by Aileen Gallagher
When we became roommates in Astoria in 2006, I was excited to live with my friend. But it was clear that you did not want to be there, that this was a step down for the Manhattanite you thought you were supposed to be. I wanted you to like it there, or at least like living with me.
You did a lot of coke in that apartment and lied to me about it. You knew that I didn’t want it in the house, nor did I view it as a Tuesday night activity. So you’d just sit at your desk in the corner, sniffing away, and I would pretend to ignore you. I remember being worried about you and you being dismissive, but I don’t think I knew how to put all the pieces together to equal cokehead, or even what I could do about it. You paid the rent and were sometimes not an asshole.
You wanted to buy a fish tank. I asked you not to buy an eel because I hate snakes. You bought an eel. The eel died. You weren’t home much, instead, you spent most nights with your girlfriend in Manhattan. The eel died and you didn’t come and clean it up for several days. I know I had to ask/remind/demand more than once. I felt powerless. I wasn’t going to clean the fucking thing up, and clearly you weren’t, either. Our apartment smelled of rotting flesh. But I was the one who had to live there.
Some nights you would sit on the couch and say nothing, your leg bouncing up and down for hours. You were so agitated you frayed the upholstery. Your silence was sullen and oppressive. I knew you weren’t mad at me, but it’s hard to live with someone who broods. I would say “good night” and you wouldn’t even acknowledge me.
As for the night you pissed on my computer, I don’t know if I’ll ever understand how that even happened. You were ashamed when you told me. I could think of no response. I cry when I get really frustrated, and I remember sobbing in the shower because my life felt particularly hopeless at that moment. I hated my job, I hated my roommate, and it did not seem like there was an escape hatch for either situation. The only reason I didn’t kick you out was because I didn’t have the money to find a new place to live and could not imagine finding a new roommate. Most of our friends were partnered up by then. I was too embarrassed about my living situation to call my family and ask them for help. Being your friend at that moment felt difficult to justify.
And yet… And yet sometimes we had fun, and when you were fun, you were the most fun. I remember you made something called “Fat Kid Pasta” that I loved. We spent hours playing Tiger Woods on PS2 for a dollar a hole. I beat you all the time. Will came and stayed with us for a while, and I have great memories of those days. For my birthday that year you took me out for omakase and then we made a night of it. When you were you, it was an adventure. We had a lot of adventures.
At some point, after the computer, you decided you needed another way. You were looking into rehab, some outpatient program in Manhattan. Instead, you went it alone and stopped doing blow. You exercised a lot. You had terrible nightmares. A couple of times you hallucinated. Once I tried to wake you up and you looked at me, terrified, as though I were a stranger. I was afraid you were going to hit me, but you stuck your arm in the toilet instead. You said you thought it was on fire.
The lease ended. I don’t remember talking about it but clearly it was time to move. By summer 2007 I was living in Brooklyn with a different friend. We hung out a lot then, and it was like you were a different person. We’d sit on my porch and drink wine and eat duck rillettes on Triscuits. We played hours of Yahtzee outside at Zombie Hut. You moved to Philly and came back. At some point I realized you had some other set of friends who were the drug friends, and you mostly preferred their company. I did not try to compete.
You asked me recently if I knew you had a problem when we lived together. I don’t know if I would have even acknowledged it then, as though your drug problem were about me, an indicator of my own bad choices. But I did know you before when you were the first friend I made on the first day of my first job as a real, live journalist in New York City. I was 21 years old and you were 25. We had all the cliched big dreams you could have. Some of them we actually did, together. I cannot remember being young without remembering you.
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