The Joe I Remember
I can’t tell you what the last eight years of his life were like or what he’d been up to in Canada. I can’t tell you his reasons or if he left a note. Fuck, I can’t even tell you his birthday or exactly how old he was — only that he’d been a grade above me in high school. I can’t tell you what we did on the day we met or the details of our last interaction or if we even said good-bye before we each moved away from the Bay Area, before we created lives on opposite ends of the continent, before we fell out of touch.
What I can tell you is that he had curly, dirty blonde hair that made him look like Steven Hyde from That 70s Show, and how I liked that.
I can tell you how when I was 14, we drank stolen Coronas together, our feet sloshing inside wet shoes, pant legs soaked from the knees down. How Joe and I had outrun this security guard by charging, without a word and without hesitation, through a creek. The one between the Asian mall and the hill where our town’s teenagers went to get fucked up. How we’d returned to our friends who were further upstream. How we were out of breath, hearts pounding, denim jeans and Converse dripping, 12-pack in hand. Fern (who’d met Joe the previous summer, at some camp, before he moved to town) was unimpressed by our haul. She rolled her eyes, commented how the guys in our group were already drunk enough from the vodka we’d finished earlier.
Over a decade later, I get a text from Fern that reads, Did you hear about Joe? I’m 25, living in Seattle. I read her message while walking to the office where I work. It’s cold out, the day before Valentine’s Day.
I remember the crush I had on him when I was 14. I remember the thrill I got when the two of us inched further and further away from the group, walking with already wet shoes through shallow water, each with a stolen Corona in hand. Out of sight, barely out of ear shot, we’d stopped along the creek bank, crouching below branches. We talked about how his mom was always moving them around, about how she hated him. He dragged his cigarette and glanced at the ground as he spoke. I remember suggesting that she probably didn’t hate him, maybe it just came off that way sometimes? He disagreed. Was that the only time we talked about her?
Over a decade later, Fern tells me, “She was awful to him, even in front of my mom and I.” When I was 14, Joe had lived with his family in California for only a year. I never met his mom. But Fern had. The night Fern tells me about her, we’re both still reeling from the news of his suicide, still searching for reasons. I’m in the Bay Area on a trip I’d planned months before, a quick visit from Seattle to celebrate my 26th birthday in the days leading up to it. Within a few hours of arriving, I’m sitting beside Fern on a stone bench in the Berkeley Rose Garden. It’s dark out and the place is empty, possibly closed for the day. We’re staring at a fountain. Between moments of silence, I learn these new things about Joe, things he never told me, things Fern found out in the conversations they’d had in high school until her boyfriend got weird about how close they were, until they’d had to create a bit of distance. She tells me about his mother’s love for his siblings in contrast to her hatred for him, about her verbal abuse, about the possible reason, about how he’d been conceived. Things I wish I’d known, things I should have known.
I remember being 17 and getting stoned and making out in his dorm-style apartment (barely big enough for the furniture that came with it, bathroom down the hall), Muse playing on the speakers plugged into his laptop. That was the year he moved back to the Bay Area and attended Berkeley City College, the year before I moved to New Orleans, before he returned to Canada, before we fell out of touch. Those were the days I was insatiably restless, ready to finish high school and move far away. I viewed his place as a tiny haven, a room where we could escape the world, where we could pretend we were grown.
“I hated that place,” Fern says as we stare at the fountain in the rose garden. “It was depressing. I only went there once and it just reminded me how shitty things were with his mom that he had to move out the second he turned 18 and that’s all he could afford.”
I’m not sure now how many times, over how many weeks or months, I’d been over and we’d squeezed into his twin bed. But I remember laying on our sides beside each other, exhaling smoke through the open window, his place so narrow that we could almost stretch our hands outside to ash. We’d gaze out at the tennis courts across the street, the constant whack of ball against racket, rhythmic though never steady enough to become white noise, uneven in a way that woke me that one time I’d stayed over, made it impossible for us to sleep in once the early morning players had arrived.
In the rose garden, Fern continues to tell me these pieces of his story that I never knew. I wonder about all the key details I’ve missed about all the other people I’ve laid beside in the past. I wonder what it’ll be like to lay beside anyone new from this point forward.
I remember how much Joe hated it when I’d smoke my cigarettes all the way down to the filter, how unhealthy for me he insisted it was. Laying next to each other, he’d bribe me with the promise of a fresh Camel from his pack in exchange for my nearly finished American Spirit. Before flame met filter, he’d take my cigarette and, with the same hand, skillfully flick it through his window, arms still around me. Muse playing in the background. Tennis balls hitting rackets, ricocheting between sides.
The day after the rose garden, Fern meets up with Gabe, the friend who Joe had stayed in touch with in the years after he moved back to Canada. Gabe was the one who originally shared the news on social media in a heart-felt post with three photos of Joe. In each, his hair is shorter than I ever saw it. He no longer looks like Steven Hyde. I text Fern to ask what she found out, to ask about what he’d been up to since leaving Berkeley. I ask her not to tell me how he did it. It’s all pretty depressing, she responds. If you don’t want to hear how he did it, you probably don’t want to hear any of it.
I remember the day we finally had the talk, finally realized I was hoping for something more serious than he was able to offer, realized we needed to call it quits before I caught real feelings. He’d walked me out when I left and we stopped to smoke in the shade of the cement staircase leading up to those tennis courts. We chatted casually and, when our cigarettes were done, he asked if he could kiss me good-bye. I remember how that simple ceremony made for perfect closure, made for a cleaner split than any of my breakups to come, made it still fun to see him at parties after that, like that one for my 18th birthday — was that the last time I saw him?
The day before I turn 26, on my last day in town from Seattle, I return to that staircase to again say good-bye. This time, puffy-eyed and shaking slightly in the 2am cold. My ears are ringing from blasting Muse on the car ride over, alone, wet-faced, exhausted. Outside, the street is silent. I look up at the window where we used to smoke, where we laid beside each other (how many times was it?), where we had dozens of casual conversations that I now wish so fiercely to remember.
On the morning of my 26th birthday, I’m back in Seattle and an hour late for work, unable to get up from my bathroom floor, after realizing that, of the two of us, I’m the only one who’ll ever get any older.
I remember being 14 on our way out of the Asian mall when the security guard stopped us. I remember running a couple steps behind Joe, hearts racing, his hair in a flurry, the calm creek water splashing around our knees. I remember him drunk and beaming.
