Brian, My Friend.

Brian died this week.

For a while, we were inseparable.

I knew Brian’s family most of my life. He was the youngest of nine children and we served mass as altar boys, went to the same schools; we were from the same neighborhood and were Italian/Irish-American Catholic. I had never actually met Brian personally, though, until we were in our twenties. I’d just graduated college and he was finishing up at Saint Mary’s and we were both employed at Marin General Hospital. He was an Emergency Room technician and I worked in the warehouse and Central Supply department. In my capacity as a clerk in the supply department, I was responsible for forwarding messages to the technicians. Move a patient, deliver surgical supplies, help with an overburdened Emergency Room. Brian was an amazing worker and when he was in the ER he saved lives. He had been trained in the Army and had just completed an undergraduate degree in pre-med and he never hesitated getting into the thick of the trauma. He saved lives. He brought people back from the dead. In an Emergency Room that’s a goddamned good asset. It didn’t matter that he drank a bit, was late for his shift and was sometimes unkempt. When Brian appeared, the nurses and docs and other techs breathed a sigh of relief. They knew that they had a smart, knowledgeable guy with guts and experience working alongside them.

He liked working three shifts in a row in the ER. It was grueling, exhausting, but he was making double- and triple-time-pay and only had to work one twenty-four hour stretch to make enough money for the rest of the week. Medical personnel often burned out with those kinds of hours, but the supervisors knew that Brian thrived on the stress and they were grateful that he had the desire. They gladly paid him premium wages for the extra hours.

I was answering the phone and taking orders in the Central Supply Department in the basement of the hospital when we met. I think it was Christmastime, when hospital employees who had a few minutes downtime went from department to department enjoying Christmas goodies, parties, and sometimes, drinks. I kept a bottle of brandy my desk. I didn’t advertise it; I thought I was being pretty discreet; the bottle was hidden in my lower right hand desk drawer all year, not only for the holidays. I’d just been introduced to Brian; we recognized each other from the neighborhood but it was the first time we’d worked together. He sat down, reached over and picked up my Styrofoam cup of fortified coffee, smelled it, wiggled his eyebrows and held out his own cup. I looked around, cautious, poured a healthy shot for him, and we became friends. When I found out he also enjoyed cocaine, our friendship was cemented.

Brian had a baby face with an ironman’s body and his appearance was deceptive. His eyes were shifty blue marbles under light brown curly hair. He had a loose-lipped smile and a fast, easy manner, but he was tough. He’d played college Rugby, was a balls-out fearless skin diver and river rafter. I once saw him throw himself out of a raft that was charging over class four rapids on the American River above Sacramento. He swam across the river, splashed the people in another raft, stole a couple of beers and swam back. The rest of us were just trying to stay onboard and not drown or die or be crushed and sucked under by the fast moving water, and he was bouncing around like a drunken otter.

He could punch, too. One of the two best short right hands I’ve ever seen.

We were in Matteucci’s bar. I was drinking and talking with the bartender and he was playing darts with some loudmouths he’d just met. There was noise at the dartboard. One of the loudmouths was accusing Brian of cheating.

And he was right; Brian cheated. He knew how to cheat at cards, dice, and darts. He even cheated at trivial pursuit.

In the Bad Eighties we’d get high on blow and booze and play Trivial Pursuit for hours. It was my turn to ask a question; I held the card and read, “What actress waited for the postman to ring?” or something equally dopey and stupid. Brian and I watched a lot of movies and had pretty good memories, but, trashed on coke and brandy, we often found that the word was on the tip of our tongue, we knew the movie, the record, the book, but couldn’t get the answer.

Brian said, “I have to piss.”

He went into the small bathroom across the hall and I heard him pee and flush. He came out and said, “Lana Turner, The Postman Always Rings Twice.” I gave him the point and when it was my turn to go to the restroom I saw that he had the 1500 page copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide propped on the back of the toilet. He’d pissed with one hand and looked up the title of the movie with the other. I wondered how many times he’d done that. I knew we were pretty evenly matched, but he always found an edge.

The noise at the dartboard escalated and I turned around. Everyone in the joint was watching. Brian, animated and chatty, was showing how his darts had actually landed over the line and how he had won the game. I know that he had moved them, quickly, deftly, when he rushed to the dartboard to count up his points. He blocked his opponent’s view with his broad back and held the darts in one hand and gestured with the other, distracting the players with his chatter, the same way that he’d done when he cheated at dice or cards. This time he’d been caught.

One of the loudmouths approached. He was about Brian’s size and he was yammering about cheating; he wouldn’t let up. They’d been playing for money and he wasn’t letting Brian get away with it. He stood close to Brian, chest to chest, and I knew that he was getting ready to swing but a half second before he did I saw Brian’s fist shoot up in a short, jabbing arch, clip the dude, hard, on the tip of his chin. The guy went down, dropped, and, with the momentum of the punch, rolled up against the jukebox and stayed there, dangerously still, like a log.

We were regulars at the bar, but they threw us out that night. They said we were “troublemakers”. The bartender made us stay away for two days and then we went back.

We would hit two or three bars in a night, sometimes just drinking and talking, but other times, tough times, we were there to buy dope. There were several days a year, Christmas, Easter, whatever, when it was hard to score. Then we’d just drift through the bars until we found someone who wanted to sell us some. It always worked out.

Worked out. Maybe not. There are hundreds of stories about Brian and me, but in 1994, at the end of an almost thirty-year run, after some bad times and big trouble, I quit drinking and using drugs. I stayed out of the many bars we frequented and Brian and I stopped seeing each other as much. A little while later Brian got married. He asked me to be best man at his wedding and I agreed. During the ceremony, I scanned the guests and realized that I was Brian’s best man because most of his other friends were becoming uncomfortable around him. His drinking and drug use was a problem. He was losing respect, was sometimes foolish and embarrassing, and was always trying to get something for free. The marriage failed disastrously.

I moved to New Mexico and Brian called a few times but his voice was mumbling and unintelligible. About six or seven years ago he stopped calling and I heard that he was drinking more, hanging out with aging dope dealers, scrounging for freebies.

And then, Monday, a mutual friend emailed me his obituary. He died in the tattered little house that he’d bought when he had a bit of money. The roof leaked and was draped in a thick blue plastic tarp and there was an old station wagon in the carport with four flat tires.

Brian was the funniest, fastest, smartest and strongest and he died. It's really only an assumption on my part that he died as a result of too many years of drinking and drug use. I quit; he didn’t. 

I’m lucky. God damn. I wish he had been lucky, too.