February 28, 2010

• Goodbye Jayan

  You’ll get over it… It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it’ is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not erased by anyone but death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no one else can fit. Why would I want them to?”

  Before I even try and begin with specific memories or instances the first thing that comes to mind is just how much time I spent over at their apartment doing nothing. sitting on the couch watching tv, deciding on the spur of the moment to walk down to the supermarket and grab food to cook dinner for the three of us or whoever else came over. I was the third roomate, but never the third wheel.

  The month I spent as Jayans actual roomate…watching season after season of stargate sg-1. Playing god of war or call of duty, trading off at harder places or having Jayan chime in telling me some secret I missed or laughing at some fuck up.

  The endless bouts of cooking…top chef competitions aside, we ate dinner together at least once a week for 5 years, and our skills esclated proportionately. The experimentation doing things as simple as alfredo sauce to habanero-honey seasoned oat-encrusted blue cheese filled turkey meatballs. Never have you seen two men get so excited about cooking and therefore naturally turn it into a competition. We would derive challenges that we would each have to follow making country themed burritos from india and greece or creating a three course meal based on an emotion, color, and protein. Though it’s hard to select just one memory when so many fight for my attention, I think I will miss having my cooking soulmate the most.

  I find myself having to pause constantly in the middle of writing this entry, to walk away, and come back to it because it is too overwhelming, too daunting a task to try and record an entire friendship, a truncated lifetime in a single post. All I can do is hope to give you a sense of one of my closest friends and perhaps along the way give myself some closure by setting virtual pen to paper and putting down some of my favorite memories before they fade away into the sands of time.

  Teaching Cabbies to sing bon jovi and journey, convincing them it would help them blend in to american culture better.

  Turning any bar we walked into into a karaoke bar with only one drink.

  Playing co-op on resistance and call of duty into the late hours of the morning, nothing more important than beer and saving the earth, not to mention the key strategies we would come up with.

  The boy band acts which we wrote and choreographed together then performed to the delight of our school talent show

  The air band acts we would tape and put up on youtube, always the same 3 songs we loved to sing

  The pirates of the carribean drinking game, or the aliens v predator drinking game, where the two of us got so fall down drunk we were reduced to monosyllables and had some of the best times watching the worst movies ever

  The games of taboo riddled with so many inside jokes it wasnt fair to any team competing against us, because a mere word or gesture gave away the clue.

  The random wanderings and the time Jayan passed out drunk 2 miles from the bar we were at, and we only found out when some strangers picked up his phone and told us our friend was passed out on their lawn

  Watching heroes and rooting for sylar, or discussing what was going on in the world of marvel comics and how we would do things differently if we had superpowers, or more likely be just as obnoxiouds

  The constant st patricks day adventures

  hanging out at lucky strike before any amc movie and buying childrens tix, then arguing that we deserved them when we were caught

  The wonderful education in beer Jayan gave me, as 5 years ago i didnt even like bud light and now I find myself making beer pairings with dishes and recommendations to friends on over 100 beers you have taught me to enjoy, not to mention finally finding a scotch I liked

  finding out on multiple occasions that his girlfriend had brought us out to celebrate at a gay bar or gay night before we realized it, and Jayan staying just as happy because everyone was buying him drinks and commenting how sharp he looked

  The time Jayan convinced some random frat boys that he was the dude from slumdog millionaire

  The street pizza where we decided to test the accuracy of the 5 second rule

  The fact that I knew I always had a place to stay in chicago, a drinking buddy, someone to party with, and a guaranteed adventure well worth a story whenever I was in Jayans company.

  And of course, the unforgettable drunk face we all tried to emulate

  These one line memories are not a fitting memorial to the work of art that you were, but seeing any of them helps to bring back thoughts of the good times and all the adventures we had in our past. I walk away from our friendship a changed person, and I like to think one for the better, one who is more spontaneous, one more willing to talk to strangers and one who wont lose sight of the fact that life is nothing if not an adventure. For all the pain your death has caused, I wouldnt give up one moment of it if I had to lose even a single memory of our fun times

  So goodbye my friend…those of us who remain will do our best to step up our game to help fill the gap you leave behind, to make your memory proud and to keep your motto alive

  Good Friends, Good Times.

  • 2:13 pm
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