Jim Carroll: People Who Died

The Jim Carroll Band's frenzied song "People Who Died" always reminds me, probably as intended, of all the people who've fallen, and obelisks have not always marked the place. Crafton was a guy I first met in grade school. An awkward-looking kid with thick glasses and a crazy shock of black hair, he sported black whiskers by the time he was twelve. Crafton was smart, but completely wild. He liked to steal things and cause trouble. He was always playing pranks or trying to start riots at Northgate Mall. He was thrown out of the Watts Street school and several others for disorderly conduct and scheming.

I met up with him again in high school. We laughably joined the soccer and football squads. He looked so old for his age, he could buy beer for me and the rest of our gang whenever we wanted. He wrote stories about Jesus and Barabbas and intended on being a great writer. Toward the end of high school, he managed to get exchanged to Sweden for a year. When he got back, he somehow graduated and made his way into the University of Pennsylvania.

Last time I saw Crafton in Durham, he rambled on about various drugs he'd been experimenting with. On acid and mushrooms, he said, he could see Led Zeppelin emerge from walls. Cloud formations invited him to fly. He sounded totally crazy, but enthusiastic.

Crafton never made it to twenty. The story was that he'd locked his keys in his dorm and decided to climb out of a next-door balcony to get back in, had slipped and fallen headfirst on the hard surface of a Penn quad. He didn't die right away; in fact, he was transferred back to North Carolina and kept on life support for weeks. Brain dead, his family decided to pull the plug. His body lingered a bit, but he died shortly before his birthday.

I remember in high school, endlessly talking with Crafton and the gang about bands like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, and about books like Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries and Alice Childress' A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Sandwich. We'd play billiards in his parents' basement or "go on patrol," meaning walk around Durham pretending to be on a mission. One time, he and I rode our bikes across the city on a night so dark that we both crashed into a telephone pole, one after the other. We got up, shook ourselves off, and kept right on going.


Today's rune: Fertility.