One Friendship On The Rocks, Please     I can't exactly remember how or when the whole thing started, but I remember where we met. We were both involved in a school band. It wasn't even my school and he wasn't even in school at all anymore, but such it is with all these stupid things. The band was too lame to be able to recruit people from their own institution. Their membership is a hodgepodge assortment of unlike individuals from all over God's country, including my friend and myself.     He wasn't my type. One spends much time in their growing up years learning who his or her type is, and he definitely wasn't mine. For one thing, he lived south of the tracks and I lived north of them (compasses and the like have always been favorite ways of denoting class distinctions, God knows why). My background supposedly required men with professions for my romantic needs, not high-school dropouts who were blue-collar workers.     The friendship didn't start out with any hint of romance, however, at least not from my point of view. See, I liked this other kid. He was much closer to my type-a college dropout currently holding a white-collar job. He also fit my definition of GQ: tall with white blond hair and blue eyes. The only problem with him, as it is with many heartfelt crushes, was that my heartfelt love wasn't exactly returned. You see, he was among the walking wounded. His almost-fiancee (he never asked) had dumped him after seven months because he was of the wrong religion.     I had always thought that was relatively asinine for her to do that. I think she knew I felt this way about her because one day she called me on the phone and tried to justify her actions, not that I had ever confronted her about them. I think my raging passion over her former lover didn't help this situation at all. I envisioned situations of me rescuing him from the wrenching pain he felt over this woman. I saw every subsequent seduction he made of high-school age girls as an expression of this pain, and I would be the one who would save him from the depths of his self- destruction.     It didn't work out that way. My heroic efforts all amounted to one bumbling experience where I was playing relationship therapist with him in his car and he made a pass at me. I batted him off me like a gnat and got the hell out of there. I mean, I liked him, but not enough to degrade myself and be a notch along with his high-school conquests. So much for reaching the stars with my Apollo god. After this experience, I used the string-along approach to men I liked. If they liked me so much, then they could come and get me. No more Miss Nice Guy.     By the way, the above two idiots were also from the school band. And no, they didn't go to school there.     In the meantime, my soon-to-be friend was having difficulties with his own life. He was going out with this girl he couldn't stand and who couldn't stand him either. I wasn't hanging out with him yet, but I knew both of these things to be true. In fact, the whole band knew these things to be true. Every ten minutes she would stomp from the band room to the bar where my friend spent most of his time when the band was in session, a verbal interchange that ranked at about one hundred and ten decibels would take place between them, then she would stomp back to the band room, my friend would order another beer, and the cycle would repeat itself. I couldn't understand the psychology behind that one at all. I guess it gave my friend an excuse for getting loaded, which he liked to do.     I remember very distinctly trying to avoid company with this guy. I always have had a strong tendency to attract rejects because I love listening, and the sicker they are, the more fascinating it is to listen to their story. What I was also beginning to realize in life was the more I hung out and listened to wackos, the more they leeched onto me; like they were grateful someone was nice to them and they were not going to let go of me. Then I'd be stuck in this friendship where they're they patient and I'm the therapist. No thanks.     So, I had to be careful. It would be my luck that out of all the relatively normal twentysomething crowd I'd wind up with the only alcoholic in the place. But he was growing on me, to say the least. Like the time I was hanging out in the hallway watching out for action and I became victim to a tickle assault by my former Apollo (I don't know why he did it; maybe he was insulted that I hadn't degraded my body with him). I really beat up ex-Apollo and somehow in the entanglement my necklace got broken. My friend-then acquaintance was pretty disgusted with him, especially when the guy didn't offer to fix my necklace after being such a slime for attacking me. My friend went up to ex-Apollo and demanded that he do at least that much to ease my pain and suffering. Ex-Apollo felt he did me a big service fixing my necklace and never let me forget it. I'd never been happier about rejecting a guy's advances than then.      After that my friend had a new light in my eyes. Here he was, a full blown drunk, and he was beginning to seem like a more decent person than the blonde playboy thing I wanted. So I actually started to develop a certain trust for this drunk. It seemed that we were paired off with each other an awful lot. Like the time we were supposed to go Christmas caroling around the local neighborhoods and the wind chill was fifteen below zero. I got to the rendezvous meeting place for the band about ten minutes early, and he was already sitting in a car with two of the semi-drunks in this band, and we were the only ones who had showed up so far. So they invited me to sit tin the car with them and we shot the breeze until the other dimwits showed up twenty minutes later. I don't remember what we talked about, but I know we spent a lot of time putting down the other members of the band. It's surprising how righteous drunks can be, especially after tying a few on.      