It would've been Amy's birthday today. I think she would have been 46 today. Larry always said he was robbing the cradle, even though he only had a couple years on her. They'd always have some big event on her birthday, go to some fancy restaurant and order steak and lobster, go for a long ride on his motorcycle up into the mountains to enjoy the clear air and view of the stars. He loved to do things for her, he loved being able to make her smile and provide experiences for her that she never dreamed could be hers. And she loved him, in one of those stupid storybook ways, where her eyes would light up when he came into a room. Her adoptive parents died, within a couple years of each other and her sister had married into a very exclusionary family all within the last decade, so her life was Larry and her small cadre of friends in Denver. Every week she'd meet with her trivia group at a bar (she never drank, just had Diet Coke), had done so for years. All the rest of her time was working or with Larry.

You could see it in how he'd puff out a bit when she was around and there were other men in the room. It took a long, long time for him to stop doing that when I was in the room, and I was neither interested nor available; but it was instinctual for him. He knew that the relationship he had with her was the best thing he was ever going to have, and there was nothing he wouldn't do to protect it.

She had Crohn's Disease. She put off her flu shot too long. She went from having a fever to Larry crying on my shoulder after having her taken off life support in less than 12 hours. He lost the best thing in his world that night. Ripped away from him. He'd be furious at the anti-mask crowd. Probably come to blows, come to think of it.

The funeral plans were a helpful distraction for some time. But he found an old friend in a bottle of whiskey once that was all taken care of. I couldn't keep up. It started as a way to remember her without feeling the pain of losing her, just feeling those good feelings (don't ever forget fst brd, Steve, don't ever forget). But you know this story, it's as old as the drink itself.

In one week's time, it will have been two years since Larry died. He had started climbing out of the bottle, just started imagining a world where it was okay to have a future. But his heart couldn't take it, and while he slept on July 24th, the damn thing just stopped working. He'd had a heart attack some years before (we went to lunch while he was having it; he thought it was heartburn, so got a dish with a mountain of brown rice and Sriracha), probably more than once, smoked 30 cigarettes a day for 30 years and after a six month stint in the Navy, never lifted anything heavier than a Zippo without damn good cause. I think he was enjoying life, but was just as happy to be dead, comme ci, comme ca.

Two things I learned about my friend Larry, who had been my dear friend for 25 years:
1. I was his emergency contact.
2. He kept the one article ever written about me in a chess magazine at the one chess tournament he and I went to in 1996.

For so long, the Larry-Amy-Steve trio was just a unit. For so long. If I was doing something that involved other people, it probably involved them. Dinners at my place, their place, out on the town, movies, coffee...They would've gotten a fucking kick out of this damn pandemic. It has all the markers for our brand of humor. We would've all isolated together and maintained a strong network with gaming, and good food, and late night laughter. It would have been the perfect way to survive this. And he would have been down on the front goddamn lines demanding justice for George and Breonna and Elijah and all the others. He'd make Amy and me stay home for health reasons, but he'd be there, goddamn he would be.

My brother's first wife died in 1999 (leukemia), and he found an old friend in a bottle of whiskey, too. When Amy died, I tried so hard to get my brother and Larry together, get him the support I know he needed--after all, David had been there, climbed out, has a new life, a wonderful wife, and two beautiful children for me to play gay uncle to. And it worked, there were lessons in there that I know David helped him with, and maybe that bought him an extra month or two, because there were several months there towards the end where he was my old pal Larry, but purified and calcified and wiser. It was a wonderful time. Surly and brilliant and funny and crude and passionate, but gone was the false bravado and machismo and one-upmanship.

I sure wish I had Larry right now to talk to my brother, because he's found an old friend in a bottle of whiskey; and I already know this story but there's nothing new for me to do.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Amy. I loved you like a sister, and I miss you every day.

You always really liked E2, why not break my noding silence with a little logging, eh?