My Friend Dave
“Keep the car running,” he said as he opened the passenger side door. A creak and a slam, and I watched as he strolled towards the store like an actor from classic Hollywood. I stared at the flood lights across the street for I don’t know how long. The next thing I heard was my car door slam again, Dave now alarmed and, packing his cigarettes and yelling, “Jay, Go!”
Fucking Dave, man. I don’t recall a time when we were young when he wasn’t pushing me beyond my limits. Our relationship is a constant push and pull of normalcy, irrelevance, and kindred.
My buddy Greg and I started hanging out more that summer in High School. We took my shit brown Cutlass Supreme over to the next city because Greg wanted me to meet this guy he knew from his circle.
Bushy brown quaff, Oxford dress shirt with the collar cut off and the sleeves past his hands, a pair of ripped jeans, loafers, and a hint of eyeliner - his friend was a drummer for a local group that was playing a Fourth of July city-wide festival. His bandmates were on the podium, and he came around from the back. “Hey, Greg!” he said in a cool yet happy-to-see-you tone. Greg introduced me, letting Dave know I, too, was a drummer. “Sweet!” the words spilling out of him like honey. We hit it off immediately.
I started seeing Dave at all the parties, and our paths began to cross so frequently that I wound up in his basement one night, hanging out, not even knowing it was his house. In those days, we were at parties Friday through Sunday, finally wrapping up at Spankies for the eighteen-and-under crowd. I recall thinking Dave’s house was the coolest because everyone could write stuff on the walls. No way in hell was my dad ever going to let me do that.
Like two people waiting for the other to break up, such it was for Dave and me with music. He was playing drums with some folks, and I was with Greg and Dan O. When Greg upped and disappeared to Florida to be a disc jockey, Dave, too, was moving on to a new gig. Now he was playing guitar and piano and looking for some players to front. He and I hooked up with Danny D and some guy named Mike, who slept with anything he could get his hands on. We were a wonderful disaster that somehow burned our brains and then made it off the roller coaster a couple of years later with all of our hands and feet intact.
Here was the routine: Up at seven and out to the barn, where the landscaping truck met us ready to go. We spent the whole day in the oppressive summer sun, cutting lawns or spreading mulch. The forman, Kevin, was addicted to two things: Metal and pot. Needless to say, our days were mind-numbing and long. Five would hit, and we would all separate to get cleaned up and meet over at Danny D’s for practice. Before the instruments were strapped on, we headed to Faris Beverage to buy a case of beer. Then back for a few hours of pure blissful sweat, blood, and rock. We lived it like Zeplin in the day. Neighbors would begin to call around nine or so, and that was when we headed inside for a final beer and made our nightly plans.
Reaching down, I felt something in my seat between the chair cushion. It was a wallet. We were front row at some strip club downtown, wasting time and money. “Let me see,” he quietly snatched it from my hands. “Follow me,” and I followed him to the bathroom. Checking the stalls first, he reached into the wallet, grabbed the cash and a gas card, and dropped the rest in the garbage can, covering it with some paper towels. We exited the place, and who knows what we did then.
It’s like the other time we were driving, and he spotted an envelope in the middle of a busy intersection. He jumped out of my car, ran into traffic, retrieved the envelope, and jumped back in before the light turned green. “A thousand Dollars!” he exclaimed. “It must have been some truck driver’s gas money,” he posited. Again, who knows where it all went? Things just seemed to fall into his hands. While one could say that it was theft, he had a way of making it so normal. Even comical.
He’s telling me to drive away, and I gun it for fear that someone is going to be shooting at us or something. Well down the road, I said, “What the fuck did you do?” “Jay, I walked up and asked for a pack of smokes. This really cute girl was working behind the counter. I started flirting with her. She put the cigarettes on the counter, and I picked them up. I told her that I was going to take these. She said, “Oh no, you’re not,” jokingly. I said yes, I am, and I bolted.”
The temperature cooled along the band front as we began onboarding a new generation of players. I could see that Dave was troubled and ready to go in a different musical direction. Off he went, and off I went. He went to economics and I to Music school. About half a year later, he reemerged. I got a call that he was putting together an all-star group for one night. He had been preparing music, arrangements, and sections. You could say it was like his version of a Neil Diamond concert.
That one night was memorable. I recall all the parents, siblings, and girlfriends there watching as we lit up the stage. That’s the thing; Dave had this way of bringing a light to the stage and to those around him in those days. He came across comfortable, kind, smooth, and someone you wished you could be, even if just for a few minutes of walking around in his brain.
After that night, we drifted. He first entered the working world in the Gulf of Alaska, around Valdez, on a fishing trawler. Later, he settled down back home. I dove deep into my own world of technology and the early days of my dial-up life. My girlfriend and I got married and wound up in Mishawaka, Indiana, where I worked for Greg as a software programmer.
It all came to a head about a year later. Out of the blue, Dave reached out, looking for a drummer to join him in opening for the Goo Goo Dolls in Chicago. Having made strides in my new career, I set music aside for the time. Tried as he did, he could not convince me to leave behind my life to pick up and play Chicago. I had become too practical. We didn’t speak for many years after that. He was deeply disappointed.
Life moved on as it does. Kids, career, what have you occupied most of the days? I wound up in Arizona for a while, and he stayed put back home with his family. Eventually, I returned, and we talked of getting together many times. Greg said Dave had developed a drinking problem and that they got together occasionally, but Dave was always drunk. It was too sad for me, and I stayed away. Occasionally, I would receive a text asking about this or that. Always music-related. When I replied, I never received a response. Grief ripped my heart out when I heard of his passing from Greg. I can’t attend funerals for friends. Try as I might, I can never bring myself to face the truth. Plus, they are never around to reminisce. This is just a small taste of the much larger impact he had.