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Joe... it took a month, but I can finally speak...
For the past month i've been sitting on the death of someone I love more than life itself, and with the recent loss of another huge influence in my life I am now having a harder time keeping the thoughts and wishes in. But there's never been a time or place to release them.
most of you know that I've experienced a lot of loss in the past couple of years already. I still haven't entirely come to terms with my mother's death, and I was never allowed a venue to express exactly what she meant to me. It destroyed me for years afterward. With Tom and Julia came a lot of eye opening, and a lot of personal change. I'd already lost who I believed at the time to be the love of my life, and watched his name and reputation be dragged in the dirt for something he didn't do by someone who I'd given every ounce of trust I ever had. I was completely broken. But quite literally there was one person that made themselves available to me, and made me want to wake up every day of my life with all of this filth around me.
I met him while walking down Santa Monica and having a 'double take' after meeting juicy jay and insisting that I had seen 'that bastard' Jeffree Star walking around (who later I found out was just Robbie Styles in huge shoes looking altered through my beer goggles haha)
I met Sabastian first, then Chrys, and eventually everyone in Blaq! that was playing at Club Vodka - then at 7969 in Hollywood. Joe captivated me as being the most confident and solid looking boy in the group. He didn't say much, but he had the most intense interested look on his face when I was talking to his band members. After that night I hung out with everyone in the band regularly except for Joe.... I hadn't realized this was because he had only been 14 at the time. I was shocked when I found out, just like everyone else!
Somewhere in the time before summer started in 2004, I became homeless due to a misunderstanding and a very dramatic set of girls. With only having known them for a few months, the members of Blaq! began taking me in and letting me sleep on their floors. It wasn't particularly well known at the time that I had an extremely heavy drug habit.... and I'm not sure at the time many people knew that Joe did too. And even though it may not have been the best thing to bring us together, I'm thankful it did.
I think what will always stand out in my mind the most is the time I spent at his house while the parents and his brother were on vacation. For a week we did nothing but eat chef boyardee out of the can, drink, get high and talk about everything that could be turned into a topic. We would submerge ourselves in conversations that I've never been able to hold with anyone else. He was so smart, so well spoken, and had a valid well explained opinion about everything I could dish out. To this day I've never had a more stimulating conversation or argument than with Joe. He had this incredible way to defend his point and shoot yours down without hurting anyone's feelings. I called out of work most of that week just because I never wanted to stop talking. Sometimes we'd get so caught up on a subject that we'd say nothing at all, and fall asleep with our heads under the blankets on his bed. That week something had happened, i'm not sure what, but I had nowhere to go and I'd gotten sick. It was so hot out that sleeping in my black car was giving me blisters on my neck. I knew his parents were coming back from their trip and had already packed my bags and left. I felt so.... disappointed... I didn't want to leave. No more than 20 minutes on the freeway and He is calling me excited yelling for me to come back right away. Without me asking, and without me knowing, Joe had pleaded my case to his parents and they agreed to let me stay with them until I recovered. for the next week or two I would sit up every night with Joe, and wake up bright and early to talk about life and goals with Simone. Sometimes I think she was just making sure that my age and experience wasn't going to be a bad influence on her son haha.. but I appreciated her kindness. There were nights where Joe and I would talk about spirits and magic in correlation with his Catholic school teachings and fall asleep together, and even though my ......'bed' was the couch the parents never seemed to bother with it. Joe and I were never romantically involved, but we shared so many of the same thoughts it was hard to keep away.
For a while after that Joe and I would have weekly adventures with groups of my other friends almost always ending in dinner with his family. At the time I didn't have a family that wanted me around, so this was always an amazing thing. We would climb the tree in his backyard and I'd let him play 100 drum lines that all sounded the same to me so that he could tell me what opinion to give him...haha.... One thing was for sure, I never felt lonely or sad when I was around him. Some nights I'd just pull up in front of his house and he'd sit on the curb with me and talk for hours while I vented about all the things that were collapsing in my life. And he would counsel me.
This brilliant 15 year old boy would council ME, who is known to council others.
These visits would continue for two years solidly, during my illnesses, during the deaths in my family (when I would find home on his couch with his family again, and was welcomed with open arms), and during my frantic attempt to discontinue using drugs. Though he didn't stop for sometime after I did, he was never less supportive of my recovery. He never put me in positions of temptation. He would listen, he would speak, and he made more sense to me than anyone I've ever known.
We never seemed to lose touch even though we wouldn't see each other sometimes for 6 months at a time. It was like there wasn't a gap in our visitation, catching up was never a problem, and it was never awkward. He completely respected that when we got thai food, screwed around at Guitar Center, or whatever we decided to do that I only wanted it to be us. In a way now I'm slightly regretful that I never had the opportunity or made effort to meet his other good friends, but privileged that he took the time always to make room for my weird agoraphobia. Up until the last weeks of his life he was trying to find ways to come to me at my work when I couldn't get any days off. And a couple days before the new cancer was found I'd been at his house planning out our escape together lol....
