October 18, 2018

At the time of this writing, I’m barely 29 years old. A millennial. Even worse, a millennial without a formal education. Admittedly, I’m about as soft and timid as the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I’m a Mr. Rogers kid who used to hug his mother after watching Barney. Although I’ve had a couple of close calls, I’ve never even been in a fight.

I’m not a shark, I’m not interested in screwing people over and frankly, I spare people’s feelings far too often. I’ve always been athletic, I’ve been around competition but winning something that seems so trivial means nothing to me. Those participation trophies thrown at us for rec league baseball when I was a child are corroding in my parent’s attic. They served a decorative purpose at the time but even then I wasn’t that interested knowing there was a bigger trophy out there. 

These characteristics have not gotten me very far in my professional life but they leveraged enough strength to court someone who is now my wife. In 2011 following a stint in the Deli at Walmart and a downward spiral of joblessness, I took the biggest risk I’ve ever taken in my life. I packed up my things and followed my heart and through a dark tunnel of losing a loved one, hopeless drunken nights and heartbreak, my wife and I made it through. That in and of itself is a story for another day.

I met Ethan at the coolest job I ever had and probably will ever have. We worked for a company that bought and sold used media online through Amazon. Thousands of CDs, DVDs, and books at our disposal. Not to mention, the sanctuary-like environment of a library. Add a crew of ragtag introverted misfits and that was us. I could have worked there forever. 

 20 years older than me, we clicked over our interests and mutual distastes for the mundane. The winds of change blew swiftly and both of us knew how we ended up in Charleston, we just didn’t know why.

If memory serves correctly, the first time he chose an album to play on the communal boombox, it was Black Flag’s “Damaged.” Growing up listening to punk music and playing in “punk” bands, I was thrilled. An easy segue into a conversation which otherwise quite possibly would have never happened.  

For a solid 4 hours per day, we talked in between packing hundreds of penny copies of “Jagged Little Pill” or The Twilight Saga books often snickering at people’s taste. A masterful guitar player, we exchanged stories of music and life. We talked about The Stones, we talked about Dylan. We talked about the never-ending search for the cheapest price on gas or ways to stretch out money at the grocery store. 

My wife often worked late into the night being spread too thin at a retail job that barely allowed her to have any semblance of a life. So what began as a fight to fend off loneliness and a way to avoid the ruthless, standstill traffic between the islands and peninsulas, friendly work chats eventually cultivated a friendship for two barflies in which to this day I still hold near and dear to me.

Unbeknownst to us, the hands on the clock kept spinning and the booze continued to flow. Two dollar tall boys of PBR went a very long way. In fact, I think my liver is still recovering from the time in October that we made a day of it watching a baseball, basketball and hockey game in one sitting. This being the same day trouble reared its head as a random patron tried to unseat me even after I used proper bar etiquette: coaster over the beer and seat tilted forward. The good for nothing schlubby, neckbearded bartender wanted nothing to do with the situation and suggested perhaps we sit elsewhere. After voicing our disgust and seniority, the patron let out a disgruntled groan and gave in but yet somehow I’m the schmuck?

As time went on and the conversations grew longer, I began to marvel in the highs and lows of my newfound friend’s life. The stories he told seemed larger than life. The son of a successful inventor, a graduate of Berklee College of Music, a married man, a father, a divorced man. From Brooklyn no less where stories could start as a small brownstone and grow as tall as the Empire State Building. However, with every inch of detail dripping with more dialogue and imagery that I’ll ever be able to retell, there wasn’t a choice to believe or not.

He recalled the good; the time he spent a snow day throwing muck-filled snowballs at cars only to end up nearly throwing one at his Father’s car. Or the time he played a last minute gig in Chuck Berry’s backing band. 

He told me about the bad times which seem to resonate with me the most as I have yet to reach my preferred level of consistent happiness. I heard all about his soul-sucking jobs and the sticker on the time clock that read “If you’ve never seen the dead come back to life, be here at 5:30.” I also heard about the time he spent Valentine’s Day in an airport bathroom changing clothes on the way to murky divorce proceeding getting looks from every angle. Red faced, letting out a cry of “What are you looking at?” only he didn’t put it that nicely. He spoke of his money woes that followed the divorce and his strong stance against marriages, mortgages, car loans and every other trick designed to take your money. He told me about the time he was the lone attendee at a seemingly popular friends funeral. 

After years of conversations, car problems, far too many beers, laughs, tears, and close calls, we found ourselves at our respective packing tables. It dawned on me to finally ask my friend. 

“After all of that, how do you keep going?” I asked expecting a long winded explanation.

He looked at me and said, “You just gotta.”