My homeslice Paul and I just had a public tiff on my blog. Which sucks, because there aren’t many people in this life more important to me than Paul is, so I thought maybe I’d write a blog about our friendship. Although it should be noted that we do have a nice history of being little bitches to each other and arguing about stupid shit, but that was mostly over a decade ago, while we were cooking together at the same restaurant, probably sleep-deprived and hung-over, but still. We fight.
I’m sure I knew who Paul was before he knew who I was. Why? Because he played football for my high school. He was a year ahead of me, and we weren’t within light years of each other’s social groups. I wasn’t extremely aware of him, but I was aware of him. Years later, I’d frequently have dreams that I’d been transported back to high school (with all of my intervening memories and experiences intact) and I’d seek out Paul, who, when I found him, had also been transported with his memory intact. And so there we were, in high school, finally knowing each other. They were weird dreams.
In the months following high school, I became a regular at the restaurant Paul worked at. I frequented it late at night with my friend Jeremy and his girlfriend Cory (who I would later coup d-etat away from him); Jeremy had known Paul in high school, so Paul would come visit our table. I remember being suspicious, because Jeremy had been the star of the soccer team, and here was this Paul guy, also an athlete. And Cory, although she didn’t attend our high school, was the captain of her cheerleading squad. I suspected I might soon find myself on the outside. I know you’ve all seen pictures of me in wrestling or baseball uniforms, but I assure you, I was no athlete.
Fate is a fickle broad. Before I knew what was happening, suddenly, I worked at that restaurant, too, and before long, I was a cook there, too, and before long, I was working overnights in the kitchen with Paul, too. And (long story short here) we ended up going to the same college and being roommates and having the same group of college friends. Paul and I had quite rapidly become insperable, the kind of friends that when you show up somewhere alone, people always ask you where the other one is; although how that sort of thing happens is beyond me. All these years later, it just seems natural that Paul and I are hetero-lifemates, but back then, it didn’t seem so simple. Paul and I are quite different men (as good friends often are). We share some simliar interests, but actually have more differences than similarities. And not just the surface items like, he’s into sports and I’m not, or I’m into poetry and he’s not, as these differences are what can make a friendship keep ticking over the years (the male friends I do have whose interests most align with mine, I mostly don’t care for all that much, and I just keep them around because I might need them some day…for what, I have no idea). But Paul and I’s differences seemed a bit deeper than that to me. Mostly, he was a good soul and I was a bad one.
Now, he’ll probably want to argue with that, and he certainly could make a case for it. After all, we were damn young, and drunk and tired pretty much ceaselessly, and in college, and—dare I say it—completely captivating to the opposite gender. Neither of us were perfect young men. But in Paul, one could see the seed of a quality adult, and a man who could discern right from wrong (even if he still sometimes chose to ignore that distinction), and how to be honest, and forthright, and helpful.
I, on the other hand, was a total shit. It was probably obvious fairly early on that, while a whole bunch of us were partying constantly, I was the only one who couldn’t have stopped if I tried. And no matter what you believe about how much I am to blame for that addiction, the fact is that being a drunk is not often accompanied by positive personality traits. All those positive traits I listed above for Paul, think of their opposites, and apply them to the me of back then.
But somehow, we fit together. We picked up some company on the way (“Nature Boy” Chris Davey, Burke “Testudo” Bowen, Heidi “Heidi” Dagen, “Mello” Cory Kelso, “Sultry” Joel Holtry, and quite a few others) and within a year of meeting Paul, I suddenly had a brand new group of friends and a new lifestyle, the old high school chums all-but forgotten. And this was just in time, of course, for my descent into serious alcoholic oblivion.
There are lots of people to thank for how they handled my alcoholism and for what they did to help me, but as far as my friends go, nobody can really get more credit than Paul, a fact I’ve never really told him (fuck! I’m crying now!). Paul never made me feel like I was a bad person because I was unable to stop drinking. He always seemed to understand that it was like any other addiction; for instance, his own reliance on cigarettes. Now, he never said that to me, but his actions and the way he treated me suggest he thought that way. He never told me I needed to stop, or slow down (that might sound reckless to you, but it’s my philosophy that “intevention” methodologies are counteractive. Making somebody feel like shit never chased an addiction out of their skin, a philosophy my parents also seemed to share, which is another big reason I think I’m alive today); when I would, on rare occasions, talk to him about my addiction and my fear relating to it (being in the grip of an addiction to a mind-altering substance is absolutely terrifying), he was understanding and helpful, never demeaning or judgmental, but forthright and honest in ways that showed a maturity and understanding that I’m not sure I could master even now, at age 34.