My friend and I wound up together when the band actually got around to caroling, partially because our other two colleagues were a married couple and already pretty occupied with each other anyway. Besides, I wasn't really minding the company of my new friend, especially when I saw my former Apollo running around making loud noises and a fool out of himself. The teeny-boppers liked his act so I felt, good riddance, child molester. Why would I want normal if it was as asinine as that?      At the end of this whole charade, we all said our good-byes until the middle of January when the band resumed practice after "Christmas break." My new friend gave me his phone number and offered that one day we get together at his favorite bar (I don't drink). I sat in my car looking at it for a few minutes before I pocketed it and eventually lost it.      I didn't see him again for three months after that. I think I subconciously lost his phone number because I knew it would mean trouble if I did. I resisted going to the band even though I wouldn't have minded seeing him again. I was inexplicably drawn to him . He was a bad boy and I loved bad boys. He seemed dangerous yet vulnerable, and at that time in my life I wanted all the danger I could get out of life. I was young and invincible, or almost invincible. I wasn't entirely naive to the inevitable letdown that followed a run on the wild side of life, but I guess I eventually decided, what the hell, you only live once; go for it.      So after three months of resistance, go for it I did. I broke down and went back to the band not to rejoin but to see my friend. He was playing equipment boy, unloading the truck with all of the musical instruments. He saw me as he was depositing a snare drum set onto the ground.      "You never called," he accused.      "I lost your phone number," I replied.      "Bitch."      "Prick," I replied sweetly. Prior to a year earlier I would have been insulted by an interchange like this. Now, considering I subjected myself to environments such as the band, this conversation seemed normal.     "Did you quit the band?" He gulped some beer from his oil can as he asked this (For those ignorant of these things, an oil can in this situation is not Valvoline. It's beer sold in a can that looks like an oil can).     "Yeah, I did," I replied. "This place is crazy."     "So why'd you come?"      "Charity visit." We grinned at each other and he polished off his beer. His girlfriend that I always used to see him with passed by us with another girl and glared at my friend. I heard whispers as the two females disappeared.      "Is she mad at you again?" I asked.      He scrunched up his mouth in indifference. "I dumped her New Year's Eve. She's a bitch."      "Yeah? I heard at Tom's party you guys were engaged or something."      "Oh, right. Yeah, well, one time when I was drunk I asked her to marry me. I didn't mean it for real and then she got extra bitchy towards me. I'm never getting married. I was best man at my brother's wedding and now he's divorced. I don't want to go through the hassle of getting married if it isn't even going to last."      "I know what you mean. I'm not into getting married either. I like my freedom single."      He snickered under his can of beer and I felt his eyes go right through me, so I stared right back and made an assessment of him. He really wasn't bad looking at all. Then I kicked myself. How stupid could I be, getting the hots for a drunken bum?      "Are you hungry?" Thankfully his question shattered my reverie. I was starting to get nervous there for a second.      "Yeah. Where's a place to get decent food around here? I haven't been around for so long that I forgot where everything is."      "There's a Taco Bell down the road. I'll show you where it is."      So we hopped into my car and escaped the crazy band. I was glad to get out of there because they'd been harassing me by phone and mail to rejoin the band- apparently membership wasn't doing very well. I didn't want to get bodily harassed as well.     "Where's you car?" I asked as we drove away.      "I don't drive and I don't have a license. I'd be dangerous to the roads. I'm always drunk, haven't you noticed yet?" I couldn't argue with him on that point.      "What made you join the band? I mean, you don't play an instrument or anything. You just unload the truck, right?" I asked when we bought the food from the drive-in (he paid) and parked the car in a vacant lot to eat.      "Yeah, that's right. My brother was always into this band stuff. I just came along for the ride," he said between bites of Burrito Supreme. "Then when I was here I met this girl." He mentioned her name, and I recalled seeing her around. "I liked her, so I started coming to see her but I was too chicken to ask her out. Then my brother told me to stay away from her. I had no idea why. All of the sudden, I found out my brother asked her out. Now they're living together."      That didn't sound like a reason to come to the band; it sounded like a good reason for staying away from it. "So why are you here now?" I questioned.      He shrugged. "Something to do." He finished the burrito and started on a taco. "You know, you should really join the band again."      