Anthems
I hate telling this story. I would rather think about urinal cakes, decapitation, or road kill. However, I have to tell it because you, too, may have a friend like this some day.
It wasn't until that soggy hour of summer where I was dying on one of my occasional, and by occasional I mean every few months or so, jog where I saw his name etched into a birch tree. It was probably put there with one of his many switchblades with a dopey grin on his face and then followed by some morose contortion, a fleck of water pooling in the crevice of his eye; Sölj. Why that stupid umlaut was there to begin with I have no idea and I doubt he did either.
According to him, the name arrived when Sölj moved from New Ipswich, N.H. or "NipNam" which he liked to call it, to Peterborough, about thirty minutes north. His family moved to Lobacki Drive, a cul-de-sac of ranch-style houses. It was there where he met his friends, his worst influences, and his best influences. The story goes that one afternoon during a game of battle hack, (a game similar to hacky-sack however, if you dropped the hacky or if you just weren't paying attention you would be annihilated with the little bean sack) he donned the name. Sölj either wasn't paying attention or just didn't have the crude sense of necessary coordination. Needless to say he got hit quite a few times and because of his endurance, his unwillingness to complain, he stood there and took it. Thus, they named him Soldier, which over time he shortened to Sölj.
* * *
I guess you could say that I am bitter, a bit rouged when it comes to talking about Sölj. You see, he was the type of guy you kept around because you always felt he was tougher than you and for this he would come to your defense. You would think that, however it was always my friend Dylan and I pulling Sölj's ass out of the gutter.
Sölj liked to ferment trouble. Whether it was manhandling every woman around him, whether already spoken for or not, or rousing corporate America by pilfering their products, not much stopped him. His raison d'être was to live a life uninhibited by the laws of nature, by any social contract, only to receive the dividends and to have a story make its way around the campfire, even if he couldn't. I suppose now is that chance. In fact, he would probably be gloating at the idea of me telling you this story. In fact, I can see his Scottish/French-Canadian blend of stubble fanning toward the mid-day light in admiration of himself. However, Sölj, beneath the layers, stolen goods, scars, and tattoos he was in some ways, always a martyr. He was dying for what I always wanted be, and that was to be ruthless, to live by my own doctrine of sorts. He had the mentality, at least so it seemed, that if you love something you give it away or something along the lines of you create your own freedom, it's not given to you. I'm not quite sure what his calling card would say on this matter as I lost it only a few months ago.
From the day I met him, freshman year of high school in Earth Science with Mrs. Eppig, joined together with our musings about how Mrs. Eppig's nipples are eternally erect, I knew he was going to become somewhat of a brother to me. He looked like a greaser and probably smelled that way too. Sölj wore his leather jacket like a hard exterior, too big for his wiry and tender frame. His hair was always standing up like a handful of nails in a formation he liked to call "The Rooster." A faux-hawk that peaked up in the front and then sloped down, stabbing his forehead right in between the creases. The day I met him I thought this kid had to be twenty-five. It wasn't long until I found out that he always went commando and that would be some sort of pre-cursor to his freewheelin' lifestyle.
* * *
Sölj got me into Punk music, the Punk lifestyle, and Punk ideology. My first lesson was the 1998 James Merendino film, SLC Punk. Sölj, Dylan and I watched it one afternoon while skipping the last class of the day.
There is a scene in the film where Heroin Bob and Steve-O, the heroes of the film are 15, pre-high school and they are sitting in Steve-Os basement. Heroin Bob slides out from his coat pocket a cassette and presents it to Steve-O. In Steve-O's pubescent voice he asks what it is. Heroin Bob pops it into the cassette player and says, "It's new." For those who have seen the film, this is the pop-shot, the climax, the moment that makes you remember how you first got into the Blue Meanies, Left Over Crack, NOFX, and Satanic Surfers; that reason for me was Sölj.
It was almost like a guidebook of how to live in a capitalist society and get by on the cheap, with only the scratch in your pocket and no handouts from anyone. It showed the clashes of the rednecks and the anarchists. In a nutshell this movie was our story.
The main characters, Steve-O and Heroin Bob, are the last real punks left in the Mormon inhabited area and all they want to do is "loose mere anarchy upon us." Heroin Bob, whom ironically receives the name never touched drugs in his life and dies from an overdose. Steve wakes up after Heroin Bob's death and becomes a lawyer like his dad.