I still remember the day I decided—firmly, absolutely—that I could get sober, and that I would go to rehab and attempt to live the rest of my life and not die ASAP. I was at the apartment of Paul and his girlfriend at the time, Shelley. I was drinking, but I wasn’t sad, I was just talking to them about being addicted, and how much it sucked. I’ll never be sure which one of them said it first, but someone said, “Why don’t you just go to rehab?”, and they said it so…normally. Like it was just something you could do, if you wanted. Now, obviously the time was right, and there were plenty of other factors and people that contributed to that moment in time, but I said, “OK. I’m going to!” And I got the phone book and called a rehab and reserved a bed, that very afternoon, and then called my mom and dad (by then, that was two seperate phone calls) and told them “I’m going to rehab“. It would be close to a year by the time I celebrated my final sobriety date of April 3rd, but that afternoon in Paul’s apartment stands out as the beginning of the beginning. And he’s been so beautifully understanding and intuitive in regards to my sobriety. He was my first friend to order an alcoholic beverage when out to dinner with me; it was time, I was OK with it, and he just knew. He knew that at that point I’d prefer him to do what he’d normally do. It was more important to me that I not feel like the freak. He was the first friend of mine who seemed to understand that I hadn’t really changed; sure, I had always been known as the guy who drinks all the time, but the core me was the same and now more me than before; the diseased filter had simply been removed. Many friends felt the need to treat me, for a few years, like a kid who had just barely recovered from Leukemia. Paul seemed to know that was unnecessary, and just kept treating me like the same guy from before, only without a drink in my hand.
I would love (really, I would) to just keep writing and writing and tell tons of little stories from our lives together. Paul and I have lots of great stories. But maybe I’ll just hit some highlights (and maybe there will be more blogs like this in the future…I feel as though I could write a book. Tonight. In two hours. But anyway, the highlights):
—Paul and I share an intense love for two bands: Seven Mary Three and Hey Rosetta! And these loves mark two distinct eras in our lives: college (7m3) and now (HR). In an intereting twist, the first TWO times I saw both these bands, it was Paul and I together (along with others). And these were amazing experiences that have shaped my idea of how concert-going should feel: like you are touching the hand of god. It rarely is that good, but it is an ideal to strive for. In many other ways, Paul and I’s musical tastes diverge, but they align where it counts. (hey Paul…the trip to see 7m3 in York…remember D’Marco Farr? And please always remember, I called the opener in DC (“Peel”), and also, remember that fancy restaurant you picked for us to eat at in Ithaca, NY, the night we saw Hey Rosetta!? That night was the beginning of my ongoing love affair with the Americano. But I now drink them iced.)
–The Chair of Good and Evil. Paul and I found a horrid, ratty, falling-apart recliner by a dumpster when we lived in college. For reasons unbeknownst to us, we took it into our dorm room. It really was a horrible chair. It’s existence to us was more of a joke than anything else. We wrote all over it in magic marker. Quotes from movies, things we said all the time, lines from 7m3 songs (“A little motivation goes a long way down, down, down.”) I somehow got the chair to my dad’s house for a year or two after college, but I’m sure it’s long gone by now.
–Remember that dorm room I mentioned? Yeah, we got kicked out of it.
–“Circus Midgets Ate My Balls”. That’s all I’m saying about that.
–Movies we watched dozens or even hundreds of times together, even if they weren’t that good: “Friday”, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, “The Borrowers“, “Mallrats”.
–The first time I visted Paul after I got sober and moved to New Jersey, we played golf and I beat him. Which is the only time I can remember beating him at anything other than MarioKart. So I bring it up here again, even 8 years later. The gloating continues.
–I had the disctinct pleasure of giving the toast at Paul’s wedding to his fantastic wife, Liz. I have never felt more honored in my life, and that honor continues to this day.
–Paul is a big Baltimore Orioles fan, so for his “bachelor party”, fellow Paul bud “Mello” Cory Kelso and I took him to an Orioles game, making the odd fact true: the last major league baseball game I attended was a Baltimore Orioles game.
–Mr. Turnpike, Nature Boy, and the Wise Guy (Man) in the Back Seat
–Ham on Both Ends
–Aint got me on tape.
I love you, Paul. You continue to be the model for the type of man I want to be. Thank you for being part of my life (and helping to save it).
L-R, Paul, Me, Davey (code names: Mr. Turnpike, Wise Guy in the Back Seat, Nature Boy)
Davey, me, and Paul, the first time we ever saw Hey Rosetta!, in Ithaca, NY.
Picture of Paul on the day I beat him at golf. He sucked that day.
Notes From the Fire 