Not him too. Still, I got the feeling he had a different motive than everyone else had about why he was pushy for me to join the band. "Nah, no way. That place is pathetic. Anyway, I can't afford the dues he charges to belong." Which is about two hundred dollars. No thanks.      "Yeah, I know. But no one ever pays." He gave me a hard look. I didn't want to know what was going through his mind.      We ate and blabbed for another half hour or so. I discovered that he was a volunteer fireman and that we both liked hockey. We didn't like rap, and we liked Pink Floyd. These common interests were prime for the basis of a great relationship to me back in those golden days. So I felt really exhilarated by this conversation.      It was getting closer to the end of band practice so I went to drop him off. As soon as I drove into the parking lot I saw the recruiters heading straight for my car as they had nothing to do but sit there for the last hour and a half and wait for me. They were worse than Jehovah Witnesses.      I turned to my friend. "Look, I have to go. I'm going to get murdered if I stay around here much longer."      "You got a pencil?" He asked. I fished through my pocketbook as the crowd closed in for the kill and found one. I gave it to him. He wrote on a piece of paper and gave it to me. It was his phone number. "Don't lose it this time," he instructed as he got out of my car. Yes sir.      I escaped the mob just in time.      Two months later, I got a message that he called. He's in a big rush, I thought sarcastically. I didn't bother calling him back.      The following month I got my own apartment. That tripled with some problems with a couple of my ex-boyfriends and some situations with a fundamentalist religious group made my friend retire to the back burner of my mind for a while.      The stuff with my ex-boyfriends is just a lot of nonsense and I won't clutter your minds with the tedious details. Watch "Days of Our Lives" or something like that and you'll get the drift of that scenario. The religion part holds a little more relevance to this tale so I'll explain it further.      I am sure many of the readers have been approached at least once by an overzealous Gospel "preacher". Maybe you have wondered what kind of mentality people like that can have to be able to continuously harass people and basically have very little results. Well, it's a lot like being a pushy salesperson, except to the Gospel "Preacher" his (a lot of them are "he") reward is spiritual profit and not monetary profit. He is rewarded by the knowledge, as he believes it, that he is an agent of God rescuing a fellow human being from the clutches of evil by spreading the Gospel. This can be quite a head rush if you believe you've aided someone in eternal happiness by spreading Bible verses. So, if you don't believe what the Gospel "preacher" is telling you and you are so inclined to tell him so, you will be a prime target for future rescue missions.      It isn't necessarily all that hard to cop the mentality of the overzealous evangelical/fundamentalist individual once you have accepted their Gospel message. After all, if you had a strong belief that you possessed the only way to happiness/eternal life/God you might want to tell as many people as possible about it, especially when in doing so you will be conveying God's love.      I know about this because it sort of happened to me. Like I said before, I'd had some problems with a religious group. I'd gotten tied in with them about a year earlier when I was in college. They weren't bad people at all, just total pains in the ass who couldn't mind their own business to save their own lives, no pun intended. After associating with them for a while I did acquire this sort of nagging feeling in my gut every time I encountered an "unsaved" person. I'd always wonder what I was supposed to tell them. I just couldn't see myself saying, "Brother (or sister), this is the day of your salvation. Let me tell you about it." So I just would sit there and act like everything was normal. Then I'd feel guilty about not saying anything once the conversation finished.      Luckily (or unluckily) my friendship with this guy started relatively free of evangelical "shoulds". If it had, I know I wouldn't have gotten as close as I did with him. I probably botch it up with some kind of junk on how I don't listen to "worldly" rock (which was a back and forth issue with me at that time) and not really tried to get to know my friend as a person without forcing fundamentalist jazz. I made that mistake, but it wasn't right from the beginning.      Instead the friendship started the way I believe all friendships should start; just hanging out and having a good, fun time. We sat around and poked fun at most of the planet. At the time I became close friends with him, I needed a good laugh because the rest of my life was sad chaos floating around. However negative our humor was, it made me laugh.      So even though one part of me was on strike against calling him (who wants to get involved with a drunk?), the other part of me really missed him and wanted to be with him. These two sides of me would play tug-of-war over this call him/don't call him junk for the duration of this relationship and inspire many an irrational act committed by me concerning my friend.      So after awhile I gave in and called him. He wasn't home, so I left a message with his mother. I was convinced that he wouldn't call back. I'd waited too long to get in touch with him and he'd probably given up on me. I was sure of that. But call me back he did. We made arrangements to see each other the next day after I got off work. I was looking forward to seeing him. I felt giddy, like I was going on my first date or something.      