Zack Knight

this is Zack crossing Broadway at 112th street in 1986. he always made a big entrance.

One of my best friends from childhood died a few years ago of an asthma attack. He was with his parents at the time. They lived in a part of the Bronx where ambulance tend to take WAY too long to arrive, something that is inexcusable and yet sadly, horribly, familiar and common. I didn't hear about it until months later because I was in California at the time and I guess nobody remembered how close i was to him. the fact that I was a elementary school friend must have made my name slip through the cracks when the word of his death went out. I didn't know about it until well after the funeral.

Well, the news was devastating to me when I finally did get it, especially considering how old we were when it happened. I hadn't seen or spoken to him in a few months but I knew he and I were both in the middle of the biggest decision making phase of our lives. Everybody goes through it at one point or another, when it's time to decide what path to take after school. He was promoting some pretty big parties at the time and I was a bike messenger. We were both having fun, but we were clearly going to do much bigger things and hadn't yet figured out which way to go yet. We were in our twenties, when I was the most confused about what direction to go in. Our time-lines had certain parallels since childhood, this particularly confusing period being yet another one of them. Up to that point, it had been so comforting just to know the amount of options before us, as if the sky were the limit. It was during this young phase, right after college, that Zack lost his life.

He was an extremely sharp person, having earned scholarships to all the finest schools, Bank Street School in Manhattan (where we were friends), Riverdale High School, and then he was a star at Harvard. So there can be no doubt that he would have gone as far as anybody could in life. He was, without a doubt, a guaranteed success no matter what he did. I saw him sporadically through High School and College but always heard that he was the big man on campus no matter where he was. that was Zack. A man with only one single flaw. Asthma.

When we were kids, he and I competed to see who could kiss the most girls in our grade. We always hung out after school and went to the park to play basketball. I rarely tried to cover him in defense because at that age he could have flicked me away with one finger. But besides out sizing me two to one, he was a great friend and confidant. I remember sharing my first Beer (besides the ones i used to sip on with my Dad) in Riverside Park when we were 12. Back then a 12 year old had no problem just buying one at the deli. I remember listening to LL Cool J's first album on a boombox on our way to a school dance at a community center uptown. We were both reveling in the life ahead of us and we both knew how much we could achieve. We used to speak of how much fun it would be to grow up and do more then just kiss girls. We used to trade stories of our young conquests. As far as i was concerned, he and i were brothers.

So hearing that he died was like hearing that a close family member had fallen. It was as if a part of me died. I know that sounds cliche' but it was really how i felt, standing there, wide eyed, looking at the person who just informed me about him as if THEY had caused it. This multitude of coming-of-age memories that we shared, are now mine and mine alone. He's no longer here to remember them with me. The shining image that we both had about how we were going to share stories together when we were old are gone. There are a lot of people who i was friends with, or knew pretty well that have died in the prime of life. Some in horrible events. I know a guy who got into drug dealing and was shot in the back of the head execution style on the roof of a building, Eko R.I.P. I know another person who drowned in a lake at night after a party we were at in Wisconsin, and another who disappeared under shady circumstances, and yet another who was killed by a hit and run crossing Sunset Boulevard, Lorca R.I.P. I could go on.

But none of these shocks were as large as the loss of Zack. He was murdered by this fucked up system, and the system could only have benefited from by adequately protecting his life. One of our finest individuals died of a childhood affliction, one that shouldn't have been able to strangle him to death in this day and age. I never got to say these things because I wasn't at his funeral to tell his family how he touched my life. So I say this now. R.I.P. Zack Knight. I hope we get to play ball to LL Cool J again someday.