A walk on part in the war
I knew this great guy some years ago, an Evangelical Christian. Sweet, sweet dude. Sadly, life took us in different directions. I should really look him up sometime. But we had a lot of great conversations about life, religion, atheism, writing, literature, you name it.
And sometimes, you know, he was just so Evangelical. One line he used on me one time was an oldie but a goodie: Jesus, he said, never abandons anyone. You can’t rely on anyone in this life — they can betray you, they can drift away, they can die. But Jesus, he’s for always, and is the steadfast anchor we need.
Essentially, the argument is that you can’t rely on people, or even fully trust them, and that’s why you need God. I’ve heard many, many Evangelicals make this argument.
So I want to tell you a brief story, one that involves a lost friendship, and an album that still means so much to me it can still bring tears to my eyes.
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A smile from a veil
The album was Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. All I need to do is put the album on, as I just did in Rhythmbox, and I’m hit across the head:
It’s 1987-89, anytime in that period, Junior and Senior years in high school. I’m past my brush with Evangelical Christianity. Home still sucks. Is maybe, in some ways, even worse. But there is a new thing in my life: friends with cars.
Me having a car was so not going to happen. Not in that house, the House on Twilight, under the control of Him. Nosirree. But friends, now friends, some of them had cars. I had two saviors — my friend Scott, who had father problems also, and would happily drive around town picking people up. This was a big deal, mind you, because we were UHSers — our high school drew from all over town. Travel distances could be large. But he did it, all the time.
And there was Jon, my best friend. Probably the closest friend I’ve ever had. Jon, he knew, he understood in ways that you can’t imagine. I think he knew, better than I did, what my home was.
The phone call would come. “Want to go to the arcade?” Jon would ask. He would pick me up in his battered white BMW (a car that maintained its corporeal form only out of a dogged, stubborn German pride), and we’d go to this arcade that existed then. We usually played Bad Dudes.
Other times, we’d just drive around, or get together with other members of the Crowd. But it’s the times when it was just the two of us that I remember the most. Driving in that car, listening to music — Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, old Genesis, Tull, and Pink Floyd. I always think of Wish You Were Here, though, because we listened it to death. We drove around and listened to that album and made it the soundtrack of the whole fucking city.
I can sing along with the whole album, feel each change in the music before it happens, like a dance remembered from long ago. I can feel the old white BMW around me, feel Jon next to me, quietly driving. I can feel the sense of freedom, the sense of knowing that there was something outside that fucking house, outside the Twilight reality. And that music, it spoke to my fears and hopes in ways you can’t imagine.
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Hot ashes for trees
The night had started out like so many others. “Let’s play some Bad Dudes,” Jon said, “or maybe some pool.” We played pool that night, I think, or maybe both. We’re getting in the car to go home when Jon clears his throat awkwardly.
“Greg?” He asked. “You aren’t thinking of killing yourself, are you?”
I felt dizzy for a second. “No,” I stammered. “No, of course not.”
“It’s just,” he said, “You’ve been making a lot of jokes about ways that you would do it.”
“They were just jokes,” I said. Probably more than a little defensively. Okay, a lot defensively. “I just have a dark sense of humor.”
“Okay,” he said, “Good. I just wanted to make sure. The last friend I had who made those kinds of jokes is dead.”
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Running over the same old ground
I had a friend, folks. A friend who cared enough to help me escape, for short periods, an ugly place. A friend who cared enough to shine a flashlight so I could watch my step and not slip into the Void. In our college years, things happened. Mostly, frankly, my fault, during yet another fucked up period in my life. I lost him. I lost my best friend.
But for those who think that humans can’t be relied on, that you can’t place your hope in people, I can say only this — he touched me then, he touches me now. Friendships sometimes die. Sometimes you get betrayed, sometimes you do the betraying. Sometimes one of you moves. Sometimes you just drift apart after a short time. There is loss, always loss, in this world of constant change. But those people stay with you; the support they gave you becomes a part of you, and you carry it with you until you die.
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year
