People like me are boring--to me.

Orlando, Ken and I went to B.H.S. together. This is a picture of us across the railroad tracks from Aquatic Park in Berkeley around 1981 for a big outdoor punk show, Eastern Front.

Orlando was a shy artistic type. He wrote songs and took photographs and spent a lot of time in the dark room at BHS.

Ken was into pop culture, especially music, movies and comics. He was the only male in a tap class at BHS.

Neither were into sports. Neither fit into ethnic stereotypes. Neither had fathers around. Both had ideas and perspectives different from me.

I see Orlando ocassionaly on BART or at concerts. He is still living a life on the fringe of society. Ken works for a software company in Emeryville. I see him often.

As I age, I miss meeting people who see the world differently than I do. I am delighted I live in a world filled with compassionate white liberal parents. However, their experiences and insights generally only confirm what I already believe and rarely challenge it.

Orlando was different from me. He lived in the bad part of town on Cornell near Viriginia in Berkeley (not so bad anymore with the increase in real estate prices). He was not good at academics or sports. After high school, he dove deeply into the mosh pit of punk rock and was the cool black guy with the Mohawk. He fronted a band, Special Forces, and called himself Orlando X and other things. He worked security at rock gigs and at a record store on Telegraph. He was alternatively goofy and crazy.

Orlando always had interesting stories about places he went and people he knew. I am glad I know him. Orlando made me feel safer at a few hardcore (to me) gigs where I looked pretty soft and mainstream.

One very intense memory is that Orlando was the only person at my Cal graduation party who backed me up when I kicked a large group of rowdy young men out of the party. The memories are fuzzy, partly due to time and partly due to intoxicants that night, but Orlando was there for me and defused a tense situation by being scarier than the guys we were kicking out. My "regular" pals were scared and intimidated by the diversity and negative energy of the party crashers.

I am puzzled how so many folks just want to communicate and share with people who share and confirm their world view--whatever it may be. That seems boring and uneventful.