This was going to be a long status update on FaceBook. I opted to put it here, since it was long (and I wanted to add to it) and I haven't posted here in over a year.
So I had a friend when I lived in L.A. who I never really saw on the FaceBooks whenever I'd do a search for him. (I'd see lots of folks who shared his name, however.) And I occasionally would do a Google search for him, to no avail. I last communicated with him not long after I left L.A., just to get his address to mail him a phone he loaned me.
Apparently I haven't done one of those searches in the past 5 years or so. Today I hit the jackpot, but didn't win anything other than confusion and sadness. Apparently he had moved back across the pond.
And back in June of 2010 he killed his ex, his very young son, and himself. That's the theory deemed most likely, anyway.
He was my proofreader at the business card place where I worked the evening shift. He came to pick me up on his motorcycle when my car broke down very late at night on my way home from work (which would put the time at about 12:30 in the morning)--and it wasn't the least frightening of neighborhoods. (In the end, he didn't need to pick me up. A homeless man jerry-rigged my car so it would work, and this friend followed me home, pulling ahead of me and holding off traffic at red lights because if I stopped at a light my car would shut off, maybe for good.) He gave me rides to work on that same motorcycle while my car was being worked on, and he found a mechanic that would give me a good deal on a new engine when it turned out that's what my car needed.
He thought I smoked a lot of weed because of the way my mind worked. And he didn't get my joke about the sticker on his motorcycle helmet meaning he was a fan of "The Panda" (a wrestler I made up) in the World Wrestling Federation. And when I said I wanted "spicy giblets" from the gas station in downtown L.A. where people at work would occasionally send someone to get dinner, he thought I meant a chicken meal, and that's what he brought me. (I meant spicy trail mix, which I called "spicy giblets" for no particular reason. In his defense, it was an honest mistake.)
One time he told me I'd use odd expressions (which I'd learned my mom while I was growing up) that he'd heard while growing up in England (the northern part, if I'm remembering correctly).
I went to parties at his house. He and I saw "The Nightmare Before Christmas" in Culver City... and he tried to beat the parking garage bar as it lowered, and it hit me in my (thankfully) helmet-covered head. I really wish we had been able to keep in touch. He introduced me to Weetabix and pesto. He introduced me to "the stairs" in Santa Monica. He loaned me a bike to use to get there.
Sad and confused. That's what I am. Sad and confused.