Okay, so the parallels weren't as direct with Sölj and I. Sölj, as far as I know hasn't had a drug overdose and I am not training to be a lawyer. However, Sölj certainly was on a drug-destined path and I was at that time and now on a path of something a little more traditional, or safe to some degree.
One parallel I can make is that Sölj thought anarchy was everywhere and that he was anarchy and Dylan and I had to support it as his friends.
* * *
In the last year of our friendship Sölj was missing his usual air about him. It was likely to see him only three days out of the week at school. He had quit the track-team where he had risen to glory over the four years he had poured into it, moved to the coast, "Dirty Dover", N.H. as he liked to call it to live with his girlfriend who was just as much a truant as he was. Together they became ambitious, they got into a nice routine of smoking pot and dropping acid.
I got a call from Dylan one night.
"What's up broseph?" This was Dylan's typical affectionate salutation toward me.
"Nothing."
"So I guess Sölj was hanging out with Mirandah tonight and they dropped a ton of acid. I don't know what that kid is thinking. Anyways, I just wanted to call you and let you know that if you hear from him, he may be a little bit messed up."
"When is that kid going to get his life on track? Alright dude, well thanks for the heads up."
We always kept these conversations short and sweet. No need to get too deep into the recurring nightmare that Sölj was becoming for us. We did love him regardless.
The next day I get a call from Sölj.
"What's up man?"
"Nothing," I never seemed to have anything going on. Either I was keeping time open for these calls like a safety net waiting for some trapeze artist to come tumbling in, or I just had nothing to occupy my time with. High school was a sad existence for us all whether we choose to believe it or not.
"So last night Mirandah and I took like five tabs each he he." He always had this stupid sinister laugh that apparently he never thought was too unintelligible.
"And I started freaking out. I was walking down her hallway and these blue and red lights start flashing and of course I thought it was the cops but I guess not. Anyway, the hall was getting smaller and smaller like in Willy Wonka. It was fucked up he he."
"That's great Sölj. You got to be more careful man."
"I know but dude you've got try acid sometime."
"Okay, yeah sure. I'll get right on that," I was trying emphasize my sarcasm and disappointment in a few short breaths. I don't know if that ever worked.
* * *
Sölj was always a schemer, a get rich quick kind of guy and it seemed like for every girlfriend he had, his schemes got all the more clever. It often consisted of stealing women's clothing from Abercrombie & Fitch and remarketing it to unsuspecting teens. Whenever I entered a store with him I had to always consider that we would be coming out with more than which we had entered.
On the weekends and occasional weekdays when he would come home, to Peterborough that is, he'd pick me up in whatever beater he was driving that month and we'd do the usual. Walk around Stop & Shop (an east coast Supermarket chain that has been affectionately re-named Stop & Steal. We seem to have a tendency to rename all that is mundane to us) and snag energy bars or green tea then we would continue around the plaza to Ocean State Job Lot and do more or less of the same. It always made me uncomfortable up until a point where I was just becoming numb, numb to him, numb to our existence, numb to the idea that everything around us was supposed to have some sort of opposition and the only way we could fight back was to chip away at the beast item by item.
* * *
It was middle of the summer and it had been raining for a solid week. Cabin fever was getting the best of my friends and I. Sölj had called me up to see if I wanted to cruise around with him which meant we would hit up the previous mentioned establishments. This time however he wanted to check out Eastern Mountain Sports. This store was chock full of outdoor equipment for mountain climbing, rock climbing, snowboarding, skiing, snowshoeing, camping, you name it which also meant it was chock full of interesting gadgets that could be used in so many ways. There was one item in particular that Sölj was after—a pick axe and had I known the whole time, though I had some suspicions, I never would have entered the store. For about five minutes we pranced around as though we were looking for something specific but would never find it. The floor employees would ask if we needed help with anything. Of course we didn't, we weren't buying anything.
We walked out after our short prowl and I thought for once that maybe Sölj was showing some restrain by the relatively calm look of his face. I was always the naïve one. Of course he took something, it was Sölj. We got into his car, a Mitsubishi Eclipse at the time, and he pulled out from his coat a two-foot pickaxe with a curved yellow handle.
"Sölj, you are a fucking idiot. You are going to get us into some serious trouble one of these days."
He just snickered and the blade of the axe glinted off his wide eyes.
