I'll Miss Him
1
I was never concerned with what other people were up to. If anyone really knew that my casual “what’s up”s were not filled with the smallest bit of concern, they would know better than to answer. I would only show concern if I was genuinely worried about someone, in which, “what’s up?,” meant “what’s on your mind? What’s bothering you? Why do you drink so much? What did she do now? Why can’t you put down the bottle and grow a pair?”
What always ended up happening was that I missed him. We had never gone to the same high school, meeting through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend or something. He was in a band, and I was doing post-grad in university, and every Sunday evening was spent at the bar, or I would go to his gigs as he tried desperately to make a name for himself in the local club scene. The scene itself was sad, consisting of nothing but shitty bands playing some imitation of relatively famous bands that were equally shitty. But those evenings spent at the bar with him, just me and him, me with a Rickards Red, he always with a glass of red wine, were either filled with idle chatter or complete silence. The greatest fun it was, when we would talk, exchange jokes, complain about our girlfriends, bitch about the crap music scene, but it was those nights filled with silence I remembered the best. It was simply out of a lack of anything to say when they happened. It was because both of us had rather heavy things on our minds, and it had been years since we would discuss, rather passionately, how much we wanted to take down “the system” and whatever it entailed. So many before us had attempted, and we learned exactly why they had failed. I was slaving away at a minimum wage job in tens of thousands of debt, and he was finding himself getting caught up in the politics of greedy managers and record labels. But as we sat in silence at the bar, giving each other expectant looks as if the other should start a conversation, there was a wordless reassurance of, “I know,” between us.
He moved away one year, two hundred kilometres North to a more populous city that had a much more eclectic taste. I never went back to the bar, but kept in touch with him. Very slowly I started to realize just how important those weekly meetings were, even when nothing was said. For months I would feel as if something were missing, and whenever I passed the bar on my way to work, the feeling grew stronger. I figured maybe it was the bar itself, and visiting it alone one time, I noticed that it really was a terrible place, and why did I ever hang out there? I sat in silence there one night, hardly sipping a beer, continually looking up to my right where he would usually be. My best friend wasn’t there.
He told me a few weeks after that he was coming down to visit his parents, and immediately I told him to meet me at the same bar. I felt oddly excited about it, like I had really missed routinely hanging out with him in such a normal and unexciting circumstance. Of course, when he came down, while driving down a double-lane country highway, he was hit head-on. I didn’t know what to think at the funeral. I guess it never hit me that it had really happened. I skipped the reception, going back to the bar, at my usual spot, sipping the same beer, looking to my right, knowing he wasn’t there and that he never would be.
What always ended up happening was that I missed him. We had never gone to the same high school, meeting through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend or something. He was in a band, and I was doing post-grad in university, and every Sunday evening was spent at the bar, or I would go to his gigs as he tried desperately to make a name for himself in the local club scene. The scene itself was sad, consisting of nothing but shitty bands playing some imitation of relatively famous bands that were equally shitty. But those evenings spent at the bar with him, just me and him, me with a Rickards Red, he always with a glass of red wine, were either filled with idle chatter or complete silence. The greatest fun it was, when we would talk, exchange jokes, complain about our girlfriends, bitch about the crap music scene, but it was those nights filled with silence I remembered the best. It was simply out of a lack of anything to say when they happened. It was because both of us had rather heavy things on our minds, and it had been years since we would discuss, rather passionately, how much we wanted to take down “the system” and whatever it entailed. So many before us had attempted, and we learned exactly why they had failed. I was slaving away at a minimum wage job in tens of thousands of debt, and he was finding himself getting caught up in the politics of greedy managers and record labels. But as we sat in silence at the bar, giving each other expectant looks as if the other should start a conversation, there was a wordless reassurance of, “I know,” between us.
He moved away one year, two hundred kilometres North to a more populous city that had a much more eclectic taste. I never went back to the bar, but kept in touch with him. Very slowly I started to realize just how important those weekly meetings were, even when nothing was said. For months I would feel as if something were missing, and whenever I passed the bar on my way to work, the feeling grew stronger. I figured maybe it was the bar itself, and visiting it alone one time, I noticed that it really was a terrible place, and why did I ever hang out there? I sat in silence there one night, hardly sipping a beer, continually looking up to my right where he would usually be. My best friend wasn’t there.
He told me a few weeks after that he was coming down to visit his parents, and immediately I told him to meet me at the same bar. I felt oddly excited about it, like I had really missed routinely hanging out with him in such a normal and unexciting circumstance. Of course, when he came down, while driving down a double-lane country highway, he was hit head-on. I didn’t know what to think at the funeral. I guess it never hit me that it had really happened. I skipped the reception, going back to the bar, at my usual spot, sipping the same beer, looking to my right, knowing he wasn’t there and that he never would be.