Ridiculous Opinions #195
I am reaching that age where the people I know are going to start dying. This is the way life goes and the way it has always been. What was once there is no longer there. It’s the impermanence of life.
On Tuesday morning, I found out one of my best friends passed away.
My friend, Henry Holmes, was no longer my friend, however.
I hadn’t spoken to Henry in ten years. And prior to that, it had also been ten years since I talked to him. The last time we spoke face to face was when my daughter, Harper, was born. We had flown back to Oklahoma in December of 2002, and just like every other time I had been to Oklahoma, I called Henry to tell him to come by. He did and he held my daughter and was remarkably precious with her. I remember how he held her and I was shocked, because Henry always seemed like he would be a buffoon around babies, as if they were some kind of alien creature that he wouldn’t be able to relate to. But Henry held Harper with a gentleness that shocked me and I was so, very impressed with him at that moment. I hoped that he was happy for me.
But that was the last time I saw Henry.
You see, Henry and I only spoke once during the last twenty years. After my dad died, he called me to send his condolences. I spoke to him for about five minutes on the phone. After that…nothing. I was just frozen out of his life completely. I was never given a reason and now whatever it was that precipitated all of this is lost to the ages.
And in all of this time, I can only say that I missed my friend.
I don’t know where I met Henry.
In Tahlequah, Oklahoma, we had a Junior High, which meant that we had a school that ran from 7th to 9th grade. During our 9th grade year, our numbers swelled because the students from the rural schools would come to go to school in the “big city”. Henry, alongside my other good friend, Dalton (who arrived a year later), came from Keys, which was a rural district southeast of town. I don’t remember hanging out with Henry much in 9th grade, though. I remember hanging out with Henry in high school.
I’m sure I have said in this forum before that I was not a happy teenager. There were all kinds of things going on that made me unhappy, a lot of them happening at home, and so I was sullen and bitter throughout most of my high school life. I flitted around from group to group, able to blend in with each of them to varying degrees, but never truly feeling at home with any of them. I’d go to parties, tell a couple of jokes, and then go home feeling like I didn’t belong there.
And I’m sure, at one of those parties, I ended up meeting Henry. Henry was funny and the two of us shared a sense of humor that few others had. We were watching the same episodes of Saturday Night Live. We were the only ones who watched those obscure Canadians on Kids in the Hall. We watched The Simpsons religiously and had a deep knowledge of movies that few other people in my hometown had. And it was because of this shared history that we bonded with each other. It was a gradual thing.
But at a certain point in high school, it was always Henry and me getting together on a Friday night to go to a party. It was Henry and me laughing at other people during lunch. It was Henry and me consuming massive amounts of food at McDonalds late at night.
It felt like Henry was my wingman, though Henry might have said the same thing about me. He was my partner in crime. And it wasn’t just a pop culture bond. It was also the fact that most of our relatives came from the hillbilly area near Caney Ridge, Oklahoma. Our families consisted of country bumpkins and rednecks. Henry’s family was also Cherokee, which I always secretly admired.
So from about eleventh grade on, Henry and I hung out with each other. A lot. Neither of us had girlfriends, so we would go see movies together in Muskogee. We would go out to eat together. Henry would come by and pick me up when I got off work at the movie theater and we would cruise through town desperate to find a party in which we would have to make our own fun, because we didn’t really fit in.
Henry ended up getting a job at a local video store, running the cash register and checking out movies, which was a pinnacle achievement in his life. It was everything he ever wanted, because it meant that he could make money dishing out knowledge regarding his favorite subject: Film.
Many was the night when I would call Henry up at The Moo-vie Store and say, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Is the boss there?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, I’m coming by.”
And I would go up to hang out at his work. We would chat about movies, make off-color jokes about the actors and actresses, and occasionally we would watch some of them. I remember one time, we went through the horror section and decided to watch some scary movies to make us laugh (Sleepaway Camp was a modern classic that never left us unamused). We would throw on a Friday the 13th and giggle our way through, laughing at the absurdity of the murders, commenting on the stupidity of the characters, and howling at the paper-thin plots and idiotic contrivances. However, one night when we did that, we put on Dawn of the Dead and we were left disturbed by the subject matter. We never did it again.
One of our triumphs as teens was when we were bored one night before going out, we ended up ripping out the cover to an old compact disc and replacing the booklet and back cover with one we made. It was an incredible art project. We cut out pictures from magazines and even tore apart my old yearbooks so that we had pictures of ourselves for this “fictional” band. We added a third member, my friend Neil, as well as my friend, Chris, who was also an occasional member of this non-existent band. Then we came up with a list of songs that this fictional band might play. The song titles were incredibly immature and offensive, but it kept us amused.
One night, we borrowed a camera, whereupon me, Henry, and Neil all went out and took pictures around town as if we were on our own band photo shoot. We got the pics developed at a one-hour photo place (probably Wal-Mart), then went home to cut up the pictures and put them on our “fake” album. Later, we even got t-shirts made with those images. We had so many laughs about all of this.