"So, what do you want to do with it?" I thought this was the appropriate question because as much as I feared the repercussions of having this item I knew it would be fun.
"Let's climb!" He said with a shoestring grin.
We went downtown, which was more or less the equivalent of one city block with two parks on opposite ends. We headed over to the Historical Society where there was a decent sized field behind it and running perpendicular to the field was a fifty-foot stonewall.
He gave me a boost up and I began to hack away, digging the axe into the crevices and patches of moss as pieces of dirt and ivy came rolling down on top of him. I eventually made it to the top feeling accomplished and quite ridiculous seeing as I just scaled what was never intended to be a rock wall in downtown Peterborough, New Hampshire.
I threw the axe down to him trying to leave enough room between him and the axe to ensure that he wouldn't be impaled. He joined me at the top. I was Sir Edmund Hillary and he was my Sherpa.
We got down and throughout the day continued on this frenzy with the axe, feeling silly and young as ever. Two weeks later he sold the axe on E-Bay for $200 and bought a Burmese Python with the money.
* * *
I didn't believe in him or his ideas anymore. I didn't believe in our friendship anymore, we just mutually existed on the same plane but mine was beginning to break off like Antarctic ice. It got to a point where he was quitting everything; Rivermead, a retirement home where he worked as a waiter, school, teachers, mentors, his parents and the like. But, to his credit he always seemed to have a plan. The last few months of high school he had moved into a trailer that his boss (the proprietor of a landscaping company in the area) owned.
I went to visit one night. He came to escort me from my car because I have always had an aversion to German Shepherds and they seemed to be everywhere that night. When I was 10 I used to hang out with Nick Estey, the police chief's son however, a few months later a scandal would have the chief hang up the badge. At that time I was 42" tall. I only recall this because measuring my peers and myself was the thing to do while unknowingly waiting for those ripe puberty years. We had just gotten back from an arcade and the moment I stepped out of his parent's Volvo the dog tackled me to the ground. I stayed at his house the whole weekend and every time I maneuvered around his house, to take a piss, to go the kitchen, to enter the next room, he would have to grab his dog by the collar as I proceeded.
Once I got inside the trailer, I felt stuck and I wasn't even the one living there. There was one window in the back and one on the door, a galley kitchen, and pictures of these beloved German Shepherds everywhere. Sölj was drawing up his most recent tattoo idea. I failed to mention that around our junior year Sölj had decided on a whim, per usual, that he wanted to get into tattooing. He ordered a kit from a catalog complete with ink, ink wells, tracing paper, industry standard black latex gloves, needles, rubbing alcohol, tubes, rubber bands, and the gun.
I should have seen all of this coming. He was the first to be inked of my friends. He had tattooed himself and then me, then countless others who always seemed to regret their ink in the aftermath. I know I still do. When I was seventeen he gave me my first. It was an Aum symbol. I felt at the time I needed to dedicate myself to something and why not dharma? The truth. However, I got it tattooed on my back— never a good place for the truth.
We were walking around town and impulsive me had to ask:
"Hey Sölj, you want to give me a tattoo?"
"Yes," he said with that wicked grin.
We immediately went to his house, down the end of the hall to his room where we couldn't be seen nor heard, not that anyone was home to catch us in the act. His room was painted with a camouflage pattern on the walls, cross country trophies and medals stood and dangled in every corner. Tucked into the frame of his mirror were motivational quotes, none of which I can recall. I suppose I didn't need the same motivation. Everywhere there were heaps of clothes, discarded and crushed 20 oz. Arizona Green Tea cans, guitar cables and cases, and army paraphernalia. I had seen his room before this point but I had never really seen his room, I had never really examined the hope that was intrinsic in that place, which he could never see.
Sölj sat me down as he drew up the sketch, then with his cold latexed hands he shaved the spot on my shoulder blade where the tattoo would go and rubbed it down with alcohol. After a few adjustments to the power source of the tattoo gun, he stepped on the pedal and drew a line with the needle on my back.
"Does that feel alright?"
"Yeah, it feels fucking awesome," I said snidely.
"Ok man, well are you sure you still want to do this?"
"Go ahead. Fuck it!"
The needle roared and carved into my flesh, I felt like turkey meat and I could smell the ink and skin burning in one combined scent. I loved it. I hated it. I loved it.
