I have a friend I’ve known for about half my time on this planet. He’s as talented, intelligent, sarcastic and wise as any friend I ever made. I made records with him. He plays drums. He doesn’t suck at all. He’s about a buck twenty five soaking wet and took chunks out of cymbals and pummeled a snare head in one or two takes.

I made my very first record with him. A punk record for Epitaph.  I adored him in the first hour.  I liked them all but loved him immediately. He oozed cynical smart. He was such a dick.

I threw him out of the control room on his 21st birthday for being drunk and disorderly. He really pissed me off.

We bonded over Repo Man the movie, among other things. Over the years, whenever he was in town, he’d leave a message at the studio front desk. A runner would deliver it and I’d smile. “Plate of shrimp”, and a number to his hotel. Mayhem that night or the next. We inevitably got into some unexplainable drunken shit.

I made a second record with him and another band in Clearwater Florida a few years later.  More of a rockabilly project this time for Vagrant records. I was hired on the strength of the punk record and his insistence.

He texted me the other day to let me know the happiest bass player I ever met drank himself to death.

Timmy.

Orlando Airport.

When I first met Timmy, my friend told me it was a sad day if Timmy wasn’t smiling, right in front of him.

Timmy offered me a Bud Tall. Big thick glasses and a huge grin.

They  took me and my production partner to the original Hooters for lunch and took their hats off whenever  Skynyrd came on the radio. They got us a motel for the weekend but after that we were to stay with the singer guitar player, Edo and his roommate Sticky, for the duration of the record.

We had to flee Edo and Sticky’s house after a few days because they chain smoked in the living room where we slept in bags while my partner had bronchitis. Tobacco stained teeth. Stiff towels like sandpaper. It was awful.  My partner had a very fragile constitution and succumbed to anything whenever we traveled. We moved to Timmy’s house with his family. He had a cool aquarium and a brand new DVD player.  There was pot and more beer after the recording sessions and the bar.

It was gorgeous.

No smoking in Timmy’s house.

Very nice bathrooms. Soft towels.

My partner began to recover.

Goddamn this band could drink. Trash barrels of empty beer cans carted to the dumpster during lightning storms in the lightning capital of the world.

Case after case.

No smoking in the control room.

We broke the fast with Timmy’s family every morning.  A happier family, I’ve yet to meet. There was orange juice and waffles and sausages and bacon and eggs and love. I asked for peanut butter to accompany my syrup and got it. It was bucolic and warm while we were hung over as fuck. Timmy’s sisters were charming and innocent.  The more earnest they all were, the more I felt like some sort of interloper. I wondered what they were thinking with all of our eyes looking like pissholes in the snow.

We got picked up by Edo in the band van every morning and marveled at the latest Jesus sighting on the exterior window film of an office building on the way to the studio.  They actually had bleachers set up in the parking lot.

I remember the smell of gas as we fueled up.  The smell of beef sticks as Edo chewed them. I remember the pungent smell of men in a rock and roll Econoline. The indefatigable smell of beer.  I remember the smell of everything somehow more than anything else.

My friend stayed on my couch last year when he was out playing dates with the first band I ever made a record with.  My family, my girls, adored him. My new cat was particularly fond. He got sick and my wife made him homemade chicken soup.

He was so goddamn charming, polite and lovely, he made me look better in the eyes of my own family.

I had not seen him for over two decades. We’d stayed in touch but it was indeed like no time had passed and I loved him just as fiercely as the day he stole laminated menus from Waffle House for me and stuffed them under his shirt that morning in Florida after mixing his record all night. He handed them to me outside in the parking lot before they took us to the airport. They felt like contraband as I hid them in my luggage.  The sky was so big and blue.  The air smelled like the sea. Clouds like disintegrating pillows.

Two decades later we stayed up all night talking.

Me drunk and him sober.

I miss him.

He told me once I was like a big brother.  I’ll never forget the sting of humility.  No one had ever said anything like that to me before.  I was embarrassed.

I am better for knowing them.

There are good men and there are bad ones.

I’ve met so many toxic people in my life.  Mean, miserable, pricks and cunts. “Do you hate people?” “I don’t hate them…I just feel better when they’re not around.” -Charles Bukowski

I’m grateful for whatever force the universe exerts on such men. I’m sure there are people in their lives that could and should make and take plenty of exception to my sentiments here.  It doesn’t matter to me.

We made a damn good record.

It was lovely.

Rest in peace Timmy and bless you Mr. Oswald.

Drinks for my friends.