Did Angie know these would be her last public words? The morning of the day after she wrote this her roommate found her dead on her couch. Outside of blood family, i've know Angie longer than i've know any other person on this planet. We were best friends for a portion of our lives, out of touch for many years, but always connected. It never failed, over all these years we were apart, that i would dream about her and within a day or two i'd get a phone call or a letter. There was a decade or so that we fell out of touch but i still regularly dreamed her but instead of a phone call or a letter i'd awake with the unsettling feeling that maybe something bad had happened to her and i worried. A kind of chronic, under the radar on consciousness kind of worry. She's dead now and somehow i feel lighter. Like a burden is lifted. My living friends say "I'm so sorry for your loss" but i want to tell them "Don't be. I'm relieved that she's finally safe from life's continued insults" but they wouldn't understand. Other people say "you're in my prayers" but what does that mean really? To those people i want to say "don't disrupt the balance of the Universe praying unnecessary prayers!"
Angie. I met her when i was 9 years old and my family moved into the house next door to hers. She was 11 months older than i and complete opposites in personality and appearance. We'd go through periods of being inseparable and then periods of trying out other "best friends" and come back to being inseparable. It was a strange relationship in some ways. She loved me, of that i have no doubt. Whether she felt this complicated connection the same way i do, i'm not sure. I'm not sure many or any of my true heart and soul friends feel the connection the way i do. Sharon does, i think, but she has tons of friends and i'm very selective and have very few. Introvert. I remember so many times Angie coming over to my house and trying to get me to leave my bedroom to come out and play. Sometimes she could get me out, but a lot of times she'd leave mad because she didn't understand my need for quiet solitude, being more of the extroverted personality type. So many memories...
One summer, i was probably 11 or 12, Angie did something that caused her parents to ground her for the entire summer. I'm sure it was something stupid like not drying the dishes completely before putting them away, or failing to complete some task to the satisfaction of her cunt of a mother. Whatever it was, we spent that entire summer in the farthest point from her house we could get while still being within her boundary. We lived in the country and had big yards but it was still like being chained. And i had other friends so many days she would just be sitting there, at the edge of her yard, waiting. I don't even remember now what we did besides talk and dream about the future that summer. But we were those kinds of friends to each other and she had a shitty life. We were opposites that way too. My life must've seemed idyllic to her and other than the crippling depression i suffered from, it pretty much was idyllic. Intelligent, thoughtful parents, a good middle-class kind of life... while she lived what was probably the original house on our street. A converted modular kind of building from the 40's. It wasn't a terrible house but they were poor and couldn't furnish it or afford air conditioning. Stuff like that. And there were six of them living in that house that only had one bathroom and three bedrooms. A kitchen and living room rounded out the place. Angie and her older sister Debbie shared on room, younger brothers Michael and Benji shared the other, smaller room, and the parents got the other room. It always felt like camping when i went over there. But the place was clean. And as long as you stayed out of the boys room, it wasn't too bad. The boys were bed-wetters well beyond the potty training years. Michael and Benji were about a year apart and Michael was only a few years younger than me so we're talking big kid bed-wetters. I still don't know what kind of psychological abuse they must have been subjected to. But Angie was my friend and she's the focus of this remembrance. :o)
We were close for most of the 70's and through the mid 80's. Even though we went our separate ways, i was a voracious letter writer and she would often write me back or call from where ever she was at the time. She lived with my family for awhile and when we left Manassas to move to Raleigh my parents would have gladly brought her along. I don't know why she didn't come with but all of her life, Angie would ruin any kind of good thing that came her way. Definitely her own worst enemy. Anyways, all of these memories are mixed up in no kind of linear pattern. They jump from playing with her Barbie dolls when we were pre-teens to smoking pot with her boyfriend when we were suppose to be in school. We were like little wild creatures in those days. Beautiful creatures, we were.
I want to tell about the times with her boyfriend Ron. Or Bill. I can't remember his name. The other Beatle freak, but no match for my Beatle-freakiness. And her boyfriend Ray. He was a great guy. Another of her ruined opportunities. It never mattered who she was dating, she always wanted me to be the third wheel. Her boyfriends never minded either. They liked fucking Angie and having intellectual conversations with me afterwards. If somehow Angie and I could've been merged we would have made one excellent human being. Maybe that's our connection. She's my physical side i've never explored and i'm her intellectual side. She was dyslexic but didn't get treatment until she was twelve or older. I want to tell about the time we were hitchhiking to the mall and a young guy in a van picked us up. It wasn't until we got in that we saw the big gun. Luckily for us he wasn't a hunter because we would have been easy prey. Close calls. I see how close they were from this distance of Time, but we were constantly putting ourselves in harms way but somehow never got into serious trouble. Angie was a tease. She couldn't help herself. If it was an older man, she was on him like a cat in heat. Even my dad had to tell her to keep her hands to herself. She would hang the oddest assortment of people. I don't know how she met them. Older construction guys, a retired Hell's Angel name Ben working as a mechanic in town, a journeyman electrician from DC named Theodore but who everyone called Beaver, who worked a few months out of the year and lived off his earnings for the rest. All these people i met through Angie. I am who i am today because of people Angie introduced me to when we were kids. It's a very strange relationship. There's too much too tell but with her death so fresh i feel the need to get some of it down. I guess it doesn't really matter now but as much as i loved her, and as much of a relief it is knowing that she's finally safe from harm, and knowing that we really didn't have anything to talk about now besides the past, i still hope she visits me in my dreams. The idea that i won't dream her ever again is more painful than knowing she's dead.
Oh yeah. I have to remember to tell about Jay and Linda, and about the Kevins' who worked at Ross' garage, the track team in middle school. The haunted hill. Tequila Sunrises and bong hits every morning. The biting flies incident along the railroad tracks. Sunbathing at the cow pond. Terry from Richmond with the teeth rotting around the braces he'd had put on but never got taken off. The meanness of kids. Or maybe it's just life that i'm thinking about and you can't tell the details of a life because it's like describing individual pieces of a puzzle and out of context they're probably not all that interesting and maybe i should just let it all drift away for good now.
I think that Angie knew those would be her last words and i think she finally decided that she'd had enough. Unless she tells me in dreams though, i guess i'll never know the truth.
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