After 30 minutes of torture and ecstasy had finished, wiped the remaining ink off my back into a smear and walked me into his bathroom to check it out in the tri-fold mirror.
"Sölj, this is amazing! I love it."
"Good."
I could see in the sparkle of his eye that he felt accomplished and the start of something new; I felt desecrated and rewarded, but also the start of something new.
He had his station prepped, the same tracing paper that had come with the kit a year ago where he had been squeezing image after image next to one another. He was planning to write something along the lines of 'Lone Wolf' across the top of his feet. How appropriate. 'Lone Wolf,' his solution and his decree in life. At this point I could feel nothing more than pity for him and what a shitty feeling that is. Sölj wasn't someone you pitied because you knew he would figure it out, and if not then, soon. He would inevitably get back up on his feet.
I kept looking around the place with discomfort and despair. I knew only Sölj could live in a place like this and not complain. With the low lights, the one bed, the bathroom I couldn't even see from the doorway, and the few windows, I thought it a prison cell.
"So are you going to stay here for a while?" trying to subtly emphasize my disapproval.
"Until I get my bearings. You know me, it'll be fine."
I knew it would be fine but I didn't know what kind of fine. I didn't know if that trailer was the end of the road or the beginning of the trail. I left him there in his insular universe as I was feeling more disconnected and useless than ever. I didn't need an escort out this time; you could have fed me to the dogs that night.
* * *
We had made it to graduation and the impending haunt of higher education was around the proverbial corner. For Sölj college was not a castle in the sky and Dylan and I began to sense that this was the reason for the distance. How could I feel guilty? He was offered a full-ride scholarship for track and his talents outside of that world had always seemed endless to me. It was just Sölj turning the other cheek, running, always running, the lamest metaphor for anyone but lame.
That summer life had spiraled out of his hands and there was no shelter from the storm, for any of us. There was little Dylan and I could do and it wasn't like he was a toddler beholden to us. He had to fuck up but that meant we would have to deal with it eventually. However, it seemed like there was no room and no time for intervention. I had withdrawn faith at this point and now its all fog. Where we went in those last few months I have no recollection but what was coming next I never forgot.
* * *
I ended up at school in Chicago to pursue a writing career. It was October and I was standing in my girlfriend's kitchen waiting to cook something up. For all I know it was probably bacon because God knows I never had any food and my love for bacon seemed to gross everyone out which was fine by me.
I received a call from Sölj, unexpected as we kept talking to a minimum now. He went on and on about how his life was changing, how he had plans, always fool proof plans. It went as such: he was going to leave his girlfriend, quit his job at the Olive Garden and come invade my life for a three week jaunt prior to Thanksgiving. Great! After that he wanted to head to Montana to see Dylan and he planned to fund this whole one man road-show by tattooing his way across the country which I think Dylan and I could both agree would never happen.
* * *
It was around two in the afternoon, Halloween day and I was in the middle of a beginner poetry workshop listening to young intellects pick apart poems as though they were best fit to offer such critiques. We were still getting over the phenomenon that poetry is more than sonnets yet, we felt prepared enough to comment.
Needless to say, I knew Sölj was going to be arriving that day but I wasn't sure when and I thought I was sure where. He sent me a text message with an abrupt sputtering that he was at 6666 W. Chicago Ave. his phone was going to die, he had no money and no gas.
I sighed to myself thinking what a surprise. He had always gotten up to go but never planned too far in advance, it's like getting off the toilet and forgetting to wipe then carrying on with your day. I think that would have been too cumbersome or orderly for him.
Being new to the city I asked my professor if she knew where said address was. She explained that it was at the west end of the blue line and from there one would probably have to take a bus. I was already losing interest in his visit and losing focus in the poetry battles unfurling across the classroom tables.
Class got out and I strolled down the staircase ready to get this over with, to go find him because after all he was my best friend and I was excited that someone had finally decided they would come visit, I think it was perhaps best that it was Sölj of all people. I needed home to come to me when I couldn't go to it.
On the staircase I crossed paths with my roommate Chris who was just getting out of class.
"Do you wanna' go on an adventure?"
"Ugh, sure. Where are we headed?"
"Well, Sölj made it to Chicago, but not to Chicago so we have to go find him."
Chris looked mildly distressed but intrigued at the same time. I think we were both feeling that way but we decided what better way to get to know the city then to go on a wild goose chase for a wild goose.