I don't know if he already knew it wouldn't happen, but I suspect he meant it...I had been looking into real estate in Melbourne and Sydney for us to move out of the States after his 21st birthday. I had 3 weeks of vacation and $1500 saved up for our trip to Australia when he was in remission. It was going to be amazing, we were going to stay with my friends out there, maybe take one of those inexpensive cruise ships up to Japan and spend a weekend in Nagoya so I could get tattooed and apply for my apprenticeship... but without having told anybody except Bubbz really, I was giving myself a time limit on my residency in the US. We talked about the government, about the medical system and how his cancer had been dealt with (poorly.... ), and decided it wasn't worth being here any more. I pulled up applications for music colleges and programs that he could get sponsored in, and I found myself artists who would willingly intern me based only off my painting portfolio. It wouldn't be hard to find a place to rent, and we'd sell our cars and buy Land Rovers once we arrived... haha... he was delaying buying the car of his dreams so that he didn't have to pay to ship it.
It was a beautiful dream, and I can never properly thank him for allowing me to share it with him. I haven't ruled out the possibility of it still happening, but it'll never be the same without him warming canned pasta on the stove for me. I allowed my vacation time for Australia to be used in staying close to those who were close time him. We drank, we told stories, we laughed, and I did everything I could not to cry... mostly imagining him kicking me solidly in the thigh when I would start crying about my mother dying... He would say "did your mom love you? did she like seeing you cry? was she as amazing as you say she was? then knock it off, she doesn't want you to cry, she wants you to watch movies with me" He'd kicked me so hard I fell off the couch... then we'd box, laugh, and it would feel ok again. Really I needed that , and he knew it. I found myself trying not to laugh during his Rosary with that scene playing over in my head. That jerk, he should be kicking me off the couch for how hard I cried for him this weekend.
I know i'm going to miss the emails at 3am, "what's the difference between a dead baby and an apple?" and all the gear he made me quote him all the time... and I'm sure it'll never be the same eating pad thai without him flicking the peanuts down my top and creating the phrase "crumb catchers" with me. Every time I see a stuffed or ceramic frog I'm going to think about him making them dance on the toilet seat while I washed my hair in the sink. I love that when I was on that first photo shoot with him, all he could do was complain about his thighs and that he needed me to light a cigarette for him to hold in the pictures... I'll never forget him slapping my hands when I was rolling my cigarettes wrong and thanking god I wasn't a stoner in the most frustrated tone I've ever heard from him (lmfao). I'll always have a warmth come over me when I'm listening to The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison, and Neil Young.... and the word "cute" won't sound right coming out of anyone else's mouth. I'm still laughing about how he told me he pulled 'the cancer card' at his dad's house sometimes, like with the furniture... One of the last times I visited he was having me help move all the antique furniture in his bedroom, including the 7 foot tall grandfathers clock
......
I couldn't stop laughing at him for it, and he just told me "no one says anything about it, and it's the only thing I won't regret taking advantage of". Even though he had tubes in his chest or an Icy Hot wrap on his butt, he had me helping him drag in these huge pieces of furniture around at midnight with the most child-like happy smile on his face - and almost immediately changed his mind with the clock when he remembered that it chimed on the hour and would wake him up. hahaha way to go joe. I remember one night he even cooked for me despite how sick he was.... some kind of shrimp and these piss flavored sauteed mushrooms that not even the dog would eat - yet he was inhaling them. *Insert horrified disgusted face here lol. And for old times we even flung the shrimp tails at each other and let Kenji clean up the mess.
Bottom line is, Joe made me a part of his family, and he became the closest thing to a brother that I've ever had. We held each other up, we talked each other down, and I will always be thankful that I had such an amazing person in my life.... and always a little bitter that yet another pure spirit was so quickly taken from us.
Someone once told me about (regarding my mother) that such a loving heart can only give and expand so much before it finally gives out, and when someone gives so much of themselves to those they love, that there is nothing left to keep their own life force going strong. Regardless of whether or not I believe it to any degree, I know that both Joe and my mother were kindred spirits - they always did everything they could to help those in need... they were accepting of everyone's nature, and they too often put their own well being under someone else's. They are beautiful, and their light will always shine through those that they touched. I'll never forget them, they've forever imprinted their tolerance and caring natures onto me whether I choose to explore the influence or not. I can't help but be sad and angry sometimes... but I hold the two of them above my heart and in plain view to remind me that they'd never want me to be mad about their circumstances.
Joe is after all... adrift and at peace.
Goodbye little brother, I'll never forget you.
11:00 AM
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