Bad News Muse

This image was part of my old portfolio, the one I submitted to the School of Visual Arts in 1983. I was nominated for a four-year, full paid scholarship based in part on this work. However this photograph is difficult for me to look at.

I met Kelly in the ninth grade at Truman High School in the Bronx, I think we had a last period science class together and for a short while, he was also on the track team with me. Yep, my fat Jewish ass was once on a state championship high school track team.

Go ahead and laugh because I soon discovered drugs and cutting class and soon enough Kelly and I became reacquainted and after awhile, friends.

Kelly's life was difficult. He moved from to the Bronx from New Jersey where he had some serious run-ins with the law. He could easily turn violent despite his seemingly humble origins. And again, we were friends and I felt safe.

As I became more involved with photography Kelly would be my muse every once in awhile. He posed for the shot above at the Morris Park Avenue subway station in the Bronx. I remember quite clearly asking him to give me a "jail house look" for this picture. Who knew that would become reality?

Sometime after my own home life became a living hell I figured out how I could pay for college on my own. I started attending Bronx Community College in the Winter of 1984. On one hand it was one of the worst things I ever did in my life as the school was the wrong place for me and I stayed there for too long working the whole while. On the other hand, it might have saved my life.

In the first weeks of my first semester I would get off the bus along Jerome Avenue in the Bronx at about 183rd Street and each morning. I would pass drug dealers offering "road runner", "one", and "one and two". I never heard anything about the stuff and so I just ignored the dealers. Then by the springtime I heard "crack" and "one and two" and I began to understand but didn't think too much of it. I was going to school from 8:00 am until the late afternoon and working a full-time shift at a high-end film and print processing plant in midtown saving money in hopes of paying for the next semester and that month's rent.

Once my spring vacation rolled around I found that many of the people I used to smoke pot and drink beer with in the North Bronx were now smoking crack too. Things changed very quickly during my first semester of college and I don't doubt that if I hadn't gone to that horrible school, I too would have become a crackhead.

Kelly and I stopped hanging out altogether when I moved to another part of the Bronx. I only heard stories about him and others from then on.

Then came the bad news. Kelly murdered someone. He now serves a life sentence.

Going through my old photos I came across the one below. Behind Kelly and his girlfriend is the person he would later kill. (Seated in the center with his back to the camera).

Hard pictures to look at.