this time last week, was in the middle of a last minute road trip, true ride or die friend was down to go to the hell state with literally an hour's notice.
made it there for the end.
told him a dirty joke and he tapped his finger against mine three times, pretty sure that was him laughing.
he carked it to "Sixteen Tons" (Eric Burdon's version), which as a lifelong shipyard worker, is appropriate as fuck, and some real King shit.
he was a really good guy, literally 100s of comments about him in his old surf group on Facebook, saying that over and over and over, the perfect friend
he was an okay dad. he was busy helping everyone else with their stuff (and surfing and working like a dog and drinking like a fish) and running from his own demons that I.
when someone fundamentally has never learned how to be there for himself, how could I even expect him to be there for me?
we're so much alike. it hurts, packing up his room, and just seeing how our taste in media, our handwriting, our just... way of being.
still get scared of some of the other similar ways, how people pleasing and addiction just were ways of him trying to deal with how much he hated himself.
generational trauma and all that.
at least I'm learning the stuff he didn't have time to.
gonna spend a long time both hating myself for finally standing up to him on shit the last year, and also kinda be grateful he had time to learn and start to try to better in some ways.
on father's day, way back when I was 6, we spent the day at the beach, and I literally bodysurfed (as in held on to him like a human bougieboard as he bodysurfed) on him, and even then, I remember thinking, this moment is perfect, I want to remember everything about this moment.
Thank you dad, for introducing me to surfing, b movies, Godzilla, skating, college football, mountain biking, and giving me my eclectic ass music taste
Thank you for teaching me not to do two illegal things at once, how to speed, to always check my car lights before doing something fun and dumb, and how to drink without getting too hungover.
Thank you for being there for me, the times you could.
Thank you for being the coolest motherfucker I ever knew, and I have the photos and the stories from your friends to prove it.
See ya at the paddle out.