We had no idea where we were headed. It was all getting to be a little too eerie as I was firm believer in the mystique of Halloween and the mystique that Sölj has always carried with him. After much confusion we get on the right bus and Chris and I begin to realize we were the only white kids on the bus as we get farther and farther from city limits. This was not a problem at first until we decided to get off the bus for some misguided reason. We walked around a bit, probably looking scared out of our wits and decided that maybe, yet again, we should get back on the bus. So we waited, out of costume, exposed, quiet and ponderous.
Chris was leaning up against the bus stop pole and I was pacing around anxious as ever as it got darker and the chances grew dimmer of finding Sölj. A group began to approach us, everyone was in costume, about eight guys and two girls. A masked man started to get closer and closer to Chris until he was up in his face. Chris stood like a preserved deer; he didn't say a word. The masked man lingered in Chris's space for good few minutes and in that time I was thinking 'Are they going to beat him up?' ' Are they going to beat me up?' 'Am I going to have to beat them up? I'm too small to do much damage, or at least anything life saving.'
Why a fight was the first thing that came to mind I have no idea. Perhaps it was because the only words out of the masked man's mouth were, "Let's crease his ass!" I didn't know what that meant and still don't, all I could think was potential for something that would sound like a prison story.
We pressed on and from across the street only more trouble, though temporary. Two kids had launched some eggs at Chris and I. The first one just barely missed me and the second one caught Chris in the knee. We didn't know that night we would be in for such a ride—that we would be so un-welcomed in a region of the country that is considered to be one of the friendliest, that Martin Luther King Junior's teachings would have failed us all.
We arrived at the River Forest stop after deciding to get back on the blue line and could no longer see the spires of the Sear's Tower. This meant no longer Chicago. At the station I went over to the attendant and asked him how to get to 6666 W. Chicago Ave. He seemed to have a relatively little idea of where that may be but he suggested we get on yet another bus. At that point Chris and I were done with busses and the only ones we saw were PACE busses, a whole other line that our student U-Passes could not afford us.
Instead we walked. Chris had his compass on him, he was always prepared, a true boy scout. We felt as though we were fast approaching and became a little excited as we scraped our feet over the pavement in great strides. I was still nonetheless doubtful. To our left I noticed a mechanics garage. I was thinking about The Graduate however, we weren't about to break up a wedding. The American psyche always caught up in film. I don't think Chris was too keen on this but we were looking for my friend and somehow I thought that entitled me to make the executive decisions.
All the lights were off from the outside and just a few dangled overhead on the inside of the garage. Three men were standing around a table made of plywood covered in odds and ends, grease rags, cans of lubricant and WD-40. In each of their hands they cupped a beer, I think it was Rolling Rock, nothing special. They were standing around shooting the breeze and us two knuckleheads, panic-stricken and desperate came rolling in.
The man was rotund, probably six foot five, and appeared to be the head mechanic only because he took the initiative to ask Chris and I if we needed help. His Chicago accent was thick and exaggerated, short on the vowels. "Can I help you?" The two other men, one scrappy and middle-aged and the other old and grey looked on in equal perplexity.
"Yeah, we're looking to get to 6666 W. Chicago Ave."
"Ah, okay. What you need to do is go about four blocks west; go under a bridge, then four blocks north toward Franklin Avenue. Franklin meets up with Chicago."
He may as well have been directing two blind mice on how to get out of a paper bag. Chris and I tried it anyways. The suburbs were quiet, an echo of nothing I had ever heard before, and calm. It was about ten at night and the Halloween festivities had swept over on through the mansions and there he was, like a cottar holding down his fort, a white Chevy Impala, or something of that kind. I never knew cars as well as he did.
I went over to tap on the window, as it appeared no one was occupying the car caked in dirt. 'Great, he's dead,' I thought. As we got closer Chris and I realized that Sölj had put the seat back and was sleeping until he popped up and opened the door sluggishly. He was smiling regardless, excited to see me as it had been months and pleased to make Chris's acquaintance. We all hopped in the car as we marveled about how Sölj could get so far outside the city. I thought the directions I had given him were pretty clear but his independence had led him elsewhere and away from the thought of calling me for help. It didn't matter so much; we were back together, back in the saddle. The bash brothers were ready to take on Chicago for the next few days, and I must say, his car reeked to the high heavens.
