meximick's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My friend Kevin I don't think I've ever written about Kevin, but tonight for some reason he was on my mind. He was kinda a social retard, which made him fit in well in the Nerd Herd, a self-named group of me and my friends who did fairly well in school, played in the school band for the most part, and who we all tended to hang out with. We were all social retards and we enjoyed each others' stupid attempts at humorousness. When we lost half the Herd to high school graduation, then to college, the remaining lot of us coalesced as a team of entertaining morons. We were the new seniors, and struggled through the year without our friends, whom we visited in their freshman year at various schools - Buffalo State, Potsdam, MIT, Oswego. Then we finally graduated and moved on. Kevin was crazy. That's the first thing I can say about him that I also think our other friends would say. His favorite shot was dry gin. Straight dry gin. At the bar when we would take turns picking shots and it was Kevin's turn, that's what he'd pick, and make us suffer for his choice. If you've never, please don't. He had a good sense of humor whether the joke was told to him, or was about him. He was Indian, and was as culturally implied, had his future laid out for him by his mom & dad. He was to be a pharmacist, and his younger brother was to be either a doctor or a dentist (like his dad). His third year of pharmacy school he visited me & my best friend at college. We were in the midst of our mandated binge drinking, drug-taking escapade that is Freshman year of college. We stayed up most of the night in my best friend Mark's apartment. He lived in a two-floor house with 5 other friends. We were drinking, smoking pot, when our friend Kevin brings out a gallon size storage bag, 1/3 filled with an assortment of pills. Nothing packaged or bottled. Unlabeled pills - xanax, librium, valium - that I can remember. There were more different kinds than that. We were excited and all indulged - the 5 or so of us in the house. I remember more than one of us saw Kevin dipped into his bag a couple too many times. We were stoned, drunk, on pills, and telling him to stop. He did. We one by one went to bed. I slept downstairs. I was woken up by Dan, my friends roommate, telling me, "You should go check on your friend upstairs." By the time I got to the couch, he was already dead. There was white foam on the corners of his lips. I remember shaking him, and yelling to him "Kevin, wake up!" and I slapped him in the face. His skin was already cool to the touch. I knew he was gone. Someone called 911. Me and Mark went to the precinct to speak with the detectives. I remember nothing about it except when the detective told us he had to notify Kevin's family. Mark volunteered to make the call. He started to dial. He stopped and held the phone out, like it was too heavy to lift to his ear, and he looked at me. "I can't do this." he said. I knew I couldn't have the detective, a complete stranger, tell Kevin's dad the terrible news, and I was the only one left in the room. I will never forget the pain and anguish on the other end of the phone. I had to tell the man that his oldest son was dead. We both sobbed, and I kept telling him, "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry." It was one of the worst moments of my (and Kevin's father's) life. Turns out Kevin had a sleep apnea condition that affected his breathing at night. The pills did their job, but he took more than he should have, and he basically suffocated in his sleep. I think of Kevin from time to time. I wonder what he would have been doing now if he were alive. I wonder if I could have done more to prevent his death, though I probably couldn't have. This memory haunts me. I don't know why I thought of it all the way on the train home from Jamaica tonight. 10:23 p.m. - 2008-09-10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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