SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE 70
Scary Cool Sad Goodbye 2024.
I knew the year would be odd when the coyote appeared January 2. “Beware of Wild Animal on Pier,” read the email heading from the building management company that afternoon. “We have received report that a Coyote is on the pier,” it went on. “We have contacted 311 City Services regarding this matter.” Immediately I ran downstairs, joining the few others who had gathered in attempt to free the creature from the fenced-in area he’d wound his way inside. He was an amiable fellow, snapping only sometimes at those who fed him bits of sausage trying to lead him to the gate, but he ignored the open passage. Instead he trotted laps around the concrete, passing by so closely I could see his yellow eyes, or ruminated on the horizon, pink and silver-gold over the quiet lake. Tiring of this mischief at some point hours later, he simply let himself out and went off into the night.
Towards the previous year’s end, I had sent yet another email with the subject line, “Are you alive?” Bad vibes had troubled me through 2023, and I knew that something terrible was happening to Tony, but when I tried to call him, it went to dial tone. Only this time, I got a near-immediate reply. “Umm yes I'm alive. Barely,” it said. “Things have been up and down but currently they are pretty fucked.” He gave me a new number which required an hour of drinking to work up the nerve to call, and though we spoke for hours, I can’t remember how it went. But I recall the shock of his voice, how different it had become. He sounded like Michael Jackson, the way junkies get to talking in that little baby register. He told me where he was now — somewhere in Arizona you could see the border wall — and what he had been doing. I’m pretty sure I didn’t cry and that I told him I would save him, and I know that night I sent $200 to his CashApp. “Thanks for remembering me,” he texted after I had gone to sleep. “I think everyone else forget.”
He filled the days that followed with money-transfer games, which were always urgent and hard to understand: his PayPal account was locked, so he would send the cash to me, and I would send it to his CashApp, and so on. In addition to this gauntlet of exchanges, I’d sent him something to the effect of $400 in four days, and though he’d sworn to use the money for a few nights in a motel, there were Spanish-speaking strangers in the background of our calls. He was sick, in any case, and if he couldn’t scrounge up $40 in the next few hours, he’d have to do something unfathomable, something he’d done before. He said he’d pay me back, and this time, he actually did. But that night at 4 am, I woke up in a cold sweat, 100% certain that if I let this go any farther, there would be real trouble — not the old woe-is-me drama, but something immeasurably worse. In the dark, I blocked his number and instantly fell back asleep.
I woke up to a PayPal case which Tony had filed against me to the tune of $40; the ‘merchandise’ he’d bought from me was defective or not as described. “This has been a very upsetting situation,” read a statement from the ‘buyer.’ “I just want my money back and to forget about it.” My suspicions were confirmed — I was just another mark — and though it was indeed upsetting, I was proud to be a woman who recognized, for once, when someone is about to ruin her life. The year passed into the next with one last email from Tony, whose subject line read “Dude.” “Did you for real get me all hyped and then totally just disappear? I’m fucking dying for real now,” it went on. “I need you to paypal me or cash app me money please dude I’m getting super sick being outside it’s so fucking cold please dude talk to me don't let me die now fuck.” I read it, but didn’t reply.
It wasn’t until April that I learned that he had died, though it’s likely that it happened in early 2024. I can’t say I was surprised; the week before I found out from a message from his cousin, I’d had a talk with Jeff that entertained the possibility. And yet it was unthinkable when presented as fact — the magic thing with Tony was how he always somehow survived to reinvent himself anew with some impossible new scheme. Those I told would reassure me that I was in no way to blame, using therapy cliches which reaffirmed, in fact, I was. The facts remained the facts: he had in no uncertain terms told me that he was dying, and I, in the interests of self-preservation, had turned away. True, the road we would have followed would have only led to madness, not like that had ever mattered much to me before. But I’d just ghosted. I hadn’t even said goodbye.
Some months later, the Siamese cat I had inherited from Tony all those many years ago when he left me for Korea (if you’ve read our interview, you might remember how that went) was diagnosed with cancer. The amount required to save her might strike others as ridiculous, but there was no question I’d do it, nor any question of why. She returned home from her surgery stitched up from top to bottom, staggering around on pills in silly post-op clothing. For weeks to come, she’d spend her days mostly hiding in the closet, creeping out at night to lay helplessly atop my chest and press her face against mine through her recovery cone. I could feel the way she understood the situation, like she knew why I’d been crying earlier that spring.
On certain days, remembering hits me like a load of bricks. Those days, the only thing that cuts through the despair are the pair of interviews we did for this newsletter, in which Tony comes alive in a voice I recognize. It makes me laugh revisiting his views on the Old Testament; I hope he got the chance to get God’s take on the whole thing. (“There’s parts of the Old Testament that I completely disagree with, but I also feel that if God is real like I think he is, he’s not an asshole,” he’d said. “Like, that book is fucking old, bro. First of all, you’re not supposed to work on Sundays. Like, dude, we’re not all fucking goat herders now. Which means that I believe his views on homosexuality and slavery would be completely different now. But if I die and get up there and he’s like, no, actually I’m still all about that shit, I’d be like, fuck off. At least fucking understand the situation, bro. You think God has a Black Lives Matter t-shirt? I could go on and on.”) I find myself scrolling back to the beginning when I get to the last paragraphs. “You have to ask another question, this is not the end.”
Through the year, I found new comfort in writing — for once, the daily practice of it, as opposed to its completion. To wake up before sunrise, boil coffee, and work hard on pieces for various publications or for this very newsletter would become, and continues to be, the true joy of my life. The ritual reminds me of a passage I read recently from Carl Jung’s wonderful memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, in which he recounts a very formative dream from early adulthood:
“It was night in some unknown place, and I was making slow and painful headway against a mighty wind. Dense fog was flying along everywhere. I had my hands cupped around a tiny light which threatened to go out at any moment. Everything depended on my keeping this little light alive. Suddenly I had the feeling that something was coming up behind me. I looked back, and saw a gigantic black figure following me. But at the same moment I was conscious, in spite of my terror, that I must keep my little light going through night and wind, regardless of all dangers. When I awoke I realized at once that the figure was a ‘spector of the Brocken,’ my own shadow on the swirling mists, brought into being by the little light I was carrying. I knew, too, that this little light was my consciousness, the only light I have. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.”
To those reading this, I extend my gratitude for helping me in my ritual to keep the light alive. And I hope that we can meet again in 2025.