* * *
We arrived at my dorm, which was more of an apartment, at around nine that night. Sölj was mesmerized by the hum of the city, the vast spaces and the crowded ones. A year prior I was just another country bumpkin like him but now I had worn the city-life on me like a suit and tie.
When we got to my room he set his stuff down and made himself at home. He spread his bag of tattoo magazines out across the floor and stacked his tattoo gear in a corner next to his army bag filled with only a few days worth of clothes.
Sölj and I spent sometime catching up which didn't take too long. I took him around to meet all the friends I had acquired in just a few months. I was hoping they would take to him. It became evident to me that they thought he was rude and out of context, I suppose he was. In New Hampshire we always had this ball-busting nature about us but to others it came off a bit too frank. For instance Sölj would refer to me as an "art fag." To many people and even to me, at times, the term itself is terribly offensive however, coming from him it meant no harm, it was almost endearing suffice it to say.
After these brief introductions, I decided I wanted to get another tattoo from him this time, the outline of New Hampshire on the back of my calf. I was a bit homesick and I thought 'Why not bring home onto my leg and have everyone confuse it for a birthmark for the rest of my life?'
Chris was also excited about the prospect of free tattoos especially on our living room couch so he decided to go the Buddhist route himself. He had the monkey wrench from Robert M. Pirsig's 1974 Chautauqua, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance tattooed to both of his hipbones. They looked impressive at first but now I'm not so proud to walk around with shorts on and Chris lives in his bathrobe.
The following morning Sölj and I needed to address his parking situation. When he arrived the night before I picked up the cost of parking because Sölj was broke and I for some reason thought it would work itself out for the next few days.
We went down to the garage to retrieve the slip he had placed on his dashboard and brought it back up to my room. There we scanned the slip onto my computer thinking we could change the numbers that way. No such success. Instead we tried to find the closest looking font, changed the number to that day's date and repeated this process for the duration of his stay. If it wasn't for Sölj's d.i.y. savvy nature, I'm not sure how he would have survived.
With no money came other problems for him but really that meant for us. He couldn't buy food and I was getting low on cash myself however I had a meal plan that I avoided like the plague but they were desperate times. I would go to the dining hall with plastic bags and Ziploc containers and bring back as much food as I could so he could sustain life. It wasn't great food but he didn't care. I have always admired the survivalists but could never be one; Sölj fulfilled this for me.
Later that day I had to go to class and when I returned Sölj was missing. I wasn't quite sure where the hell he would have or could have gone. I searched around for him like a parent looking for a child under piles of laundry and other nonsensical objects that could in no way conceal an infant or a twenty year old. When I came to my senses I called him and he told me he was in the garage taking care of something.
* * *
"Zach, you have to get your ass down here and see this!"
Heeding his advice, something I seldom did, I went down to the garage not knowing what to expect.
Sölj was wearing a black tank top and a pair of black latex gloves. His legs were sticking out of the passenger side of the car flailing around and his head was faced toward me with the most nauseated expression I had ever seen. One hand was inside his dashboard and the other rested on his lap; he was pulling at something but I was keeping a far enough distance to be unable to identify what could be the cause of such anguish.
The smell was something I recalled from when I had found him Halloween night, which I tried to ignore then. He had mentioned something about his snake going missing while he was stopped at a gas station somewhere in upstate New York.
" I went to pump gas and when I got back to my car she was gone. I looked everywhere and had no clue where she could have ended up. By the time I got to Ohio I realized, oh fuck; she's in the dashboard. She crawled up there and died. She's been drying out in there the whole way to here, stinking this car up."
When he told me that I couldn't quite envision the size of the snake. The name Burmese Python meant nothing to me. I had no idea what size this snake was, for all I knew it was the size of a Gartner Snake, which was no threat to me.
I stood there, a safe 10 feet, covering my mouth and trying not to gag. The whole time Sölj's head was cocked at me and for 20 minutes we could only articulates grunts and dry-heaves. Halfway into the mission, liquid began to drip from the glove box and I could start to see the belly of the snake with Sölj's hand gripped flaccidly around it. I suggested that Sölj just rip it out like a band-aid and he did just that. The size of the snake finally became apparent and it was no Gartner Snake. This thing was roughly four feet long, jaundice, and dead.
