Lost Yinzer: God Destroyed My Friend

John Grochalski

I seem to do worse during odd years.  Going back a decade, it seems to me that every odd year from 2001-2011, has been besieged with bad moves, cancer, shithole apartments, bad jobs, layoff threats, rashes, pimples on the ass, or international terrorism.  Even years I can get away with it.  I beat the odds.  I get a little luck.  I was married on an even year.  I saw both of my books of poetry published in an even year.  I age better in even years.  I probably look better during even years as well.  So let’s just say that I have big goddamned plans for 2012. 

2011 has been pretty standard in terms of misery.  The year started with one of my cats needing all but two of her teeth pulled (she’s 12 years old), which came to a nice hefty $2,000 bill, and seems to be ending with an apartment-wide, Hurricane Irene inspired cockroach infestation (right after the wife and I signed a two-year lease extension) and my other cat sneezing blood, dying from a microscopic tumor that the vet can’t even find yet, even though we’ve racked up another $1500 trying to figure this one out.  I like very few people in this world.  I love this cat.  I don’t think I’ve cried the way I’ve cried watching as my much braver wife cleans the blood away from the cat’s nose and muzzle.  Maybe 2012 ain’t looking so good after all.

But one thing happened this year that’s pretty big for me.  I managed to lose a friend that I had for nearly 30 years.  Calvin was once a good pal of mine back in my Pittsburgh days.  We met in the third grade (1982, which hurts to write) trading baseball cards, and managed to carry this friendship all the way up to and beyond marriage and children.  Our halcyon days were in the mid-90s when Calvin and I, and a small core group of others, would spend weekend nights all over the city of Pittsburgh, getting drunk and basically making a nuisance of ourselves. 

Essentially we were those guys that you saw pissing on your porch at 1 or 2 in the morning, after a long night of beer and vodka and soda at Dee’s Café on the South Side.  We were those guys removing your chair on snow-filled nights, in order to steal your parking space.  If there was a group of white guys wandering aimlessly into porn shops on Liberty Avenue at 3 in the morning, or soliciting prostitutes on Wood Street, that was probably us as well.  Calvin and I and the boys were a class act all the way.

Calvin and I had one last bad summer together (1997), where I fucked a co-worker that he had been crushing on, and we almost beat the shit out of each other one night in front of my apartment on Forbes Avenue.  After that, we kind of went our separate ways.  Calvin continued with the boys for a bit before meeting the woman who would become his wife, and I went and met the woman who would become mine.  He and I became casual friends.  We talked every once in a while.  Eventually that died out too.  Calvin and his wife moved to the Midwest, and the last time I saw him was at his wedding over a decade ago.  A couple years later, my woman and I moved to big, bad Brooklyn, where we’ve lived for the better part of the last ten years.  Calvin and I became phone friends and email friends, calling and writing each other every few years, reminiscing and rehashing shit that was never really that glorious to begin with in the first place.

This summer good old Calvin finally decided to become like the rest of us rats.  He joined Facebook and started reconnecting with everyone that ever existed in his life, all in that very Facebooky way of whitewashing certain aspects of our existence.  Calvin always claimed that he had no use for Facebook, which was why it surprised me one very humid morning to get his friend request.  I thought great.  I can do this.  Facebook friendships are my kind of friendships.  They’re no hassle, and little is expected of you other than reading the occasional comment by someone or simply ignoring them altogether.  I accepted Cal’s friend request, and soon we were on our way, posting shit and looking at all of the pictures of trips we’d taken, his kids, blah blah blah, filling in the gaps from the years we’d missed out on as friends.  For a while it was nice.

But many of Calvin’s posts were related to Jesus or God, or in praise of Nation.  In a panic I went and read his Facebook profile, and was horrified at what I saw; my old friend had not only become a devout Catholic, but a flag-waving Republican.  Now, there are two ways to really anger me; God and country.  I’ll say this, if in the midst of conversation, I learn that someone is devoutly religious, I tend to lose all respect for them, and whatever seemingly reasonable point that they were making suddenly becomes null and void because I know that it’s coming from a very unreasonable, close-minded, ignorant value and moral structure.  I have the same opinion with overt patriotism.  I just can’t get on board with that rah, rah USA! USA! crap.  Samuel Johnson once said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.  Maybe that’s too harsh a statement.  I don’t know.  But I still can’t help myself from thinking about it whenever someone gets red, white, and blue on me.

In typical Grochalski fashion I began needling Calvin about his views and beliefs.  I’d leave comments making fun of Jesus and conservatism, thinking that I was being cheeky.  I’d argue politics and God with him, mock good ol’ America, figuring my old buddy could take it. Boy was I wrong.  In the midst of one heated chain of comments, I received a chat from Calvin telling me that he could no longer handle me making fun of his God and country.  In typical, benevolent bullshit Catholic fashion, he told me that he’d always be there for me if I needed him, as if I were some kind of drugged out, disease riddled sludge, instead of a guy taking potshots at Jesus and Tea Baggers.  Then, in seconds, I was unable to post another point in my argument on Calvin’s page.  I’d been deleted as his Facebook friend.

It didn’t quite end there.  I have this poem blog, and from Monday-Friday, sometimes Saturday, I try to publish an original poem a day.  To me, being mediocre is tough, constant work.  Anyway, after this brouhaha with Calvin, I started putting up poems which essentially told my side of our story in a crass, immature way.  I might’ve called my old friend a douche bag in one of the poems.  But, in my defense, I’m a 37 year-old functioning alcoholic with no children and a semi-cushy union job, who still buys baseball cards and comic books, so maturity is usually an afterthought in whatever decision I make.  Suffice it to say, Calvin was none too pleased with my attempts at art.  After the second poem appeared I received a strongly worded email from my newly former friend, once again restating his devotion to both God and country.

I was pretty angry to hear from him, considering how I’d been banished from his virtual friend pool.  Now, I could’ve taken the low road and emailed him back something acidic, as is my standard.  Or I could’ve escalated my little literary war.  But after some deep thought, all that had transpired between Calvin and I just made me sad.  I decided to be honest and forthright.  I emailed Calvin back and basically told him what I knew was the truth.  I told him that I really didn’t know him anymore, and that he didn’t know me, and that everything he’d become I detested with a passion.  I said that, to me at least, he was a stranger and that there was no point in continuing our friendship. As I wrote the email, I tried to remember that kid I once traded baseball cards with, and the old friend who split pitchers of Bud with me and shared my smokes on a Saturday night outside the Metropol.  But that guy no longer existed.  I was sure Calvin felt the same way.  I wished my old friend well.  I received a short email back, wishing me well.  I haven’t heard from him since, and I don’t expect to write Calvin any time soon.  So bring it on 2012.  This guy could use a little bit of good news.

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out and Glass City.  He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.