Because I went to university in my hometown, my relationship continued with Henry when I was in my early twenties. Despite being in university, we still hung out. My mom helped Henry enroll in school, but he only lasted a semester or so (I think) and he dropped out soon after. It didn’t matter. The two of us would still go out at various times of the week, hitting the bars or just going to see movies.
When I moved to China, I always looked forward to coming back home, because I knew it would be a time when Henry and I could hang out. And we did as much as possible. I enjoyed those summers back home. It was on one of my visits back home that we had a bonding over our love of Tom Petty, specifically the soundtrack to She’s the One and the 1999 album, Echo.
I have fond memories of arriving back from China in the summer of 1999, picking up Henry, and putting on Room at the Top.
To this day, I can still remember riding in my rental car, windows down, the air perfect as we drove through town. I was about to get married and I was hanging with one of my best friends after not seeing him for a year. The sun had just crossed below the horizon and the sky was filled with that bluish haze that happens right before it gets dark. And Henry and I would have been laughing at some joke that nobody got but us before we went out on the town.
But as with all things, the two of us eventually began to grow apart. I don’t know where things went wrong between Henry and me. There was never a huge fight between the two of us. We didn’t declare that we never wanted to see each other again. Henry just wouldn’t answer the phone. That was it. I would call him to have a chat and he wouldn’t answer the phone. I would knock on Henry’s door when I came home for the summer and he wouldn’t answer the door.
It was so very strange. I tried and tried, over and over again. I would call him at odd hours. I would go to his house to see him. He would not be there. Or if he was there, he wouldn’t come out. It sounds weird to say, but it was true.
I would hear whispers of why Henry wouldn’t see me. There was something vague in the air about how he never liked that I was always hectoring him about doing something with his life. This was true. I wanted something better for Henry. I wanted him to achieve more. It wasn’t that I was judging Henry for the life that he’d chosen. I just wanted him to experience the same joy from life that I had.
For you see, Henry knew me at a time in my life where was not a full human being. I had plenty of problems. I had so much to learn. I was not good at being human. I was selfish. I was dickish. I made bad decisions and I behaved in bad ways. I was pure id, functioning almost solely for myself.
When I met Tracey and got married, things changed. I discovered that there was more to my miserable existence than I knew, and gradually, over the course of the last twenty-six years, I became a better human being.
But during this same time, Henry was never there to see any of it. He knew me as a certain type of person. Not the fully actualized version that I have become (and I’m still working on). I think he would have liked the version of me that exists today much more than the version that existed when I knew him. And I’m sad that this version of me never got to be around him, because I would have appreciated who Henry was even more.
I was never able to sit down and tell Henry that I loved him. That I thought of him like a brother. There were plenty of times where I tried to do such a thing, but I was never given the opportunity. And I would have! I would have said, Henry, you were my best friend! You were a brother to me! I want you back in my life!
Even last summer I tried this. But he wasn’t home when I knocked on the door. He didn’t answer the phone when I texted him. He wasn’t there.
So, all of this is a long-winded explanation of saying that I’m sad. But I’m mostly sad that Henry isn’t there so I can share things with him. We won’t be able to discuss obscure, pop culture references. We won’t be able to talk about music or movies or other people. We won’t be able to just talk to each other, like brothers would do.
I always wanted to be successful in life, so that I could take some of my friends, like Henry, along for the ride. My success would have been his success. And in all honesty, I felt like that was still coming. I was still waiting on the day when I would sell a screenplay, rake in the bucks, and say, Hey, Henry! Come work on this movie with me!
But that’s not going to happen now. And really, that’s how life goes. Life doesn’t always have happy endings. One doesn’t always get to resolve all of those past feelings. You don’t always get to solve the mysteries of your existence. Just as I never got a moment where my father said, Hey, son, sorry for all the crap I put you through when you were young, I will also never find out why Henry froze me out for twenty years. It will forever remain a mystery.
But rather than dwelling upon how unfair life can be, I can only celebrate that I got to spend time with my friend. You know when you have a great belly laugh? You know when you laugh so hard, you can’t breathe, where beads of sweat form on your forehead and the laughter that you have in your gut just won’t give you time enough to breathe? On December 10th, 1993, I know exactly where I was: Muskogee, Oklahoma, where Henry, myself, and a couple of other guys were watching Wayne’s World 2 on opening night. We loved Saturday Night Live and the opening of Wayne’s World 2 was a momentous occasion for us. So we went to the theater, and though the film wasn’t so great, we laughed so hard at the following scene that I almost pissed my pants:
It’s a joke that was really funny only to us. But even to this day, I chuckle at this scene, because it’s just so dumb. It was just another moment that I’ll remember forever.
I had a lifetime’s worth of laughs like that with Henry, and I’m disappointed that I won’t get to have those any more with him.
Rest in peace, Henry Holmes. You will be missed.
