Dating : JOSH

When Josh was a kid, his family lived out in the country down a quiet gravel road. He had a trampoline and a big red barn and a farm dog who, as the legend went, bit off its own tail. We used to have sleepovers there and watch scary movies. We must have been eleven or twelve the summer we watched The Blair Witch Project. His older brother told us the found footage was real and we were terrified every time we heard a noise coming from outside the house. We’d go out at night when we were that age and talk about aliens. The sky would be pure black and you couldn’t see anything past the tree line that drew a square on the property. It felt like standing on the edge of outer space.

Around the time we started junior high, Josh moved to the edge of town right near me. His mom’s new place was maybe ten houses down the highway from mine, a five minute walk. Over the next few years we traced those steps thousands of times. Once we snuck down below the bridge that connected the road between our houses to share a cigarette. We forgot it was winter and there were no leaves on the trees in my front bush to hide us. My dad could see us from the front window, clear as day, and busted us.

Josh had the kind of mom who would let us get into just enough trouble, but never too much. She was the kind of mom you could tell your secrets to and know they were safe. Her place became home base for our friends. I have a picture of the lot of us there one Christmas with, like, everyone we knew piled onto the couch in the front room next to the tree. There must have been sixteen of us on that damn couch. It was that kind of home.

The two of us discovered punk and emo and hardcore at the same time. My mom would drive us to all ages shows in Winnipeg and in the summers my dad would take us to Minneapolis for the Warped Tour. We saw AFI and NOFX and Taking Back Sunday on those trips. We hung out at the merch tents and tried to meet all those bands. It was the Bush years and the political punk bands used to talk about social issues. One summer Josh came back with a Not My President shirt. Our English teacher, Mrs. Y, challenged him on it: what do you mean, not your president? You have a Prime Minister. But she also agreed with him: Fuck Bush.

He had the Propagandhi CD, I didn’t. I was a bit softer; I liked Propagandhi, but was, in truth, more of a Weakerthans guy. Still, I remember what the album said, printed in bold letters circling the lip of the CD: Fuck Racism. Fuck sexism. Fuck homophobia. Those aren’t values you usually find in small town Manitoba, at least not in that way. I was very lucky to have my friends. Most of the guys in other grades were jocks. Hockey is religion out there. The guys my age hung out at the skate park. On the weekends, we went wakeboarding. At our house parties, we listened to TBS and Brand New. If I’d been any other age, it would have been hopeless trying to fit in.

I was especially lucky to have Josh. I can say with certainty I would have had a harder life without him. I know being friends with him protected me. And when I moved to Toronto years later and came out of the closet, he actually apologized to me. He said he was sorry he had never asked. He didn’t have to ask, I hadn’t even thought of that, but I knew what he meant. He was taking ownership in being an ally to me as my friend. He would have never used those words, but that’s what he did. And it meant the world to me.

I wrote a couple lines about coming out to Josh in an article for The Walrus years ago. After he read it, he asked me if he’d be famous because of the story. He was always saying stuff like that, giving me a hard time about the parts of my new life that sound fancy even though they’re not. A few Christmases ago I told him I’d gone to a press conference and Jamie Foxx spoke at it. “You should tell people you met Jamie Foxx” he said. I laughed and shook my head at him. “And you know people from Degrassi?” he asked. “Yeah, sure.” I said. “But you don’t know Drake?” I laughed and told him no. Then he shook his head at me. “You should tell people you know Drake.”

It has been more than a decade since I lived in Manitoba. Most years, I fly home once or twice at most. If I don’t see a friend, it’s usually another year before I’ll see them again. But any time I’d text Josh, he’d make time for me while I was home. Our friends have mostly split up and headed off to live our separate adult lives. The last couple times I saw him, it was just the two of us. We talked about our nieces, our jobs, our relationships. Our adult friendship wasn’t the same as what we had when we were teenagers, but it was still really important to me.

A few years ago I wrote a book about the tail end of youth. It was divided up into sections and each had a name; a collection of important people who I shared formative moments with. One page has JOSH written on it in all caps. Josh came out to the party I put on to celebrate the book in Winnipeg. A handful of my closest friends from the two high schools I attended went out for a drink afterwards. Looking back now, I guess that’s the last time we’ll be together as a group like that. That’s something I have yet to grapple with. Thinking that way has an air of finality I’m not ready to accept.

In that book, I wrote that small towns crystallize what’s happened. I still think there’s truth to that, but I feel a lot older now than when I wrote those words at 25 or 26. One of my favourite songs from back then has this line and it rings truer than what I wrote: Some things will never, ever change and some already have.

I flew home on Monday night. It was supposed to be a casual, end of summer trip. A month ago I was missing my family, so I booked a flight back for three days. On Tuesday I woke up at my parents house and my mom told me Josh was gone. I didn’t understand what she meant. I thought I heard her wrong. That she meant someone else. I still haven’t really accepted that she said what she said.

I felt numb for an hour or so. Then I took my dog out into the front yard and sat down to call an old friend who lives far away like I do and was part of our friend group with Josh growing up. We hadn’t spoken in a year or two. I missed her the last time I was in her city; she was out of town. My book launch was the last time I saw her, I think. For a minute or so after she picked up, neither of us even said anything. We just cried together. I’d desperately needed someone to cry with.

After that I walked the familiar steps over to the plot of land where Josh’s house used to be. It’s divided up now and there’s a new home down the road where his mom lives now. I gave her the tightest hug I possibly could.

That night I went for a drink with a friend I have known my whole life. There are boxes worth of pictures of two of us together as kids in our parents’ homes. We sat in an empty lounge next to a line of VLT machines and she comforted me as I drank a can of Budweiser. I spent two days after that with family; mostly running around after my nieces. It was exactly what I’d wanted, but I felt deeply sad too.

Josh’s funeral is next week. I’m not going to be there for a lot of reasons. I’ve got work, I’ve got to take care of my dog, and I honestly just can’t afford to turn around and go back home. I know exactly what Josh would say. It would be something like this: “What, you too busy with your life in Torr-on-toe? You hanging with Drake?”

And then I’d laugh and shake my head at him.

I don’t believe in the afterlife. I wish that I did. If you do, good. Keep that belief strong. I’m jealous of you. I’d like to believe Josh is off somewhere, laughing at me as I type this out, crying into my phone in the middle seat of a plane with a chihuahua at my feet. He’d see me like this and laugh, I know that for sure. Whether or not I believe that’s what’s happening, I’m going to think about it. I’m going to imagine it. I’m going to hope that it’s true.

And even if it’s not, I know this: there are dozens of us, right now, sitting and thinking about Josh. And I refuse to believe those thoughts have no power at all. So, yes, I feel broken. Like someone has stolen an essential part of my youth. But I feel grateful too. Grateful for Josh, to have had him as a friend when I did. And I’m going to bask in the warm memories of those nights when we were all together, at Josh’s house.

Every time I visit my parents, we drive past that spot. Things have changed, but I still have that. For the rest of my life, I’ll remember those years when we pass that familiar stretch of road. I will remember us as we were: young and dumb, a little buzzed, angsty yet furiously happy, too.