I met Vinny the first night I did drugs. We were both at the same party making bad decisions, dancing with strangers, friends, and drug dealers, young and stupid, but thrilled to be alive. He stepped out to smoke and 30 minutes later came back inside puking blue foam. The party host took him into the shower and I returned to the heavy euphoria washing over me in waves. I didn’t realize he was lying next to me for some time and when I realized he was there, it was only because I’d suddenly taken notice of how wet and cold one half of me was.
The relative strangers I was partying with told me, “Is it okay if he lays next to you for a little while? He just needs to regulate his body temperature.” I could barely comprehend what they were saying but remember smiling and nodding emphatically. I was born a helper. I could help.
Though my body was begging to break free and dance again until my limbs gave out, I laid beside him and soon his shivering gave way to stillness...a stillness that impressed upon me so much that in my altered state of mind I still found myself placing a finger or two beneath his nose to ensure that he was breathing. Out of nowhere he opened his eyes, kissed me full on the mouth and said, “YOU JUST SAVED MY LIFE!!!!” before leaping off the chaise lounge we’d been sharing, pulling me to my feet, and demanding we dance.
I had never met someone like you. Someone who burned so brightly but lived in the hollows of the earth, in the places so dark that not even animals dare to explore them. The year I met you was the most self-destructive year of my life and it was also the year I convinced you to stop trying to take yours.
I remember sitting at my old office, one of many in a long line of places I hate and will never return to, and receiving the call. You had tried to commit suicide.
Just the night before we’d been eating Pita Jungle. You’d listened as I raved unendingly about my love for baba ganoush and laughed when I produced a camera from my bag. I don’t even have the outtake photos of you trying to look more G than you really were anymore...only the ones of you laughing.
You told me, “You believe in the power of a smile more than anyone I’ve ever met,” and I told you, “I believe in everyone’s power to be genuinely happy, even if for a fleeting moment. You deserve to be happy, Vinny.”
I left my office under threat of termination and flew down the highway towards Desert Banner. Walking inside, I saw your mother and sister, your ex-wife and daughter, and relatives huddled en masse. All of a sudden I couldn’t believe I was there, involving myself in their lives when I was just a blip on the radar in yours. I was about to leave when your sister saw me, grabbed my hand, eyes on fire and said, “You’re the only person that can talk to him that he’ll listen to. Don’t go. Please talk to him.”
I walked into the hospital room, dazed by what she’d said, and finally lifted my head to find you looking at me with eyes unseeing. I remember how black they were. So black that I could see the outline of myself in them. I searched for the light that had been bouncing between each iris the night before to no avail.
“What happened?” I asked. “I don’t deserve to be happy,” you said before turning to face the wall.
I remember grabbing your hand and in a fit of unintended emotion I shook you so hard and said, “YES. YOU. DO.” I held your hand and you cried facing the wall, refusing to look at me. You were smaller in that hospital bed and closer to death than the day I’d met you, and I had no idea how to handle the situation. I was 21, in the middle of a battle to save my own life and here you were, in desperate need of hope.
I couldn’t tell you how long I laid in that hospital bed with you curled up beside me, latched on as you had been on that first day, fighting to close your fist around the will to live. I know that when your family came in, they didn’t understand and when your ex-wife saw us laying there, she thought that I’d come to lay claim to something that wasn’t mine, and that your daughter thought you were finally better but you weren’t. You’d simply decided to live with the monsters that trapped you in the mires of their madness.
After that day in the hospital, I never saw you again. I think we both knew that the life path we’d set ourselves on wasn’t safe or healthy and without words, we said our goodbyes cuddled on a hospital bed. We’d check in by phone occasionally until the years grew so much space that we became a distant memory to each other.
Yesterday morning at 3 AM, I received the message that you were gone. “He OD’d. One last hurrah,” an old friend callously told me. “You know how he was.” It angered me that they said you’d been clean for so long and that someone had encouraged that final dose. I could hear you saying, “For old times’ sake!” And I could hear myself responding, “Or not! We don’t have to, Vin.” I wished I’d been there to repeat that to you. To hold up pictures of your children and remind you: “If not for us, for THEM, Vinny.”
Loss will never feel any less treacherous. It will never feel less sudden, like a paper cut, or trip over an entryway... It will always feel like this insurmountable stream of subconscious wherein you are trapped in all that you could’ve done and did not do.
I can’t pretend that I had more time with this person or that I cherished them when they were alive more than I did, but I can say without a doubt that I loved them. Deeply, and without judgement. I will miss knowing that they were out in the world trying desperately to find and harness a happiness they were so deserving of.
Wherever you are, I hope you find a way to walk in beauty. I’ll never forget you, Vinny Duarte. You always have home in my heart.
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