Lithium Mike  #147
March 8, 2003

We called him Lithium Mike.  There were and will always be lots of Mikes; Hat mike, Beard Mike, Military Mike etc.  But Lithium was my friend that sat down at the end of the bar and drank expensive imported beer out of a glass.  He had a sandy blonde naturally curly mullet and thick glasses worn Elvis style.  We used to play cricket and he’d have a few ales and I would have a few rumples and before the night got too late we would escape back to his parent’s house, where we used to hang out in his garage and he would entertain me with homemade bongs made from individual size OJ bottles.   

His garage was set back away from the house.  We used to close the garage door for privacy, and he would always have a tape that he wanted me to hear on this tiny dirty cracked plastic boom box.  The garage smelled of oil and cardboard boxes filled with Christmas decorations.  If you breathed in really deep you felt like you were sniffing mittens at the end of winter; the lingering smells of sweat and steel and evaporated snow.

I don’t remember much about the evenings spent with lithium Mike, except for the half dozen parking tickets I used to get leaving my car out on the street after two a.m.   One of the last things I remember hearing about lithium Mike was that he was going to go on singles cruise.   I never really understood this, still don’t.  It just seemed so odd to me, like maybe I didn’t know lithium Mike at all.