Tony Skelley is Dead

I found out Tony Skelley is dead in my dining room three years ago. I wasn’t surprised that he ran from the cops, or that he was drunk, or high. Only that he was dead. I shared an apartment with Tony and Aaron Blankenship, back in his huge hair afro’ days above the Brother’s Lounge, recently closed. I shared a dishwashing job with Tony a decade earlier at Pizzeria Uno in North Olmsted. He never became a cook, like the rest of us. Tony taught me ‘bout the drag and drip, and rejoiced when the power went off. And was constantly stoned, in his black lit living room with flourescent stickers on the walls and ceiling, and the smell of incense mingling with that sick sweet smell of weed. Tony Skelley is dead. Aaron, too is dead, but not literally, like Tony is. Tony Skelley is dead, jumped off the I 480 bridge running from the Linndale cops. I never said I was surprised.