I was in my hometown to see my sister get married. I spent a lot of time with her and my niece who seemed to have been more pre-occupied with nothing than wanting to hang with me. Her new step-father, my new brother-in-law seemed to have been the father figure she needed. Which freed up a lot of time to hang out with old friends.
Kurt and I knew each other from...shit...third grade. He still likes to brag he kicked me in the nuts and I chased him through the playground. Him a tall, gangly weird guy, my a short feisty Asian kid, in the suburbs of Ohio. I recommend anyone who wants to raise kids to move to Ohio. It's a quaint state. From top to bottom. Well, maybe not Cleveland.
Every time I was in town, Kurt is the first person I text. Boy does he like to talk his shit. He swung by in his new Subaru...a quick purchase he made when his girlfriend had forced him to get something more reliable. Kurt was that slacker in high school who didn't show up to class and talked a ton of shit to teachers. I recall during our senior year, he wrote an essay on how dumb a poem called "Thanatopsis" was. He equated it to some kid in our school who rambled on until you forgot what he was talking about. That's what he felt about the poem. Needless to say, the teacher failed him, but I would bet you $100 she secretly wanted to give him an A++. Because that's fucking genius.
Kurt marched to the beat of his own drum. The rest of us were climbing over one another to get to a great college. In an Asian family, it was a no-brainer. Meanwhile, Kurt was at the fray, watching. Never complaining. The guy didn't whine like I did. I was that deeply injured artist type (some say I still am). We'd go hackey-sack in the park, smoke cigarettes and drinking shitty malt liquor. We spent many Octoberfest getting wasted at a mutual high school friend's brother's house. I remember getting blasted one year and vomiting all over the deck. Our friend's brother was so fucking angry. I felt terrible. But Kurt was at all my birthdays. Our birthdays are close. He likes to remind me I'm three days older. Surprising considering my classmates all look 10 years older than me. No ego there.
He told me he began a job working at a factory that made cloth that sift through fine material. They had massive corporate clients. This job offered him benefits. So he took it. The thing you have to know about Kurt was that he was a journeyman. He didn't care much about anything, but bounced through life as if it would always provided. Never an ambitious guy, nor was he maudlin about it. There was one time he expressed regret he didn't apply himself more. The guy was fucking smart. Kurt also really respected my Dad for something I had never noticed. One day he came over as my Dad was mowing the lawn, he simply said "Man, I wish I was your Dad." It seemed...weird. I had to ask why. He explained "look, he's cutting his lawn with a smile on his face." It never occurred to me that my Dad expressed pride in his home and lawn. But that's stuff that Kurt points out.
As we got older, we would continue to hang whenever I was in town. Or he would make random trips to visit in college. I have film from sweltering summer days in Bowling Green, Ohio. He was there at the opening of the film I made and showed at the local theater. That was so much fun.
A decade past, and I drank myself into a stupor out here in Los Angeles. Bitterness and anger and...I have no idea what else prevailed in my life. So I surrounded myself with others who did likewise. I didn't have a guy like Kurt to tell me I need to get my shit together. Though, on the surface you could say I was successful, having graduated grad school. The emptiness still was there.
Back to being back home for my sister's wedding...
He pulled up in a Subaru and we took a drive downtown where we ran into another friend. I gave Mike his first job. Well, I strongly suggested him to work at my job when we were in high school at a pizza place. Mike went off to Utah after high school got his college degree, married had a kid and returned to...managing a pizza place. Great dude. He kinda looked like the bully in all the Li'l Rascals series. Red headed with freckles. We dropped in unannounced and boy it was a hoot. Same ol' Mike. We were a ragtag group.
That's when Mike told me. Something that Kurt had not. Kurt was getting chemotherapy the next day. My mind was blown. And if I took a photo, my mouth would be open. I had no words other than to stumble over stupid ones. Nothing made sense. He had been diagnosed with cancer. Which made sense when he asked me about when I got a colonoscopy years ago. He had actually gotten a length of his lower intestine removed. And had a block put on his chest for where they were going to insert the chemo. I was speechless. A gut punch.
As we were driving back, I had nothing to say. He was sipping through a water bottle of vodka and he lit up a cigarette. We both cracked wise still but there was still odd silence. Somehow.
The day after his chemo, I dropped by his place to pick him up. See if he wanted to get something to eat. As we were driving, he told me how awful the feeling of chemo was. And that he wasn't going back regardless of how awful he was going to feel. To him, that type of living wasn't living. I thought of pleading the case that he needs to do whatever it took to survive, but again...he had a very sound position. Living in pain isn't living. We all say it, he lived it.
I didn't think to ask what his family thought. I was still speechless. He still had his water bottle of vodka. He drank it to dull some of the pain. He was eerily quiet. No shit talking.
But it got me thinking about my friend James. They were very similar. Never felt sorry for themselves. Made sure we didn't feel weird around them. I break down when I tell this, because...that is courage. I have never seen this in anyone else, in terms of the living. This realization makes all our other problems petty. Life and death. We see it as a very abstract thing. My two friends who were in their 40's faced it head on. It's probably selfish for me to admit, but I do think what I would feel if I had this diagnosis. And, I'd be crying like a bitch with a skin knee. I have so much respect for these guys who are what the word "true grit" means. I am so very privileged to know these two.
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