RIP? WTF

People I know are starting to die.  I sense this is going to become a trend.  Based on what I've seen among my family, I'm approaching "that age".

My dad's been claiming for years that all of his friends are dying.  They aren't all dying, but a lot have.  Seems to be a mixture of old age, motorcycles and cancer.  And some of the oldtime friends who aren't dead yet seem like they already kinda are.  My favorites among his old contacts seem gone before their days.  Hard for me to accept.

But now it's my friends who are dying!  

I found out someone I used to know died during the first flush of Covid in another fucked up, tragic situation.  Another bike accident, though he 1000% should never have been on one or frankly ever driven any vehicle in his life, he was so chaotic.  He was forever distracted and so much more confident than reason would indicate.  I remember him roaring around Phoenix with an 8-track on the floor of what had to be an early 70s blue Cutlass but I can't quite remember.  We picked a friend up in his car one night and she shrieked, "IS THIS A MOVIE?"  He just grinned into the dark like a vampire had a baby with Johnny Depp, snarling, "Get in!"  Everything was hilarious back then.  Even to him.  The tape in his 8-track was Blue Oyster Cult and he wasn't even playacting at the dream of 70s America like so many kids do, because he wasn't a kid.  It was just the only track he had on hand that he liked.  He was 20 years older than us.  

I hadn't realized how much older he was until one night when his wallet fell open on the bar at Bikini.  I glanced down and boggled, decided to say nothing.  I remember joking with friends later, making fun of the situation.  He was so old, I said, that JFK was still alive when he was born.  The Beatles were still together.  History burns from a 20-something: unimaginable, but everything was a larf then.  I felt like he should have more in common with my parents, but he didn't, besides being mad at me.  He had lived multiple lives already, different existences in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Vegas.  But remember - the 80s and 90s versions of those cities.  Touring bands, heroin, women and jobs in bars - that had been his life.  I couldn't believe the photos he showed me from those times, because he looked about 35 for most of his late life.  What a bizarre, strange person; why the hell would he have ended up in Phoenix, of all places?  And how the hell did I meet him?

Surprised it took me so long to find out that he died, but that happens when you move or grow up, you just never talk to certain people again.  And I hadn't talked to him in so long, on purpose.  We had dated for a few moments once, after which he harassed me regularly for around two years, which embittered me, made me angry and dismissive.  Calling, texting all the time, once or twice even showing up at my house in the middle of the night.  I didn't appreciate the theatrical gestures and never let him in, wanted nothing to do with it.  He wasn't a bad person, just wild and unpredictable in ways that I didn't find amusing, even at that age.  Originally, he behaved in a retreating and quiet way, and the limited time we spent together was because I could never figure out which person was the real one.  Damn it, Jack.

With the distance I have now, I think the quieter version was the real person, but I felt too harassed by his other side to care.  He didn't have boundaries with women, and as an attractive man, he wasn't accustomed to rebuffs.  It spooked me and I had no idea how to handle it then other than avoidance and ghosting, the execution of which would get ruined when I'd show up somewhere and he'd be there.  For such a big city, Phoenix is an annoyingly small town in many ways.  Still feels that way.  I still manage to run into people I don't want to see almost ten years later.  

I used to remember him with a resentful shiver, but now that he's dead, I feel reflective and a little sad.  Maybe even more than sad, I feel shocked.  His personality, his ego, the way that he carried himself seemed eternal.  It's hard for me to understand that someone like that could actually die.  I began to wonder if I was harder on him than I needed to be.  Did I understand enough to judge?  I just had no patience for his insult-flirtations and low-level negging, even at that inexperienced age.  There was a different person in there that he couldn't, or wouldn't be all the time, but I couldn't care about that at the time.  I'm sorry that he had to be alone in a hospital when he died because he got into a grievous accident during a pandemic.  Only he would die at a time like that, needless and solitary, but I think he might be one of few well-equipped to handle such a thing given the life he lived, and the person he was. 

I'm fortunate that none of my close friends have died.  Yet.  It's a strange thing.  I don't know how I'll react, but I would guess "badly".  There are certain people I know whose deaths will impact me heavily and I just hope we have another couple of decades before that becomes anything I need to think about.  And I suspect the world as we know it may end before many of us have to deal with it.  

And there are the others who just fall away somehow or get lost to the churn of life.  Usually it's right, eventually, when you think about it.  I tend to be rejecting when a relationship has gone off; once in a while I'm wrong about it, but that's increasingly rare these days.  And it's something that's difficult to even think about until one of them eventually dies too.  Mortality makes people change, but it hasn't changed my feelings about this yet.  I guess I'll revisit it in another decade.