Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Sorry-Grateful
















Eddie was a very close friend. Eddie was a guide, what he had seen and known I could only guess but he saw fit to lovingly steer me through when I needed him, always. Eddie could only ever be Eddie, outlandish and savvy and true.

Slightly more than a month ago, my friend Eddie died. He was 54.

I loved him, I learned from him, I leaned on him. We laughed like hell. When I woke to the news, when I swung my feet to the floor and stared at the planks to think that my friend was gone, I wanted to feel shock. Shock seemed vast and fitting. But it wasn't there to be mined. The hollow and lethargy of sadness, yes, but no shock. Eddie had been ill, more than he let on, and his world had constricted. With his beloved Ruben, their cats, their pre-war rooms in Queens, Eddie closed out his life precisely where he would have chosen, if not when. Too soon, far too soon. There were so many happy hours left unwritten.

One revisits the last few encounters. At the end we had only some scattered phone talks, an hour-long minimum. With him being the world-class life-liver between us, I was ready to shut up as tales unfurled. They always did, an unspoken arrangement. Eddie would regale and gossip and rave. I chuckled or roared and memorized, but mostly held the phone and grinned. Sometimes I’d groan mid-laugh because the punch line was so foul. Then he’d snicker, and through the phone I’d hear the sliding tinkle of ice cubes in his glass of vodka as he sipped in the pause. Masterful timing, Eddie had.

I suspect only one thing could be more delicious to Eddie than living itself, and that was weaving the story for a captive audience over a drink and a smoke. Half the fun was in the doing, the other half in the telling. That gentleman always told, and for the record, so does this one.

If that rings tinny and anecdotal, it wasn't. Eddie's stories were like a vintage cocktail shaker that has a hard dent in it. Elegant, if a bit worn? Yes. Pristine? Never. The dent was the point.

Still as I type this, there is Eddie's bray in my ear… that cheerful, flat-vowel holler of an Astoria housewife. So too is his cackle, rapid-fire, shot down the barrel of a Marlboro. Cut the bullshit, he says. Keep it REAL, he says. Truth, style, a little obscenity to offend the weak-stomached. That’ll tell them everything they need to know.

True enough.

We met having both been cast in a production of 'Company'. I was living in Jersey. I’d retreated after city life got to me. Fled was more like it. I made some new, excellent friends, and we were all in some of the same shows. This show was staged in a dump that was a theatre the same way a methadone clinic is a spa. But it was a damn fine show.

Somehow Eddie commuted every rehearsal and show day from Astoria. That meant traveling by multiple trains, two hours, one way. He was letter and note perfect. The job was a labor of love, it paid nothing. But for him I suspect the dividends were quite rich: out of the apartment, creative muscles flexed. Here was a task now that he had retired and was on disability. New faces dotting his view, something at stake and vitality in the veins. No one lit up a rehearsal like he did.

I often drove him to and from the train station. That was where our talks began. Eddie was quitting smoking then. I remember more than once pulling into the train station and finding him on the platform: a cig jutting from two bony fingers of one hand, and in the other, a book whose jacket screamed 'QUITTING SMOKING NOW!!' How he read it through the haze of tobacco, I couldn't tell you.

What did we talk about? As I said, mostly I listened and laughed, prompted him now and then with a question. Not that he needed prompting. A generator connected to Eddie’s jaws could have flared the Eastern seaboard like the goddamn Rockefeller Christmas tree.

Topics on those train station drives? Asbury Park in the freewheeling, dangerous days. The West Village in the freewheeling, dangerous days. His tenor notes before smoking. His vital role in opening the famous restaurant, Jean-Georges. His brief flirtation with corporate work, his office and suit and demeanor, all of which he called his ‘days in drag’. How he lost his virginity, fell in love and had his heart broken, all in one summer afternoon in Midtown. Remarkable stories.

Rehearsals and hard work and laughing and drives to the train station. Fast friends have traction before they’ve any right to. Maybe I enjoyed listening to this half-gentle, half-raucous man and his careening life. Maybe he saw that I was floundering and shouldn’t be. Eddie was that rarity of both superb talker and listener. Few manage the trick.

I played Bobby and Eddie played Larry, one of the husbands. My favorite song in the show was Eddie’s: ‘Sorry-Grateful’. Now that’s a song. Unadorned, contradictory, but above all wise. I still think of it as Eddie’s song. It makes glorious sense if you’re heart, not head, logical.

And I was. The show opened, and a girlfriend at the time had bolted on me. I was heartsick in ways that were cute only because I was under thirty.

She and I reunited, oh Christ, a bunch of times. Eddie was back in Astoria, calling me up, calling me ‘Kiddo’, sweet enough to pretend to be surprised. He’d met her. He’d seen how I looked at her. Trust me, he wasn’t surprised.

Yet Eddie never lectured, never lorded. If he foresaw the months ahead for me as plainly as he might skim the Sunday Times, he never let on. And I’m certain he did. We talked a lot, and his replying ‘mm-hmms’ brimmed with patient humor and knowing. I smile now to think of it.

