Note: This remembrance of a high school friend was written and posted within days of his wake six years ago. I repost it here with revisions for no reason other than it seemed sensible to share again.
It was lyrics day in Creative Writing, an elective I jumped at the chance to take during, I think, the first marking period of the spring semester of my sophomore year in high school. So, winter 2000. I remember very little of what I accomplished in that class. Though I do remember some very terrible “joke” “poems” I wrote that my teacher Miss Sample decided to tolerate, as she always had, and not add to my grade, much to my incredible fortune.
It’s not fun remembering a lot of this time. It was a low point in my adolescence, at turns pathetic and simply embarrassing. I don’t think I’d been more insecure, more clueless, or unhappier than I was at that point. But I remember lyrics day! That fun day when we get to set aside the rigors of craft and discipline to bask in the glow of our own, obviously faultless, pop cultural tastes. Miss Sample set up the stereo. There was a usual procession. “Doll Heart” by Hole, I’m pretty sure, was one of them; at least one Tori Amos song appeared as well. All very typical enough to give me the space to extend my still-maturing tradition of impish atypicality.
By then I was a connoisseur of the extreme; a sommelier of the fringe. Granted that came about largely in isolation. I scoured histories and collected “essential” albums with my limited resources—special ordering at Scotti’s in Summit, or getting someone to drive me to Curmudgeon in Edison. One such acquisition was MIA by the Germs, a compilation of the early Los Angeles punk band’s entire body of work, all 17 of their songs. Darby Crash was a self-destructive, nihilistic idiot. He was also a poetic genius, and so what better time than that moment to showcase it? I stood up, played “Lexicon Devil.” I can’t say that most people in the class shared my enthusiasm. Miss Sample, if I recall, was correctly impressed, but so much for that.
I can’t remember if Chris went before me or after me, but I remember his presentation being more successful. Chris was a senior. We sat in the back corner of the classroom in a mini-fiefdom of other “weird” students, which given the class was saying something. Chris was unlike me, he was routinely in better spirits; he had a sense of humor that combined the jovial, the dark, the gross, and the absurd in the proper adolescent proportions. He was a musician and played in a few bands. He had a wide, Cheshire-suggestive grin that perfectly encapsulated his personal warmth with an undercurrent of mischief. It was the same expression he made as he stood before the class and pressed play on Miss Sample’s stereo, blasting forth The Dillinger Escape Plan’s “Jim Fear” off of Calculating Infinity. The band’s debut album had just been released the previous fall and I didn’t take to them right away. But Chris read off the band’s enigmatic, staccato lyrics and mesmerized me. “Alfresco slapsticked/Foam mouth sunshine/Slash her and bash her porno freak/Throw another crap cake on the stove, Jimmy/The flaming hermit/The lonely fool.”
Dillinger lyrics actually suck upon reflection. Even thematically they bore little distinction from the suburban discontent of their more popular contemporaries. But the atmospherics were unnervingly and compellingly off. Whereas Limp Bizkit and Marilyn Manson could mimic the emotions and intellect of their million-strong fans and profit by it, Dillinger opted for a singular mystique to be approached with an unusual degree of caution. They picked up where Black Flag and Deadguy left off. It was an inarticulate intensity, but all the more genuine in its forswearing of mass appeal. I understood better when I saw Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet.
More generally Dillinger signified the opening up of an entire world that I didn’t think could possibly exist. A culture that was at once self-contained and self-refined. It was an intimidating one, of course, driven by pride and passion, a resilient stridency that there was nothing else going on that was better than this. What dumb luck for us that we were at least half-correct. Chris being uniquely unencumbered from petty bullshit, whether related to high school or the scene, proved a generous and patient guide through this world. He introduced me to several bands, he was partial to Lou Barlow’s projects Sebadoh and Folk Implosion, as well as the burgeoning emo luminaries Grade and The Promise Ring. Neither was Chris hobbled by the hipster’s self-consciousness. Walking one afternoon, he drove by me while out on his pizza delivery shift and offered me a lift home. Michelle Branch’s “Everywhere” was blasting on his stereo. Not on the radio but on CD. I know this because he was fascinated enough by Branch’s singing in one of the verses that he kept rewinding to the same four-second line (“the WAter's GETting deeeeeep”) to decode its magic. He asked my opinion and I left it at “good production.”
We started our own project, little evidence of which actually exists outside of a few t-shirts (designed by me) and maybe some photo footage (not that I particularly want to know). It was called Morgancore, featuring me on vocals and Chris on acoustic guitar. We debuted at that year’s Teen Arts Festival, performing before a packed lecture hall at Union County College. (I don’t know if other states, or current teens, have something similar but it was a cherished tradition in every high schools in turn-of-the-century New Jersey.) The evaluating teacher indulged us and the students were amused, more or less. With the addition of drums we played one and a half more “performances.”
To some it might appear that I was making a total fool of myself. Maybe to the pseudo-Darias who bore witness that was precisely what it amounted to. It was not wise in any sense, but wisdom (among other things) wears unflatteringly on the 15-year-old. All told, it was one of the single best days in my entire soon-to-be four-decade existence. I felt central to the moment as opposed to just filling space on the margins. Chris had a talent for encouraging centrality. Among teens at least, such a talent is rarely appreciated beyond its lucky beneficiaries.
I do regret what that it took a death to remember this. I had never properly forgotten any of it, but shifting priorities and self-involved anxieties that make adulthood such a joyride have a way of rearranging boxed memories into new corners, each more mildewed than the last. My friendship with Chris drifted as these tend to do, and was more or less relegated to Facebook interactions that went from occasional to infrequent before dropping off entirely. We had some reconnection over the fact that he would go on to attend my college to get his nursing degree. He never seemed to lose that joy that stood out above most others at school; or, truthfully, any human being I’ve ever met. Indeed, attending his wake reminded me of his justly earned class individualist and friendliest senior superlatives. But his passing is a reality that situated stubbornly and guiltily into something like acceptance. I left a gap wide open, which now will never be closed.
I make no claim that my memories of Chris boast a special esteem. In fact when this was originally written it brought out memories of others no less poignant and dimensional. It did modest work for valuable profit. Loss has a way of digging out the mind’s account ledgers to review what you owe and to whom you owe it. Because you never self-invent as independently as you like to think you do. Those exquisite tastes, inexhaustible passions, and resolute morals are arrived at as much by wind changes as by mere choice. Whether in breezes or gusts, you are grateful they blew in a certain way and by forces that pushed you onward rather than over.