I met Linkoya in the summer of 1988 in Allston, MA. I lived in a house with a bunch of my friends and he showed up one evening when we were all drinking in the back yard. I don’t remember which mutual acquaintance had brought him over, but we hit it off right away. Link was funny and smart and we shared a dark sense of humor. Over the next year we became good friends, though I don’t recall him talking much about his family or where he had come from.
During the winter of 1988/1989 we were roommates in a run down top floor apartment in a creaky old house by the Mass. Turnpike. We never paid the bills and they turned the heat off in February. I remember sleeping on top of a table in the kitchen with the oven going full blast, in a mostly failed attempt to keep warm.
One day our crappy TV set broke and I dragged it to the hallway with a plan to take it downstairs, eventually. About a week later I came home and the broken TV was gone. I assumed Link had taken it out and left it on the sidewalk. Then I opened the refrigerator. Along with the mostly empty Chinese food containers and random condiment packets was the TV set, only now it had smashed in screen. It was still there when we moved out. Maybe it still is.
It was an unpleasant time but Linkoya always managed to find humor in whatever terrible situation we’d created for ourselves and his friendship made those months a little brighter. That’s what I remember most about him.
We went our separate ways after that winter. I have a vague memory that he moved in with a girlfriend. We only ran into each other a few times after that. But whenever our paths did cross it was always good to see him, to laugh and catch up.
