I lost a friend.
I first met him in high school through some other friends. He was exceptionally perceptive and intelligent. It took a little while to really get to know him, but I had liked him from moment I met him. We spent a lot of time just hanging around; skipping school to get beers from the Chinese carryout place that never carded anyone; hanging out in the park smoking’ blunts and getting into stupid shit.
In college he had a house with another friend of ours that quickly became the place where people just showed up, at all hours of the day, whether they were home or not. They were the first of our friends to have their own place so it sort of became our clubhouse. We did so much stupid, dangerous stuff there that looking back I’m surprised we all survived.
He had a radio show on the college station that aired late at night on weekends. We would all go to the studio and listen to hip-hop and get fucked up and be stupid on the radio. It was the greatest time of my life.
After college we hung out less and less as we grew up and began building lives of our own, and eventually everyone had mostly lost touch with him.
About 7 or 8 years ago he had just decided one day that he wanted to go to Brazil, so he packed up some things and went, and he never came back. He was just that kind of guy.
He learned Portuguese entirely on his own in just a few months and got a job coaching soccer and teaching English.
He met a girl and they eventually had a daughter together. They had an apartment together and everything seemed to be going well. He spoke to his family frequently and everything seemed fine.
Then two years ago his family received a phone call from Brazil. It was the police, informing them that he had apparently had an argument with his girlfriend and taken a dive off of their 30th floor balcony.
Now, this story did not sit well with anyone. It was so out of character it was completely unbelievable, but what could we do? We had no choice but to just accept whatever story the dubiously trustworthy Brazilian police told us, and did it really matter anyway? He was gone. My friend was dead. He was 32.
After his funeral his parents had us all over to their house. We found it quite amusing that we had spent so much time at their house back in the day and yet never actually met them. His girlfriend and their daughter were there, and she didn’t speak much English. His parents kept trying to get us to talk to her, trying to get as much information about what had happened to their son as possible through any means possible. It got a little weird to say the least, but I really can’t blame them. The circumstances of his death were just so completely out of character, so totally unlike anything anyone had ever known him to do that it was impossible to accept the story we had been given. He was not an emotional guy, he was not someone who lost control, ever. But again, he was gone and no amount of explanation was going to bring him back. I’m sure his family is still struggling for answers to this day, and we will never know what really happened. I can’t imagine what that must be like for them.
He was the smartest and bravest man I ever knew. He had no fear of the unknown whatsoever. It was one of his most fascinating and, to me, terrifying traits, something I found to be both endlessly admirable and completely perplexing. He was completely unlike any of us but he was still one of us.
I hadn’t heard from him directly in years but occasionally I would get random anonymous comments on the blog I used to write, and only after he was gone did I realize that it was him. I wish I had figured it out sooner. I would have liked to have talked to him again. Every Christmas I would hope to hear that he had come back for the holidays and wanted to hang out with us. I always thought that someday in the future, I didn’t know when but someday, I would see my friend again, after a great many years, and have a lifetime of stories to exchange. I would have liked that.
I miss you, man. Rest in peace.