I didn't pay attention to my work at all the next day. Luckily I was a security guard so it didn't make much of a difference- no one paid attention to anything on this job. All day I sat wondering and worrying. What if he stood me up (such self-esteem)? Would he find me attractive? Would I find him attractive? Would he get drunk and pass out in the middle of the road? Would he kiss me? Then: What the hell is the matter with me? I'm going on a date with a drunk? What has my world come to?      The afternoon dragged to a close with me being in a fuzzy state of mind. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience as I drove home to prepare for my "dream date" (hah hah), and after I'd cleaned up and changed from a grubby uniform to normal clothes I sat around impatiently watching the clock until it was time for me to leave. The two hours I sat waiting at home felt like forty years. I swear a couple of times it seemed like those damn clock hands froze up.      I got to his house at around eight. When I rang the doorbell, I saw him bounding down the stairs to answer the door. I wondered what he was thinking; if he was half as nervous as I was. I greeted him, hopefully, quite cheerfully. I was trying my utmost to act casual but I was doing a really lousy job in my opinion, especially when he took me to meet his parents. I felt so shy I wanted to run away or wake up in my bed and have this whole thing be a weird dream, but of course, that didn't happen. Don't get me wrong, I liked his parents, but I was too nervous to hang around and make conversation. I'd have sounded like a certified idiot if I'd tried.      Mercifully, my friend suggested that we get going. We said our good-byes and I escaped. "You want to go to the mall here?" He offered. Where I live, there is an abundance of malls. The mall sounded innocuous enough for a first date. "Sure," I agreed.      We got there and wandered about eating greasy food and making fun of the perfume lady and other mall-shoppers. Then he announced that he wanted to go to the sports store to get bullets.      "Bullets?" Maybe I hadn't heard correctly.      "Yeah. I have a pistol from when I was a security guard."      "Oh, you did that too? I'm doing guarding myself. Only it isn't armed."      "That was the good thing of armed security. I could shoot people and get away with it. That's why I would want to be a cop." My mind was so weirded out that I found this amusing. "Yeah, I was a guard," he continued. "Actually, I was a supervisor. I'd get stiffed with everyone's shifts." He told me some stories about the guards under him and how they wouldn't show up for work any time and sometimes he'd work shifts as long as twenty-four hours to cover for these idiots.      "I can relate to being stiffed," I said between sips of a Coke. "They always try to keep me after my shift because they're too stupid to hire someone that will show up for work."      He laughed. By the time we got his bullets, the mall was starting to close down. The only thing that would still be open for a few hours was the movie theater. So we picked "Gremlins 2" out of the four movies showing. He paid for both my ticket and my popcorn. I felt like a queen. Halfway through the movie he held my hand. At first it felt weird, but I got used to it. I don't remember the movie that well either. My memories of it include Gizmo and Phoebe Cates wearing this brain-dead looking hay with a model skyscraper on it, and the commercials that Spielberg threw in as a joke, which I was impressed with.      We didn't say much on the way home. When we got to his house he invited me up to his room to see his movie, record, and gun collections. I obliged, no problem. He opened up his refrigerator (I never had one of those in my room!), and offered me a beer, which I refused. He went to the stereo and put the soundtrack of "Les Miserables" on his tape deck (the band played the main theme for competition once) and plopped down next to me on his bed.      I was really in to the music so he took me by surprise when he made his move on me. His kiss was very sensual and I couldn't get enough of it. Forget his stupid collections; that night I never saw them. I didn't want to leave. The tape ended somewhere in the middle of the makeout session but neither one of us made an effort to flip it over. It seemed an eternity that we alternated between kissing and holding each other. It was like, so romantic.      The next time I looked at the clock it was two-thirty in the morning. I had a half-hour drive home. "I have to go," I said, still holding him.      "No, don't go," he protested.      "I have to, " I countered. "Otherwise I'll fall asleep on the road."      "All right," he reluctantly complied. He walked me to my car and gave one last long kiss. "Drive home safely. I'll call you later today."      He did call me later that day. And he called me the day after, and the day after that. That third day, though, I thought that he sounded somewhat distant on the phone. I didn't question at the time. Maybe he was just drunk, I reasoned. I went about my life with my job and my friends. I didn't pay attention that after the third day no calls came until about a week had passed. During that week I started doing weird things with my keys- once I locked them in the security vault at work and once I locked them in my apartment when the landlord wasn't home and I wandered around the streets for three hours. Maybe I was getting nervous about my friend's not calling without even noticing it.      After a week of silence I know I noticed. So I called him and he sounded fine, but he didn't offer to see me again and like I have mentioned through experience I am chicken to make a first move. Hence, nothing came of that call. I told my friend about this and she thought I was nuts.      "What's the matter with you, woman? It's the nineties; get with it. You can ask a guy out for a date, especially when you've gone out with him before. Your Catholic school days are over, my dear."      I laughed and had to agree with her. So I called him back again but his mother said he was out and didn't know when he was coming home. Something inside me felt nervous but there was nothing I could do. I went out to meet some friends instead and tried to put the phone call out of my mind.      Unfortunately, my uneasiness didn't go away. So I decided to confront this head-on and go to the band and speak to him directly. I knew the band was planning a special parade for the Fourth of the July so I knew when and where to find him.      When I arrived at the band, I saw what I half-expected to see. He was with this girl holding her hand. My whole body went into shock anyway. When he saw me he made sure he was surrounded with a lot of people but I grabbed him anyway.      "I'd like to talk to you," I said rather gruffly.      "All right," he agreed when he realized I wasn't going to take any other answer. We walked about twenty feet from the crowd.      "So this is your girlfriend?"      "Yeah."      "Were you going out with her when we went out?"      "No. I had a party last week and she was there. I ended up with her."      I felt like I was pulling teeth but I really didn't care. "What, were you drunk or something?"     "Probably."      "Why couldn't have you at least told me?"      "I was going to a couple of times but I couldn't tell you."      Wimp. "You're an ass." I meant it this time.      "I know," he said quietly, "I'm sorry."      "Go to hell."      We looked at each other for a few minutes. "I'm going back," he said.      I shrugged. There was nothing left to say; the damage had been done. I was getting ready to leave when the recruitment crew attacked me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my friend attack this girl Beth and tickle her. Her necklace broke and she made him fix it. It seemed like deja-vous with the blond Apollo I used to like. Losers must come in pairs, I deducted.      Up until this point, the relationship had progressed as normally as it could have- boy meets girl, boy and girl go out, boy and girl break up for various ways, shapes, sizes and reasons. If the relationship continued in its normal fashion, I would have never had anything to do with my friend; at most he would have been a casual friend. I forgive many things but sexual cheating is not one of them. So after this incident with the woman, the relationship took turn for the abnormal.      I got lots of varied advice and comments from my friends, ranging from "What's the big deal? You only went out with him once.", to "You think that was bad? Guess what my ex-husband did!", to "What a dick. But then, all men are dicks. Don't go out with him again-he's not worthy of you." But there was another voice talking to me and it wasn't external.      By the time the natural relationship with my friend died, I was in full throttle with evangelical and fundamentalist individuals. In the midst of all the evangelical fervor of various prayer groups that petitioned for the salvation of unsaved loved ones, it dawned on me that I might have been placed in my friend's life for some special, supernatural purpose. This feeling ate away at me for a couple of months. I prayed for my friend that he might know God and all that.      I'm not knocking God or the institution of prayer. It just seemed like at that time in my life prayer and witnessing was a compulsive activity. It was something to be done because the pastor said the Bible said so, not because you read the Bible because you wanted to and you prayed to God on your terms. Your husband wasn't saved yet? It was because you needed to whack him over the head with more thus saith the Lord and drag him to church against his will, not because your husband simply didn't want that particular concept of God in his life. It was like people in the church and out of the church as well were objects to be manipulated with Bible verses. At that time, even though I was free (sort of) of this Bible trap, I was still somewhat a puppet feeling I had to save the world.      Even so, many of my prayers for my friend were sincere ones. A crazy drunk running around with a gun collection wasn't all there and I wanted to help him. I really was worried about him, especially when I finally broke down and called him yet again, two months after the Fourth of July incident.      He wasn't doing too well when I called.      "She dumped me yesterday," he moaned about the girl I'd seen him with. My, what perfect timing I have, I thought sarcastically. He gave me a really big sob story about how he'd called he the previous day and she told him to buzz off and never bother her again. After that break-up he called the girl he'd dumped on New Year's Eve only to get the same results. Apparently she'd gotten engaged (for real this time- it was confirmed by his friend Beth), and she wasn't exactly dying to break it off to resume her relationship with my friend. My friend had been a busy man in the last twenty-four hours, I surmised. Then came the killer (no pun intended): "I want to kill myself."      I looked at my phone receiver wondering if I had a bad connection or something. I didn't. So I put the phone back to my ear. "You what?"      "I want to kill myself." I heard a click in the background. "I've got my gun right here, loaded and cocked. I should do it."      