Matthew James Hinton was one of the first friends I made when I moved to Cedar Springs High School in the fall of my Junior year. I had met him, years prior, at my cousin’s birthday party when we were 13. I kissed him on a trampoline with butterfly clips in my hair. He was bright eyed, insightful, mischievous, and had a genuinely kind heart.
In high school we were a part of a close knit friend group that loved music, smoking cigarettes in the parking lot, trading ratty paperback books of beat poets, sneaking beers from the fridge, and hauling ass down country roads in our shitty old cars. Your classic alternateens. We were infinite, to quote a book from that era. We dated briefly but stayed friends, like most high school relationships. We had hundreds of late night AIM conversations, his raw honesty and poetic nature a refreshing change from most teen boys I knew. His handle was “esaelpotnrob” (born to please, backwards), and I was “xshastasheenx” (from the Pixies song). We would play acoustic sets at the local coffee shop, because of course.
After school I saw him a few times over the years, through a few different eras of our lives. He moved to California for a little while after graduation and wrote me funny letters in his terrible handwriting, the frayed edges left behind after being torn from a spiralbound notebook. The last time I saw him was perhaps ten years ago, maybe more, maybe less, I don’t know, I don’t have a good concept of time.
They pulled his body from the Grand River on Monday, April 17th along Indian Mounds Drive near the Trestle Trail Bridge in the late afternoon. The autopsy declared it an accidental drowning, and they estimate he had been in the water for a week. The last time anyone in the old group saw him was this past New Year’s Eve. He walked from GR to Sand Lake and showed up at a friends’ house. He had been living in Chicago as far as we all knew. I wish I had more answers, I have so many questions.
Thank you for being my friend, Matt.
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