Teddy, sniffing glue (he was 12 years old), fell from the roof on East Two-Nine. Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug on twenty-six reds and a bottle of wine. Bobby got leukemia - 14 years old, he looked like 65 when he died. He was a friend of mine.
G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten so they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan. Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head. Bobby OD'd on Drano on the night that he was wed. They were two more friends of mine, two more friends that died.
Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room. Bobby hung himself from a cell in The Tombs. Judy jumped in front of a subway train. Eddie got slit in the jugular vein and Eddie, I miss you more than all the others and I salute you, brother.
Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys' Club roof. Tony thought that his rage was just some goof but Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchin' proof: "Hey," Herbie said, "Tony, can you fly?," but Tony couldn't fly. Tony died.
Brian got busted on a narco rap. He beat the rap by rattin' on some bikers. He said, "Hey, I know it's dangerous but it sure beats Rikers." But the next day he got offed by the very same bikers.
They were all my friends and they died.
- Jim Carroll, 1980
Jim Carroll is the author of The Basketball Diaries, a chronicle of his life as a teenager in 1970s New York City. The book covers his high school basketball career and his addiction to heroin, which he financed through prostitution in the vicinity of 53rd Street and Third Avenue. In 1995, The Basketball Diaries was made into a motion picture; Leonardo DiCaprio starred as Carroll. After overcoming his addiction, Carroll moved to California and formed the punk Jim Carroll Band with encouragement from Patti Smith, with whom he once shared an apartment in New York along with Robert Mapplethorpe.
Carroll died of a heart attack at his Manhattan home on September 11, 2009 at the age of 60. At the time of his death, he was in ill health due to pneumonia and hepatitis C and was reportedly working at his desk. His funeral was held at Our Lady of Pompeii Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich Village.
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