Panic. "You're not kidding me, are you?"      "Nope." More clicking noises. What the hell was he doing?      "Well, don't do it." What an intelligent statement.      "Yeah? Do you have a good reason why I shouldn't?"      "She isn't worth it." Another intelligent statement.      "But I love her."      "Well, blowing yourself away isn't going to bring her back." There was silence. "Are you still there?"      "Yeah."      I wondered what should I do next, since I don't deal with people holding loaded guns to their head too often. Call the police? Nah, he'd probably splatter his brains the minute I got off the phone with him. I thought about going over there, but my better judgment, what was left of it, thought the better of that idea. I just tried to keep calm and talk. "Look, you're my friend. I wouldn't want to see you dead. It would really hurt me."      "Yeah? You care about me so much that you haven't even called me for the last two months."      Sure, blame it on me. "Did you really expect me to call you after I saw you with that woman? I wasn't exactly thrilled with you as a person."      "So why are you calling me now?"      "Because I still consider you my friend. And I mean it, don't kill yourself. You'll make me upset."      "Really?" That was the happiest he'd sounded today.      "Yes, really. I still like you."      "Really?"      "Really." I looked at my watch. I had to work a midnight shift and I needed some rest. "Look. I've got to get going. I'm working until six in the morning and I have to get some sleep."      "I know how that is," he said, like this whole incident never happened.      "I'll call you tomorrow. You'd better be alive."      "Okay."      My hand was shaking when I got off the phone. I hadn't noticed that the whole time I was on the phone.      I sat around during my shift in the mental fog that tended to enshroud me at four o'clock in the morning when I worked midnights. I mused about the pervious evening's conversation, wondering if he had been serious or not with his threat. I was too out of it to be consciously worried, but I couldn't get my mind off the subject once it got on it. Maybe I wouldn't have been so concerned if I didn't know that he had loaded guns lying all over the place.      I almost chickened out of calling him, but I braved it and did it anyway. He was still alive, and he didn't sound too bad. He was going target shooting with some fellow firemen.      "I'll just pretend I'm aiming at her head," he said of his last girlfriend. How nice he'd shared that. I should have been nervous and gotten off the phone right then, but instead the evangelistic urge popped up and I played preacher instead.      "Hey, I'm going to see this evangelist with some friends next Thursday. Do you want to came?" It sounded dumb coming out of my mouth.      "Nah, not really. I'm not that religious. Thanks for asking, though."      You're welcome. "Well, enjoy shooting. Don't shoot yourself."      "Hey, you never know."      Jesus Christ. Literally.     The following Thursday was also his birthday; he'd told me what day it was one time when he was hanging out with me, so I sent him a card. He called me Friday.      "Thanks for the card. I really appreciated it. No one's ever done that for me before."      Right. I believed that one. "So what did you do to celebrate your big day?" I inquired.      "Some of the guys from the fire department took me to the bar."      What else was new? "That's good, I guess."      "Yeah, I'm going to get drunk for the rest of my life. Might as well; nothing's worth it anymore." And on and on with maudlin nonsense like that. After ten minutes I hung up on him in disgust.      I didn't call him. I don't think he called me either, except that my landlords told me that several nights after that while I was out they heard my phone ring past midnight. I never found out who made those phone calls because I didn't have an answering machine. I sent him a letter, telling him I couldn't be friends with someone who was destroying his life like he was. Being the good little evangelical Christian I was, I sent him AA literature and religious tracts along with the letter. It seemed the right thing to do at the time.      A month later I was back on the phone calling him again. It also seemed like the right thing to do. I was mending a relationship in my eyes. My nonevangelical friends thought I was crazy. They didn't really care about my evangelistic efforts, especially when I shared the fact that I didn't know whom my friend would shoot first- Suddam Hussein, his ex-girlfriend, or himself. My friends were concerned that my name would increase the list to four names. Let someone else be an evangelist to him, was the gist of their reactions.      "But," I would protest, "he might kill himself before anyone else gets to him."      Did I mention that my friends thought I was crazy?      So this time when I called, he asked, "I thought you weren't going to speak to me anymore."      "I don't know what to do with you," I answered honestly.      He jumped right past that one. "We should get together."      I had enough sense to hesitate before I answered him despite my excitement (was I still attracted to him?). "Yeah? What do you have in mind?"      "I don't know. Call me next Friday. If I'm not at home, call my beeper. I'll get back to you. We'll do something then."      After that phone call he started seeping into my subconscious or something because I started dreaming about him. He even invaded my daytime thinking. I confided in one friend that I saw in him the self I once was, destroying myself in any way possible. Perhaps the reason why he got under my skin so was because he was so much like me, at least the me I didn't like to face.      