May 20, 2004 - 6:55 AM

The reason I didn’t believe he was dead was two-fold:

1) He’d be the one to totally fuck with me like that.

2) I had just spoken with him 3 days prior

I just couldn’t understand how someone you just spoke with could just die. I mean, you JUST SPOKE WITH THEM.

Actually, he was coming to LA and we were going to try to hook up.

We never did.

And then I got an email forwarded from someone at his work announcing his funeral services.

The subject line was “Funeral Service for ( )” and it had his name.

And it was like someone punched me in the chest.

And then I found myself telling myself that it was him fucking with me.

Cuz that’s what He would always do. Call me up at work with a phony voice, asking stupid questions until my customer service politeness reached its limit and I knew this person had to be a ruse.

Cuz that was Him. Always taking jokes to the limit.

But, as it turns out, yes, he had died.

And not in some tragic accidental way like a car crash, or a flood, or dog attack.

It was his own fault.

Stupid fuck.

Thirty years old, engaged. And he drinks himself to pass out level and drowns in his own bathtub.

Yes, he had a drinking problem.

Yes, he and his fiancé had had a fight that night.

But the police report still ruled out suicide.

I dunno still.

It still hurt me, a lot. No matter what the circumstances.

We had been friends for 12 years.

He had a big time crush on me when he was just a wee lad of 18 and I was 22 and married.

We worked together.

We played together.

Then life circumstances separated us. But we still kept in touch.

He went up the ladder of success and landed a sweet job at a casting agency and rolled like a playah.

But he was still the dork I’d always known.

But that’s when the drinking started.

I didn’t know about that until three months before he died.

That was when we last saw each other.

It had been maybe 6 years since I had seen him and a business trip was bringing me back home to San Francisco where he lived. I emailed him and four others to arrange a play date seeing as I never get home as often as I should.

And all four…five including him….agreed.

But just two days before my flight, all but him cancelled.

He picked me up from SFO and took me downtown to my hotel.

We laughed the whole way. Picked up like we had never been apart. Marveled at how each of us looked like adults now.

He brought me to a bar he knew well. It was classic, old school San Francisco dive bar by Union Square.

We sat there, for four hours, and brought each other up to speed on all aspects of our lives from when we last saw each other six years ago to the present.

We laughed about old times when he used to be in love with me and the adventures we had and the people we knew.

He told me all about his new love and their upcoming wedding.

Then in comes the Ragtime band.

And he tells me the story of how these guys would get pissed at him cuz, as a regular, he’d always yell out for them to play a ragtime song called, “Ragmop”. A song he knew from his childhood. A song his mom would always play.

The only ragtime song he even knew.

It had been a few years since he’d been in that bar. But he tells me, “Hold on, watch this….”

The band stops and he yells out, “RAGMOP!”

The lead guy, an old guy, answers with, “Oh no….not THAT guy…”

And my bud laughs and they start to play it.

So he pulls me up and we start dancing. The only two dancing in the place.

It was funny. He was so amused by it all and was so lit up.

I told him that someday I’m gonna hear that song and I’m gonna think of him and smile.

The night got late and I had to work in the morning and he had to get back home. He walked me back to my hotel.

I don’t think my feet ever touched the ground.

This guy was in my heart on so many levels. One of those good friends that you just connect with no matter what. They make you feel good and you make them feel good and the world just gets better when you’re around each other.

And it had been so long since we’d been together.

We hugged for a long while before he took off. He walked up the block backwards, smiling.

Then he yells back, at the top of his lungs, in true form, “I DON’T CARE IF IT’S HIS BABY! WE’RE KEEPING IT!!”

Then turns the corner and is gone.

And then three months later he was gone for real.

And I realized that those other four people ended up canceling for a reason. He and I were given the chance to catch up and rebond and reconnect because he was going to leave here. We were supposed to have that time.

I looked at that night as a new beginning for us. I didn’t know that it was really the ending…..

And I miss him.

It’s been two years to this day.

I’m still waiting to hear Ragmop.

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