So it begins. I have 3.5 besties and one of them died today. He was only in his 50s. I won’t reveal his name here because there’s no point, you don’t know him.
Apparently he died of a heart attack but I wonder if that had something to do with his drug use as everyone knew he used and sold cocaine for a while when we were teens. I don’t know if or when he ever stopped, but my Mom said he was looking bad and thin last time she saw him a few months ago. I haven’t seen him in over 10 years myself. She also said she saw him with a woman that didn’t look like his type, if you know what that means.
Sad. I cried really hard about it because we have been besties since I was about 12 years old. He was one of the first kids I met when I got big enough and started to be let outside alone. We met each other at the neighborhood Crime Watch cookout, if people even have those anymore. But I thought he was the coolest boy in the neighborhood doing popper-wheelies on his BMX bike. He would come over to my house everyday, doing tricks on his bike, ya know, back then when kids actually rode bikes to each others houses. We never really dated but thinking back, I wonder if he was just trying to impress me. I was a tomboy back then so if a guy was trying to impress me, it would’ve went way over my head.
He was the first person I smoked weed with, since he was the one who gave it to me.
We were always together back then from when I was a preteen until my mid-20s. We were always together so much that people around the neighborhood thought we were brother and sister, until he got a stupid girlfriend. But he would pick me up from school in his yellow Speed Buggy and he took me to do 360s on the street when it snowed. He played on the high school football team, and we went to the same high school, so I’d go to his games and cheered him on. We even won our first Homecoming game in like over a decade or something like that. His Speed Buggy didn’t have much heat, so I’d ride back home from the games with him in his freezing-ass car. Shivering.
Then when I got old enough to drive, he taught me how to drive my first car which was a stick. I bought it for $200 off another neighborhood friend but it sat in my Mom’s driveway for weeks because I didn’t know how to drive it. But it was my bestie who showed me how to drive it and I’ve been driving sticks ever since.
He wanted to start some dreads, so I helped start them, twisting his hair back in high school and as far as I know, he never cut them and still had them up until now.
And when I got laid off from my first job in around 1996, he got me my first, and only job, working in the restaurant he worked in as a food preparer even though I didn’t know shit about food. He later became a professional cook.
I remember, he turned me on to Alanis Morissette and would blast her entire “Jagged Little Pill” album over his car speakers so everyone in the neighborhood could hear it.
He was also the one who told me I was book smart, but not street smart. Which he is right.
We did date for a little but it was just weird really. He said I was too skinny lol. It wasn’t that, I was just significantly younger and he hit high school before me so he was into more woman-looking girls. He said I was shaped like a baseball bat and no butt and all he felt was bones everytime he hugged me 😆 I did like him back but it sucked being shaped like a pubescent boy lol. Oh well. He was good-looking and I think girls were just jealous because I was always around him like his little sidekick, I had the most access to him and we weren’t even attracted to each other like that. I was more like just “one of the boys” to him but them other hoes didn’t understand that and thought I was competition.
I do remember when I started dating his friend he became very angry. I didn’t understand it until the conversation came up years later. He told me he was angry at me because his friend was too old for me and he wanted to be my first. And I remember telling him, “Well, you were my second.” LOL. That only pissed him off further because he didn’t want sloppy seconds or to be the 1st loser 😅 That’s how he saw it as. Oh well.
We drifted apart after I graduated high school because that’s when I moved to New York back in the 90s. He drove up to pick me up from NY when I failed to start a life here the first time. After that, he started having a bunch of kids with random women anyway so that’s enough to end a real kid relationship. Last time I had seen him was around 2005. Then when I came down to visit he was never around.
That said. I had just told my Mom a few weeks go to tell him I wanted to see him next time I come down, but I guess I’ll be heading down south for his funeral. I didn’t mean like this. Everyone knew we were tight back in the day, so it would be an obscenity for me not to be there.
I love you _____. Of all my best friends in my life, you were my favorite. And the only one who affected my life in life lessons and prepared me for the world. I’m so angry and sad this happened to you. Especially since I never got a chance to talk to you again before you passed. Sleep well my friend.
Life sucks.