Without a moments hesitation he threw the snake directly into the trashcan and we both waited until we got away to take a breath of some fresh air, then we proceeded with laughter.
* * *
I had no more classes for the day and decided it would be a good idea to get Sölj accustomed to the city. It didn't help that my solution was to go the zoo considering our near death experience that morning, but Sölj took the bait anyways.
We rode the twenty-two bus across town up to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which was far from impressive that November. At that time of year it was too cold for any of the exciting animals to be hanging out, I guess that was the job of the people, to be the exciting ones that is.
It was a beautiful day to be at the zoo as the monkeys ate their feces and the elks looked off in distances as if they were recalling the real habitats from whence they came. Sölj looked off, not caring about where he came from. At that time he was only concerned with where he was heading.
We strolled along Lake Michigan for a three-hour walk back to my dorm and more disappointments. In that three hours I think we both found how lost in our lives we were.
"Zach, you're out here doing things with your life."
"I know man, but you'll figure it out. You are a hell of an artist."
"I think I want to go to culinary school."
"Really," I was taken aback but could see it happening in the same moment. We continued to talk, not really getting any further than we normally had, still lost in the chasms of pre-adulthood. We spoke of the women in our lives which was typical for us and where we would want to be in a few years, how Dylan had always been a distant member of the "tripod," that was Sölj, Dylan, and myself.
Our walk had worked up a thirst and I think Sölj was ready for the glamorous college life—the one that consisted of binge drinking, trivial make outs, and pure hell raising. We didn't quite to do all of that but we decided to meet up with my neighbor and her friends who happened to be visiting that same weekend. In agreement we chipped in our money, what little of it we had for a case of beer and headed off toward the beach.
I wasn't much in the mood for drinking, I sparingly had about two beers whereas Sölj was going for glory, taking in the mating calls of the skyline's flashing lights. I could tell he felt a little bit smaller in the world; his words were few as he paced up and down the shore. He had left his girlfriend, his job, his parents whom at that time he could care less about, to settle upon a more than uncertain future of hustling and running. I again did what you never do to Sölj; I pitied him.
After a few hours of exchanging stories with my neighbor's cohorts we sluggishly traipsed back to our beds. Along the way Sölj was speaking to me in a half sardonic, half depressed voice. I felt he was on the verge of tears as he was saying how much he loved me. Those words have never sat well with me, not because they came out of his mouth but for a history much longer than our friendship, have those words plagued me.
* * *
To my surprise we didn't finish the beer so we dropped it off in Sölj's trunk for what we thought would be our next night of debauchery.
The following day we didn't do much, we were low on funds, and I was running out of ideas on how to entertain him. We watched Requiem for a Dream to pass the time but it did nothing more than depress the living shit out of us and make Sölj think about never doing drugs. Had that been the case I wouldn't be telling this story.
Night was descending and there was beer to be consumed. Sölj grabbed the twelve remaining Miller High-Life, the champagne of beers, and dumped them into his camouflaged bag. He didn't bother to cover them up with a shirt though I suggested it. I guess I should have explained that if we got caught that was it, he was gone. But that was him—the ever-fearless soldier.
We entered the building and walked past the security desk. My stomach and heart were moving ferociously as my feeble legs carried me. I had Sölj go first. He had nothing to lose; he was already more or less homeless.
Goldie, the sixty-something security guard, called us over. Here was our fate.
"Open your bag!"
Whenever Sölj was in these situations his guilty conscience would kick in and his tough guy attitude would evaporate. He compliantly opened the bag.
"Ahh, you done it now. Adam's gonna' be mad at you!" pointing and glaring in my direction. I could've sworn that was in a movie somewhere. Adam was my residence assistant. I needed no assistance. I knew at that point I had fucked up and Sölj had fucked up, not to mention my dad's words from the weeks before Sölj's arrival were ringing in my ears.
"You know he's a liability, Zach."
So there it was. My dad's words became true, my apprehensions realized, and the soldier had to be deployed.
Adam made us empty the cans into what had appeared to be the beer sink for all the other delinquents who had preceded us in trying to be as clever. One by one, the foamy liquid fell to the sink, splashing and whirl pooling down the drain. That was hardly where our melancholy was at as Sölj peered to look at me and I grinned back.
The next step was to go up to my room with Sölj and Adam to clear out Sölj's things. He grabbed his tattoo gear, his bags, put on his cowboy boots and we headed to his car to say our last goodbye.
