My friend Andre says the inside of an Oreo cookie wouldn’t be half as good if you didn’t have to pull the cookie apart. He says the indulgence and sense of decadence makes all the difference, with a little bit of mischievous thrill thrown in for doing what you are not supposed to do. My friend Andre points to the cracks in the dirty walls as we walk down the alley and says that some of these cracks dive deep, and down, to the center of the world, but I can see where most of them stop.

Andre always walks with his hands in his pockets and he bumps me with his elbow when I ask too many questions. He then calls me a pest, or a dodo brain, or a used-up fart, or something and he goes on and on with the wisecracks until we’re both laughing so hard that we often end up wheezing and coughing and stooping over as if we are old men trying to catch our breath.

My friend Andre says that one day we’ll just keep on walking till we end up at the Great Wall of China, or Sri Lanka, or Tierra del Fuego, or some such far off place, but we always walk right back to our apartment complex across the way from the concrete overpass. We sometimes just sit under that highway, leaning back on the angled cement with our eyes closed, lost in the roar of traffic. I peek at him from time to time, and I can tell that he does it different than me.

My friend Andre says that I’ll make it on my own because underneath my thick skull I have a special knack for numbers, (which I do), and just enough curiosity to go for it, and a heart of gold to boot. (I hate it when he gets mushy like that.) So I ask him where will he be and he tells me not to worry. But I bug him, and bug him, and he keeps making no sense at all like when he says that he doesn’t think that he really lives here anyway. So I scream at Andre and tell him that’s just not true and that he just has to come with me or I won’t leave, so there.

Then he sighs, shuffles his feet, and cocks his head one way then the next, all the time watching me carefully. His eyebrows lift, his eyes twinkle, and he rubs the wetness off my cheeks with those big thumbs of his and says, “Ok, man. But be ready to be stuck with a monkey on your back.” He describes how he will hang around my neck every minute, draped all over me, which makes me laugh to imagine the four-eyed squirt toting around this big monkey man and we wheeze, bend over and slap our knees when he tells me how I will have to maneuver so that he can take a crap. And we knock each other with our elbows making up more ridiculous situations all the way home.

***

Many years later, I still open the cookie to eat up the creamy frosting, summoning as much of Andre as I can possibly imagine. I don’t know where Andre is, the last time I remember him was a desperate, dark time when I left practically everything behind. Then again, I didn’t know I was bipolar, it crept up on me. But I always thought I would find Andre when I came back.

I sometimes forget to think about him for a while, so I’ve started to concoct a bunch of silly habits to keep me remembering. I miss him, and I love him, and I like to think of him walking along, with his hands in his pockets, on the way to some uncharted, but safe, corner of the world.

And oh how I really wish, that my friend Andre, this special, creative part of myself, will someday find his way back to me.