like his friend, who attacked him. “What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? Do you think I’m going to let you just run up in my house and fight me? Karen! Karen! Call the police.”

When the police arrived, Billy still had Fred pinned down on the bedroom floor. There were three officers, two men and one woman. The first officer asked Fred why he ran into Billy’s house and attacked him. Fred’s answer was that in the black community, one way to find a person’s true feelings about you is to make them angry; because when they are angry, they will not fear hurting you, so their true feelings will surface. If they love you, they will treat you with love, even when they are angry. If the real love is not there, or if they really don’t care that much about you, they will try to choke you to death and call the police on you. “Friends are important; they shape who you are and who you will become. I didn’t want to waste my precious lifetime with a pseudo-friend. I had to make sure my brother was a real friend.”

After hearing Fred’s answer, the officer quickly made the decision to send Fred to the mental hospital. The officers were putting Fred in the police wagon, and he continued to talk like he was teaching, as opposed to explaining himself. One of the female officers playfully mocked Fred’s speech, imitating Malcolm X from the movie X. “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.”

            Friendship was very important to Fred; it was not something he took lightly. How to be a real friend to him was synonymous with how to be a good man. To him, friendship was one of the building blocks of character.

            Billy had a daughter who was in her early twenties. She was tall and very athletic. Beautiful was all Fred could think when he first saw her run. He tried over and over again to view her as a little sister, because he was friends with her father and considered Karen off-limits. He felt it would be a betrayal of their friendship, but no matter what he thought, he continued to find himself attracted to her. Billy might have noticed the way Fred looked at his daughter, but suspected nothing. After all, what would he want with Daddy’s little baby? However, Fred never let Karen know how he felt. He was careful not to let his feelings show. Night after night, he would repeat to himself that another love would come along, but when your heart is preoccupied, a new love can’t get in.

Then, two weeks ago, Fred got the news. He was working on a group accounting project with his study group from Temple. They had to play a game of Monopoly and record all of the business transactions in a journal and prepare all of the necessary financial statements. The phone rang, and it was David on the other end. He was a member of Fred’s running club,