So there’s this guy…

…who fought with me non-stop, who challenged me, and argued with me (often times just to get a rise).  He knew my buttons and he pushed them regularly not because he disagreed, he just wanted to play devil’s advocate.  He would argue with himself and I truly think he did often.  Many times his then girlfriend would wonder how it was I managed to stay his friend for so many years.  He was exhausting!!  Yet you knew that each time he challenged you or fought with you, you grew ever so slightly and learned that arming yourself not in his defense but in defense of the world and what was only made you a stronger more capable person.

But then he’d smile that charming Cheshire cat grin and his laughter would begin.  He’d tell you a joke or that he loved you and somehow, each time, everything would be okay.  Until it wasn’t again.  But it mostly never mattered because regardless how many buttons he pushed or how tiring his rants would become, his glitter was far more exhilarating.

He was a brilliant musician who could write songs that spoke to places in your soul that would fire automatically without warning.  He’d write a lyric or a chord and suddenly you were right in the middle of the music your heart beating to it’s rhythm.  He would wax poetic about the life he saw or the experiences he encountered and you felt not for him but because of him.  Each time he pulled out a camera, still or motion, something slightly brilliant would be captured and edited into pictures possibly coherent yet deeply meaningful.

And his voice!!  He could hit the low notes that you felt deep in your blood and the high falsetto that made the hair on the back of your neck stand on ends.  His voice was the voice of someone who felt more in the end of his middle finger than most allow in their deepest of hearts.  And it added to the already driving words and notes to create an orchestra of love and hurt and hatred and nothing at the same time.  He knew that regardless of how subterranean his music was the world itself was fleeting and we were all merely passersby often on a trip to nowhere.  And everywhere at the same time.

He introduced me to new music, new lands, new ideals.  He taught me about heartbreak, wandering/wondering, artistic maintenance, literature and bits of Farsi I’ve long forgotten.  He was and is, somewhere, a sage.  Although he’d argue with me for saying “somewhere” and simply have me admit that he is no where.  This is exactly the circle of madness you’d find yourself in with him.  Until he just picks up his guitar and starts strumming away.

He also was in a constant state of evolution, always another .0 version of himself it was often hard to gauge which creature you were encountering.  His music changed, his words changed, his art changed, his friends changed, his drugs changed, his lyrics changed and his place changed.  But the love he felt, and perhaps the constant restlessness, was unflappable and it came out in extraordinary, spell-bounding ways.  This evolution only empowered his artistic being to higher highs.  And sometimes lower lows.

I’ve honestly never been more broken-hearted by anyone than I felt with him.  And why or how he left me emotionally long before he left me physically is something I’ve stopped trying to work out because those answers I’ll never unravel.  However, much like Ali himself and his Cheshire cat grin, I received my “I love you” days before some fucking asshole climbed down his fire escape and shot him in the head.  I hate to be so blunt but I feel sugar-coating the circumstances of what exactly happened is something Ali himself never shied away from.  He faced reality like a bulldozer.  So after a two-year “challenge” of isolation, and incidentally 15 days before his murder, I received a letter with a beautiful apology and the words, “please know that I’ve always thought the world of you and have much love for you.”  His peaceful words and peaceful heart made those two years of wandering somehow all… okay.

And on that note, the season of death (and heartbreak) has ended for me and mine.  We can all go back to dating assholes, decorating for Christmas and what exactly Taylor Swift is up to in New York City.

And this is the death part.

Thomas Mann said “A man’s dying is more his survivor’s affair than his own.” And it’s true.  The dead pass.  They go where ever it is we go and those of us left behind…well, we keep coming back to them; their voice, their laughter, their smell, the shape of their eyes.  Try as we might, the dead never really leave us.

It’s been 8 years since my greatest friend Wendy left this world.  Her exit was a 12 year encore of dancing and bowing and dancing again.  We watched her life like a great film; the personal moments, the private moments, the great love, the great heartbreak, the collapse, the struggle, the passion and of course her final curtain call.  When you know at 13 years old that your life could and probably would be cut short you tend to live life with the kind of wild abandon we all should.  But don’t.  And those of us who don’t, stare in wonder at these bright enigmatic souls longingly.  She had that effect on just about everyone who met her.

Wendy and I became friends at 19 over the mutual love of a boy but that boy brought us together and for that I will always be grateful.  We moved in together immediately, acted together, went to radiation together, shaved our heads together, visited NYC for the first time together, lost together, fought together, broke up, made up and laughed and laughed and laughed all within the first two years of becoming friends.  Three years later, I found myself moved into her living room in Williamsburg Brooklyn in September of 2002 with two suitcases and 5 boxes.  Oh the insane choices we make at 22.

By now Wendy had “successfully” completed her second operation to remove a astrocytoma tumor from her spinal cord, navigated radiation and chemotherapy repeatedly and also graduated college with a bachelors of fine arts and began working as an actress and model.  I quote successfully because she struggled with paralysis on her right side on and off for the next 6 years.  But she knew how to take care of herself with the right foods, skin care, massages, reiki, magnet therapy, the outdoors and love.  She always saved pieces of her for her even at the expense of others, she never let anyone take everything she had.  That was such a fascinating lesson I learned from her that I attempt to implement into my life daily.  She made time for everything and let herself have as much fun as she wanted.  She truly was a demon at time management.  That I wish I learned better.  She was also crude and smelly and hilarious and goofy and so talented and so ridiculous.  She could drink and smoke just about anyone under the table.  She laughed hard and loud and loved hard and loud.  She could dance and act and decorate an apartment.  She dressed up but mostly dressed down and cared equally.  She could listen and respond and navigate the feelings.  She loved her family, her friends, her Tom and her mean ass cats.  And she always had good music playing and good food somewhere nearby.  She was a host at life.

And I miss her.  A lot.  There were many times this year I would have given anything to talk to her again and hug her thin little neck.  But all I can do is imagine what she’d say or how she’d feel.  Oh her forearm!  Her birdlike forearm; the shape, the texture and the lightness is what I will forever think of when I think of her.  It was that forearm I held so often the last year as we walked around the city and maneuvered around people so frantic to get somewhere else.  It was that forearm she held when the feeling was fleeting and she couldn’t grasp things how she intended.  It was that forearm that forever remained the same when everything else bloated and eventually came to.

Her mother called me on October 30th, 2006 around 5:45am.  I’d already spent almost every night for the past two months in one of several hospitals rooms and halls.  She was dying and it wasn’t something any of us pretended wasn’t happening.  In fact, during the last month of her life she made peace with her spiritual and physical journey and wanted our permission to move on.  I knew what her mother was going to say before I answered the phone and within two hours I was in the Bronx laying in a hospital bed next to my best friend who was not even there.   Her body all puffy and warm was beating and breathing but Wendy, she’d gone home.  I’d watched her trying to leave for two months.  I watched her body break down and felt her spirit floating around the hospital and in my life.  She shifted and expanded and shriveled.  She was gone.

She’s been gone for 8 years.  And there’s probably not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her and smile.  Or cry.  But mostly, I smile and hope that she’s doing the same thing looking down on me.  But she’s probably dancing in heaven with all them other fools!