One summer, maybe late July, I was at her condo's block party. Swarms of roasted pink strangers, and their hive was a large turquoise pool. Full sun, glaring white concrete striped by rows of metal lounge chairs. Jersey summer, humid air soaked with the scent of grilling beef. I grew up by the ocean, so choosing this landlocked weenie roast on an otherwise beautiful beach day was really a testament of love.

Eddie called. I wandered off a distance to take his call, for quiet and shade, pine trees I think. We launched headlong. This time he was focused. He kept on urging me to move back to the city. It was time to get back to work, he said. Beyond I heard screaming kids, splashes, Bon Jovi’s Greatest Hits.

Somehow he was adamant while never telling me what to do. Quite a feat, if you think about it. He leveled about neighborhoods and rents and utilities, all the realities of cost. He glowed about the mayhem and fun, but really what he was doing was more than clever: he was awakening me to possibilities. Eddie was projecting better, busier days, tougher challenges and unimagined rewards. All that while letting me think it was my idea. He was one hell of a Pied Piper. Eddie thought that it was time I stood up to be counted. It scared the hell out of me. 

I had a choice: a woman I loved beyond reason, a life with her, children immediately, and turning my back on the city and path I dreamed of. Or this city, this path, this gamble, and without her or that possible future. Couldn't have both.

Heart or head logical?

I remember looking back at that block party around the pool. I remember feeling alien. Not above it, not at all, but not of it. I was under those pines for a while.

When she and I parted for the last time, I called Eddie that night. There was steel in his sympathy. He didn’t baby me, but didn’t smack me around for my choices. It was time to move back and get to work, he said, and very kindly. And I did.

How the hell would I have done it without him? Living in New York again, this ultimate playground for children who don’t play nice with each other. A lot of phone talks. My progress and mistakes gave him equal pleasure. It always sounded as though things that I thought were dire… like bills or roommate troubles or auditions or dates gone wrong… instead to him, these were thrilling. I kept thinking I’d fuck it all up. Eddie saw it as an adventure, unfolding and writ large. Only a selfless man could do that.

And then? I found myself getting much busier, then more so.

And then? Eddie and I connected less. He might call while I was performing, or tearing out the door, late for a job usually. Eddie ventured out less then. It was getting harder to see each other.

The talks became more important, and much as I missed him, I was less available to have them. It breaks my heart to admit it, but it’s the truth. I felt, and still feel, as if I had returned his selflessness with selfishness.

Then one night he called me while I was on a train to a gig out of town. By luck it was at the beginning of my hour-long trip, and he kept me madcap company the whole way. But at the end, before I had to step off onto the platform, he asked something of me: could I gather the gang for some laughs because he missed everyone terribly, only it felt a little starker than that. He said I had to do it, that he couldn’t, and with enough time to plan, maybe he’d be able to make it. He said he was counting on me. He made me promise. And I did promise.

I never saw him or spoke to him again.

Oh I relayed the message to the gang, we started to look at when and how and all that feeble shit that ‘busy’ people do. Whether he could have actually met with us at that point isn’t what matters. I broke my promise.

So this is directly to you, Eddie. ‘Sorry-Grateful’.

Sorry, to-my-bones sorry, I let you down when you needed me.

Grateful, because our friendship was one I will always treasure, pull from, boast of, smile about.

Well, Kiddo, you might have said. Here we are. Whaddya say we ring down the curtain…?

Eddie, I have a feeling that at a moment like this when your friends’ eyes brim with tears, you’d be the first to make a fearless joke, some bawdy zinger, a theatrical exit line. The kind of line a pro knows will have him coasting on the audience's laughter from the wings out to the dressing room.

You had those chops, that style. You did leave this life a month ago, but sonnovabitch, you didn't leave one single drop of life left untasted. You gorged on it, what you wanted you tried and wrung every bit of pleasure from... and unless our conversations led me awry, you knew too well the flip side of that gamble. But no regrets, never one. I marvel at your courage still.

You idealized this city you lured me back to. I roam it and am reminded of you often, how kindred a place and man were. And I meet a lot of people, Eddie, you knew that too well. But you were the sort of man whose departure makes the whole damn city a little blander. I happen to think you and those select few like you are hearty stock, and lately this city brews its characters by bouillon cube. One can see right through them and their flavor is forgettable. Not you, Eddie.

Oh and one last thing, one detail that I prize.

You made me give you a promise once before, a long time ago. You might even have forgotten.

Eddie, you told me, “Have your fun, I’m not tellin’ ya to be a fuckin’ nun, so do what ya gotta do, okay? And God knows, you do! But don’t fuck around so much that you get a shell over your heart. Protect your heart. Get with too many people that don’t mean anything to you and you lose something. Something you can’t get back. Promise. Me.”

I’ve tested that promise, but so help me, I’ve kept it. You were telling me to never relinquish just that little bit of innocence. I see that now.

I refuse to say that you were a gift, Eddie, because you still are.



© Eric Yves Garcia, 2014

No comments:

Post a Comment