Somewhere along the way, as we progressed into conference, group and state meets, I made a friend from another school who was my rival in the 440 and mile relay. This was a long time ago now, and my memories must be suspect, and reshaped by decades of retelling my experience to others, but this is the story as I remember it.
His name was Donnyell Bourgeois from Whippany Park. There he is in the photo above, just behind me. I had no experience befriending strangers — I was a bit shy in that teenage kind of way — and I had almost no exposure to African Americans. But I also had nothing in my upbringing to prejudice me either. So when Donnyell was friendly, I was friendly back. We let our guard down with each other as we stood together away from the others, stretching and preparing, both of us admitting we were nervous about the meet and our races. Donnyell was easy to talk to.
I see now that we had more in common than that which separated us. We were both runners. We were both in that place to compete and hopefully to win. We were both competing against ourselves, and our own best past records. In my memory, in certain moments, there were just the two of us, stretching, readying ourselves, moving to the starting line in slow motion, waiting, waiting, waiting for the baton to be slapped into our hands, springing into flight, hurling ourselves around the first bend, floating on the back stretch with rhythmic footfalls the only sound, hitting our mark on the end of the final turn and exploding down the home stretch in the final effort to cross the finish line first. My teammates and his teammates and the crowd and the cheers fade into the background of my recollections. It was just us two, suspended together in this altered mental state of athletic effort.
I'm sure we congratulated each other after our races. That was an important part of our connection, being gracious regardless of the outcome. Donnyell won sometimes. I won sometimes. We were very evenly matched. We made each other better, setting a pace for each other. We usually left the rest of the field behind us. In the photo above I am just about to cross the finish line in first place, winning the County track title along with my relay teammates for Chatham, with Donnyell just behind me, bringing a second place finish home for Whippany. I was lucky that day.
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Of course, in reality there were many other people involved in my experience running track, not least of whom were my relay teammates. As an underclassman, when I was the new kid, I ran with Elwood Regan, Patrick Merrell, and Keith Wilcox as well as Anthony Schiro, all of whom strode across the cinders like living, breathing giants to me. I was so happy to be on that team, even though I was the low man on the totem pole.
By my senior year, I anchored the team along with Joe Barmakian, Jim Rice, and Brian Gilling. That's us in the photo below, referred to in an accompanying article as fleet-footed "Cloidtmen" after our tough-as-nails and (I have to admit it) beloved coach Joe Cloidt, who would position himself at the last bend during my races and as I passed would take the unlit stub of a cigar out of his mouth and shout "Burn, Gudey, burn!"
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I decided to dedicate a piece of guitar music of mine to my unlikely, meaningful, and brief friendship with Donnyell Bourgeois. This song has existed for some time, but always with a working title. Now my wordless song has a proper name: "A Friendship Among Rivals." I hope when you give it a listen it expresses some of weirdly slow-motion mental landscape of determined effort and triumphant exhilaration of our achievement together. Thanks, Donnyell, for helping make me the person I am!
If you want to hear more songs like this, check out my whole collection of Guitar Music - Volume 1.