I pondered these realizations the following Friday awaiting his return phone call after calling his beeper. I got so lost in my musings I was startled to realize when I looked at the clock that two hours had passed since I'd called the beeper and no return phone call had come. I calmly picked up my jacket and left my apartment to find some friends to bum around with. I wasn't angry with my friend at all. Strangely enough, I felt relieved that he hadn't called.      I started dating a mutt (that's what my father called him). He made my friend look like preppy model material. Basically, he was this kind of grubby, long-haired heavy metal thing that I basically found on the side of the road. I needed a diversion from my alcoholic friend.      By the way, he called in the midst of my relationship with the mutt.      "Where were you? I called you to go out."      "Yeah? maybe you called the wrong girlfriend, because I beeped you at six and waited around until eight. I didn't get any phone calls."      "You could have waited longer."      I hung up the phone in his face.      My big spending splurge that year was buying partial season hockey tickets. I love hockey. I think it's exciting to watch a bunch of idiots beat each other up over a round black thing that gets deserted in the rink corner as soon as the fights ensue. Sue me, I have weird taste.      The mutt I was dating didn't like hockey. He didn't even want to go to my friend's wedding because he didn't have clean pants. He got his walking papers. He'd just been a diversion, anyway. I went to most games with a friend of mine named Pete.      I looked at the date of one particular game- Thanksgiving night. Great. It was going to be lots of fun trying to find someone who would be free Thanksgiving night to go to a hockey game. I called Pete and all the other people on my usual list to go to this game but to no avail. That ticked me off because I hated wasting tickets. They cost twenty dollars each. So I ran through everybody I knew and I came up with one person who wasn't on my list, liked hockey and probably was free that night- my friend. Boy, times are getting rough, I mused to myself.      He was more than happy to go. We made arrangements that I would call him at his brother's house after I finished dinner with my family.      So I did that. I told him I was ready to go to the game.      "You sure?" He laughed as he asked the question.      "Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"      He just laughed and hung up the phone.      I met his brother and his live-in girlfriend formally when I got to their house. His mother pushed desserts on me like crazy. I was starting to enjoy myself and almost didn't want to go to the game. After fifteen minutes my friend suggested that we get going and I forced my self to pull away from the cocoon I had just built.      We spent the drive to the arena in surprisingly comfortable conversation- about our new jobs (he'd gotten a job in the freight section in a shipping and handling company, I a new job delivering pizza), the band, my apartment, and Pink Floyd. I'd forgotten how comfortable conversation with him could be.      The game was fun. Our team won. I talked about some of the players with the guy who usually sat next to me during games because he had partial season tickets too. I noticed during the conversation that my friend was looking at me very strangely, as he was suspicious or something. Too bad, I shrugged to myself. He had no right to be jealous, especially after the incident with that other girl.      After the game we sat and watched the Zamboni machine clean the ice while we watched the crowd thin out. He had his arm behind my chair, but I attributed that to the fact that he had no room to put it anywhere else because the seats were so narrow.      "You want to come to the firehouse?" He inquired. "I never took you there before, did I?"      "No, you didn't."      "Let's go there. I can get free beer there." But of course.      The ride from the arena to the firehouse took about twenty minutes, and as we got closer and closer, the volume of conversation got less and less. I was starting to get nervous, but I felt excitedly nervous, not in-danger nervous.      We got to the firehouse and no one was there. When we got inside my friend showed me his uniform and relayed several tragic experiences he had as a fireman. He started to cry and I excused myself to go to the bathroom. He went to get a beer.      I didn't go to the bathroom. Instead I found a TV lounge so I flipped through the channels, impressed that taxpayers' money was going towards full cable TV for volunteer firemen. I settled on MTV.      Eight videos later, he hadn't joined me yet. It wasn't as if he didn't know where I could be; the TV was the only damn sound in the whole firehouse. I went back to the equipment room and searched for him. I found him sitting near his uniform and looking pretty morose. Three beer cans were strewn around him and he was well into number four.      "Are you okay?" I asked as I sat next to him.      "I'm depressed," he whined. He put his head in my lap and I stroked it, somewhat taken aback by this scenario. My arm started to fall asleep and I felt uncomfortable emotionally with this whole scene so I suggested we go back to the TV room. He got up and I led him there. I felt like a mother dragging her kid through the supermarket.      We were watching music videos for awhile and I started to fall asleep. My alarm clock was waking up out of my twilight zone to his kissing me. It felt kind of nice.      