"Here's $20 man. It's the best I can do. I'm really sorry this happened. Ramblers got to keep ramblin'."
"Naww, don't worry about it. I mean I was the one who brought it in. I'll be fine."
I gave him a firm hug, wished him a safe trip and told him to be sure to call me along his way. I didn't know where he was going to go next or how he would get there. The rest of the night I was a nervous wreck and debated whether to tell my parents. I didn't want to prove them right and I didn't want them to know that I was in trouble too for having a guest sneak in alcohol. I deferred to the next evening:
"Dad, I don't really know how to put it and I don't want you to get angry but Sölj and I got busted trying to bring beer into the building and so...he had to go. He doesn't have any money, I have him $20 but I doubt that will even get him through Indiana. I'm not sure what to do."
"Jesus Zach, I told you this would happen."
"I know, I know—"
"Alright well see if you can get his credit card number and maybe I can wire him some cash."
"His phone is dead. I guess I'll just keep you posted and we can talk about this later."
"Alright, please do and just try to get some sleep."
"Alright Pops. I'll talk to you and mom later."
Though my dad new Sölj almost as well as I did he wasn't one to give up on him either. In some ways I even saw my dad thinking of Sölj as his own son but I think for his sake he was glad he wasn't.
* * *
For the next couple of days I would talk to Sölj for a few minutes at a time. I would ask where he was and how he was doing; if he was making progress and getting anywhere near New Hampshire. Apparently he had pawned DVDs and whatever odds and ends he could find in his car to pay for gas money and panhandled the rest of the way home. According to a mutual friend of ours Sölj was relieving himself at a rest stop in Ohio where I man start to sexually harass him. Sölj usually carried a weapon with him and this time Sölj had a knife with an 8-inch blade handy. The guy backed off.
I didn't see Sölj again until Thanksgiving where he opted not to eat with his family and decided to come eat with mine. We sat at the end of the table; a safe distance from the rest of my relatives who probably would have ate him alive. They all claimed to be liberals but some leaned a little more conservatively and I doubt Sölj's life philosophies would have bode well with them.
After his exhaustive yet short visit to Chicago I knew then and forever on our friendship would no longer be the same. His drug habits kicked up tenfold from dropping acid to doing coke and selling everything in between. I wasn't interested in that Sölj. The Sölj I knew, that was a brother to me, was a guy I could count on to go his own route, to do things the right way but his way which made it right in that it was authentic to itself. He was the excitement in my life that I didn't have even though this excitement came out of some half-baked ideas. The drugs, I didn't want.
After more time passed I sent him a text to see if he wanted to go see a movie and he told me that he would get back to me on it. I didn't know what was so hard about saying yes or no to seeing a movie. When I didn't hear back for a few hours I pressed the question on him again. At that point he went off, the button I pushed I could not see. He told me I had been a ghost (this was all via text message mind you) and that he had a more solid group of new friends. I rebutted by expressing their only interest was one of necessity and that was foundered on drugs. He didn't seem to think so. Sölj gave me a brief lecture on how I had no idea what I was talking about because I wasn't a drug user. Well, that was true however, I have seen many friends other than Sölj get on the path he was on and they had enough common sense to turn around, even if only for a little while. For him, I wasn't so sure.
We had a 30-minute stream of incendiary messages and he had made the ultimate decision, to cut me out of his life and delete my phone number. I can't say a part of me died then but I had a bit of fury and a bit of remorse in me that still hasn't left.
The last time I ever spoke to him was in August of 2008. I had seen him at a party decked out in camouflage and some ridiculously tight red pants with his signature cowboy boots and his signature army bag. He was with a fellow adversary of mine who had become his new drug buddy; they were somewhat co-dependent. I tried to make alms and talk but he was too messed up on something or other and I was maybe too drunk to handle the situation effectively, so we didn't.
In the end I took his advice, the one philosophy of his that I now have come to agree with—you have to cut your losses. To this day I have dreams about him where he is fucked up on something or where he is homeless and looking for my help. I want to help him, I wish I could have helped all my friends who brought such energy to my life, as though they all wore capes that enveloped the cosmos and were delighted to share them with me. But, I had to realize, you let the good ones go.
He now lives in South Carolina with his dad, his Pit-bull, and some existence unbeknownst to me.
© 2009 Zachary Green
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