...
And they did a TERRIBLE job of it, but they got booked for every party in junior high anyway. Jim was a founding member. Very hip for a preteen, and by the time we were freshmen at Drake, he not only smoked cigarettes, but smoked them artfully, the smoke leaving his mouth and traveling up his nose with a curving flourish.
He was my best friend from age twelve to twenty-two, but right around then is when the drinking got too awful for even his best friend to bear. By the time we were twenty-eight I outright couldn't stand to be in the same town as he was.
He was alright if he just stuck to beer or wine, but one sip of the hard stuff and he turned into the devil incarnate... and twenty-two was when he couldn't drink beer or wine without moving it up to the hard stuff.
Many years later he stopped drinking and we got our friendship back... plus Jeannie, who'd been the one who got him to stop drinking. Even though he'd been middle-aged since I'd known him it seemed as though he was going to make it despite all the early warnings.
Every year, on or about the first day of December, the blackest of depressions would descend on him and he wouldn't come out of it until late January or mid-February. Every year. Like clockwork. Drunk or sober. I had to point it out. He was too busy in his annual blackness to keep track. I mentioned he should maybe try an antidepressant, that they mostly didn't work, but for some they work like gangbusters.
Big mistake.
Brilliant, entertaining, cripplingly-envious, unable-to-hold-down-a-job Jim turned into a grinning corporate droid before our very eyes. It was terrifying. He kept his own single coffee maker at his desk. He had a goldfish bowl at his desk. And a plant. His desk, in the whole warehouse full of ugly cubicles was the place everybody in the office wanted to be.
It got him fired. Jeannie and I were so relieved. But, contrary to everything we ever knew about Jim, he was undaunted and had himself another corporate droid job in record time.
He was avid about it. He beamed with pride from organizing supply rooms and creating ways to keep them stocked before they ran out of anything... on the side... apart from his job description... got a bonus....
This was how he was going to make his fortune, show those rich fucks who were our crowd when we were kids that being born on third base does not mean you'd hit a home run. Jim was hitting his home run.
Oh. So the envy part had not been drowned by the Zoloft.
He decided he was too flabby and out of shape. Joined a gym. Gonna shake his tush like Ricky Martin. Not only not ever depressed anymore, but outrageously shallow and a fuckin' bore, happy as a proverbial clam... like his IQ was in park and he'd get out and polish it on supply room organization projects.
He quit smoking.
I created a monster.
Jeannie was gobsmacked.
I was gobsmacked.
He got interested in Buddhism, started going to retreats out in San Geronimo. Met a young thing there. Came home and announced to Jeannie that he was with the young thing now and would move out when he got the money together. Jeannie, who'd been with him for twenty years, was upset and confused.
He turned to her. "It's Buddhism 101, Jeannie. Things change."
End of discussion.
When Jeannie called me to tell me what happened, Jim went from dear oldest friend to dead as these words reached my ears. This will have been sometime in late 2000 or early 2001. It took that fuck a few months to get out of the house, but, still, Jeannie was having a hard time processing it.
He, thank goodness, decided to move to Arizona with his young thing. We didn't hear from him again. I've been down with that from the Buddhism 101 gig, but Jeannie has never gotten used to it. I fixed her up with someone else, and she's happy with him in her life, but she's never been able to get closure on the matter of Jim leaving her like that, like he'd reached over and changed the channel.
I told her the young thing was not going to last more than a year or two and he'd be drinking again after that, that she should just try to let it go and, even though it was cruel and abrupt and it would be swell to talk to the sane Jim again, the sane Jim is dead, never coming back. I was certain. She, of course, was not, thought he'd be with his young thing forever and never touch the demon alcohol ever again.
About a year and a half ago or so, one sleepless night, the thought of Jim dying entered my silent mind. Considering this notion, I figured immediately it was booze, and then returned to my insomniac muddle.
Jeannie'd lost my phone number, needed to get it from Old Uncle Dave. He emailed me the other day to tell me she'd be calling soon. The moment I saw that email I knew she wanted to tell me Jim is dead.
She called the next day. Her son was doing some kind of internet check on somebody for something and while he was about it he'd decided to check on Jim for his mom. He found something about Jim being dead... a year and a half ago... manner of death unspecified. She wanted to see if I could help her confirm this and find out what happened.
I told her immediately I was certain it was true, because... because I was certain it's true. No good reason, or no reason you would call good, but I just knew... probably knew on the very moment and it registered and I chalked it up to the booze and left it there. Still, I couldn't find any obituary or anything whatever that alluded to his state of health or lack of it for her on the internet, barely anything even on his existence. We found the young thing... not so young anymore... by googling and Jeannie called her.
Yes. He's dead, for over a year, and she didn't know how either because she hadn't been with him in years.
This is bothering the heck out of Jeannie.
It isn't bothering me at all. Jim died fifteen years ago. Who cares what happened to his body?
always and any time....