He nuzzled my cheek. "You're hot. I've always wanted you."      I believed him. It seemed as if he had eternal crushes on the entire female population, he just rotated them as he felt necessary.      Then I wanted him and we were all over each other. We were detoured, however, by the arrival of one of his fellow firemen. The guy just walked in on us and talked to my friend as if he talked to half-naked mating couples on a regular basis. I suggested to my friend that we take this elsewhere. I don't know why; this would have been my chance to bring this junk to a halt, but I guess my hormones weren't exactly in the mood to hand the reins of control over to my instincts.      We got to my apartment and finished what we started, which was somewhat of an awkward thing because his alcohol consumption had deadened him in certain areas. He fell asleep in my arms and I lay awake in disbelief; I couldn't believe I'd had sex with a suicidal drunk with a gun collection. Had my life become that pathetic?      I waited for the nausea of the morning-after feeling to arrive. It never did; I was too numb to feel anything.      I spent the next three weeks trying to dig myself out of the rubble that my lustful impetuous act led me into.      We were now boyfriend and girlfriend, at least according to my friend; never mind the fact that one week after our secret rendezvous he called me up totally confused about whether he was in love in me or the ex-girlfriend he wanted to shoot. I didn't care; I just wanted to get out of this hole I created for myself.      My phone rang all of the time at all hours. Eventually I shut it off. All his phone calls consisted of interrogations of where I went and who I was with. I copped a resentment big time with this attitude of his. My time was mine, not his. I made the mistake of seeing him again during these three weeks. It made him think that if I was seeing him at all I should be seeing him every day. He certainly didn't like the idea that I wouldn't sleep with him again. To me, the affair was over. It had gone too far. I really didn't want to be his savior, and I thought of him as a friend, not a lover. I just didn't know how to tell him that without him going nuts on me.      I went to a hockey game one day during all this with Pete. Now, Pete was a nice guy, but he was a friend and absolutely nothing more. I had known him for three years and he had become something of a big brother to me. At this particular time, I preferred his company to that of my friend's; there was less of an inquisition when I spoke to him.      I got home around midnight to encounter my phone ringing angrily. Damn, I thought, I forgot to turn it off.      "Hello." I said.     "Huloh." Drunk as hell. "Uh'm at thuh bah."      "I was at the game."      "Ah figuhd. Was watching duh t-t-t-teeee-veeeee heeuh en ah s-s-aw duh game. Whodya go wid?"      Why lie? "My friend Pete."      Silence. "Pete."      "Pete."      "Pete."      Give me a break. "Yes, I went with my friend Pete."      "Ohhh." Clang, break, fall in the background. Burp in my ear "Scooz." A drunk's version of 'excuse me'; I was getting used to the expression.      It was too late for it. His drunk apology came just as I hung up the phone in his face.     I was not terribly surprised when I got a phone call two days later from one of his drunk firemen friends telling me that I was various vile things and that I should never call my friend again. Actually I was relieved to get the phone call- it was my ticket to get off this roller coaster relationship. Still, I mourned the friendship, because I did love him deeply as a friend. I wished for the days when we hung out eating Taco Bell bullshitting and making wisecracks about life. I lost a friendship with that call, but introspection provided me with the realization that I had lost it much sooner than that.      I never called him to find out if his friend's call was valid, if he'd really had his friend make that call. I had bought him some Christmas presents, so I went for the last time to his house and left them on the doorstep without ever finding out if anyone was home. I was finally ready to let this guy go, as a friend, lover, or evangelical candidate. It was a sad feeling that took me a while to get over, but I was glad too. I changed my phone number so I would never have to deal with his phone calls in the middle of the night again.      I personally met the woman I saw him with the one time the day of the parade, and I found her to be a very decent person. I was also glad to find her alive and in one piece despite numerous threats made by our mutual friend. We both came to the same conclusion about him- he was really a nice guy, but the booze transformed him into a nutcase.      After my experience with this fiasco, I don't try to evangelize anymore, especially to strange people with guns. To me this whole situation was an example of trying too hard. I leave evangelizing to those more qualified- God Himself, preferably. My current opinion on the stuation is that if He really wants to reach someone in a certain way He has the ability to do so without putting His other children in insane situations. I only say something about my beliefs if asked, and I don't engage in romantic relations in order to convey religious messages anymore. Besides, I'm no longer single anyway.      I hope my friend is okay. I regret the circumstances that occurred, but I am also grateful that they happened. Experiences such as these remind me that I am human. What a wonderful feeling that is. Copyright © by Jessica Kuzmier Home      Biography      Nonfiction      Fiction      LinksBlog