Lewis was one of those guys you couldn’t help but notice, the quintessential bad boy with an effortless charm that drew people in. He was tall, with blondish-brown hair that he religiously combed straight, a black plastic comb always tucked into the back pocket of his well-worn jeans. He never wore socks with his Vans, and his crooked smile—though never graced by braces—was oddly endearing.
He wasn’t violent, not by a long shot. His humor was sharp but kind, a survival tool we both used to mask the wreckage of our lives. While I leaned into the surfer-dude persona, always looking clean-cut and pulling in the “high-quality girls,” Lewis embraced his rebel image, effortlessly attracting the rest.
Our connection was rooted in humor, a shared bond that allowed us to laugh at the dysfunction around us. Lewis didn’t skate, but he was a master of hacky sack, the kind of guy who could turn the simplest pastime into an art form. I never knew much about his real mom; she was a shadow he rarely mentioned. But his stepmom? That’s a story for another time.
Before I got kicked out of my house, we made an odd pair—the good guy and the bad boy. My side of life demanded relationships and status; his promised fun and freedom.
The day Lewis started experimenting with coke was unforgettable. I watched as he leaned into the high too hard, throwing up midstream only to have it eject through his nostrils. It was equal parts horrifying and absurd. I slapped him around a bit to snap him out of it, cleaned him up, and got him home before his 9 p.m. curfew—a condition of his probation.
Our lives diverged when I moved in with my grandmother and enlisted in the Navy. For a while, Lewis faded into the background of my life, a memory from a different time. But later, I found him again in Downtown LA at Job Corps—a government program offering housing and trade training for people with nowhere else to turn. It wasn’t exactly prestigious, but it was where Lewis landed, and in some ways, where I did too.
Hanging out with Lewis again felt like stepping back into a time warp. We drank with the homeless, listening to their dark stories, the kind that linger long after the last bottle is drained. One night, we climbed to the top of a building, tossing empty bottles into the streets below, the shattering glass a kind of catharsis.
I couldn’t do drugs anymore—not with the Navy breathing down my neck—but I learned to drink, and I had the cash to keep us both going. I looked like a young cop with my military haircut, but Lewis was still Lewis. We were different, but somehow still the same.
The last time I saw Lewis, I was back in San Diego on leave. I brought as much alcohol as I could buy, and he and his crew indulged until the daylight blurred into drunken haze.
It was in a Hollywood alleyway where I saw him for the last time. Lewis was sprawled out, lying in his own vomit, completely out of commission. His friends and I decided to leave him there for a bit, thinking he’d regroup, and we’d come back for him. But when we returned, Lewis was gone.
I’ve tried to find him since then, but he’s remained a ghost, a flicker of memory that resurfaces in unexpected moments. The bad boy with the crooked smile, my closest friend in a chaotic world, vanished into the cracks of the city.
Somewhere out there, I imagine he’s still Lewis—comb in his back pocket, a joke on his lips, and a glimmer of defiance in his eyes. Or maybe that version of him is just a memory now, a piece of my past that I can never quite let go.
