The one heartbreaking fact I will give you is very simple: the band was breaking up. I didn’t care so much, except for the splitting up of the songs, of course. That goddamn Gary was such a shuttlecock about petty things. If it wasn’t the electrical cords, it was the signature kick moves; if it wasn’t the band logo, it was the second verse to this song…you know what, never mind, it just pisses me off thinking about it. What gets me really burned up thinking about it is this, I mean, if you have to know. The lyrics aren’t even that good, and Gary thinks he wrote them and Gary is honestly a shuttlecock, but the truth is, I’m the one who actually wrote them down. I think I wrote them back in the third grade, and you know what else gets me, if you have to know, Gary says things like, “It’s okay if you want my lyrics, I understand that they’re worth lying over.”

 

But it’s fine, everything is fine, because Gary will be dead soon anyway. What I mean is, is that he has some rare disease where like only one and a million people have it. It’s like winning the lottery, except instead of winning ten billion dollars, you die.

 

Then there was the issue of splitting up Gavil. He was our Russian drummer who was as good as any legal citizen drummer, for sure. I mean on one hand, Gary was dying, and on the other hand, Gavil listened to me. “Gavil, it is a fact that within the several free years you are able to spend under Liberty’s Torch, there will never be a time in which you will meet a Gary, and he won’t be an asshole.” This equation stuck strong in Gavil’s foreign head. He nodded his head obediently. “Hey, Gavil? What’s the equivalent to a Gary in Russian?” 

 

“Adrilovitch,” he said without a pause, because a Gary is a universal border-breaking jerk, apparently just like those damn Adrilovitch’s. Then there was Torkle, our bass player from Sweden. We were very international, exclusively to cold countries. The band was based out of Seattle. I lived outside the city to the north. If people asked we said we were from Vancouver, even more international and even colder. Plus Seattle’s music scene died whenever that one singer guy shot himself. What’s his name? Yes, Leo Experience, the one-man Jimmy Hendrix cover band, oddly enough.

 

Anyway, no one really cared to keep Torkle. Shitty bass players were a dime a dozen, especially ones from Sweden that lived in Seattle. It made me sad for about two seconds, though, because he reminded me of my older sister who is kind of gigantic and not that manly, just like Torkle. So with Torkle out and the custody battle over Gavil, the only other piece of our band that I wanted to keep was the song that was going to be our number-one hit single. It’s called “I waited for you behind the gym when the snow-storm started right after fifth-period chemistry class, even though you wanted to meet after school by the abortion-clinic parking lot.”

 

It’s going to be catchy because the title is so long. That’s how people get famous these days, gimmicky crap like that. And if I knew Gary, and I do; we’ve been friends since, like, third grade when I wrote my first song. Back then he played the glockenspiel, not very well, but give him a break, he was only, like, eight years old. But since I know Gary so well, I can tell you, he’s not going to try and get “I waited for you behind the gym when the snow-storm started right after fifth-period chemistry class, even though you wanted to meet after school by the abortion-clinic parking lot;” what Gary will do, what he will come up with is a longer title and then put something about him dying in it. I would bet Gavil on it, for sure. That’s how much I knew Gary. If he didn’t have that damn rare disease as his legendary crutch he would probably kill himself anyway.

 

Back when we were in the third grade and Gary was eight and I was eight and a half, he saw me beating on some empty Lincoln Log boxes. He came over with his glockenspiel and began playing along. He also tried to mix in some weird dribbling humming vocals and it wasn’t horrible or anything. After we were done playing, we didn’t say a word to each other because that’s sometimes how kids act. We just walked away and took naps. I caught him with one eye open that day staring across that blue flat carpet. That was one strange moment. If I knew what gay was back then, I would have definitely guessed Gary for a Gay. The next day the first words he said to me were, “My dad says I’m lucky to be alive. I’ve got a really rare disease called DFI.”

 

That’s when I wrote the lyrics that he thinks he now owns. I wrote them in the first person as if I were Gary. It went like this in the third grade: “I’m lucky to be alive. I’ve got a really rare disease. My dad says I’m lucky to be alive.” It’s like a long Haiku. And I know what you’re thinking; Gary said it before I wrote it. But you have to think about the history of rock and roll. It’s something you can’t discount. Every great song writer gets their lyrics from somebody, something. I can’t think of any specific examples at this moment, but... Alright, I mean, if I write about a goddamn flower I saw that doesn’t mean the flower has rights to my song. It’s who writes them down first is whose lyrics they are in possession of. That was me, the leader of the band. Gary was Paul and I was John, and that’s why Ringo came with me. If you don’t know The Beatles, I was just saying that Gavil and I were going to form another band together. I told Torkle he should think about joining an ABBA cover band or something. I told him that when he showed up for the audition for the new band members. Obviously Torkle didn’t make our new band. We were only looking for a keyboard player anyhow. That’s what Gary played. He gave up the glockenspiel in the sixth grade when he found a Casio keyboard in his grandma’s attic. His dad told him he was an idiot for trying to learn to play another instrument because he was going to die soon.

 

Then we were seniors in high school and Gary was a kick-ass keyboard player, so fuck his dad. Oh, and by the way, Gary turned out to be a Gay. That look he gave me in the third grade was a look of affection that I don’t think I’ve gotten ever again in my life. He’s never even told anyone, but he’s definitely a Gay. Everyone knows but no one puts any pressure on him or anything since he’s dying and all and since he’s such a kick-ass keyboard player. I’m not sure why he didn’t come out of the closet since he didn’t have much time left. I know I would be making out with dudes left and right if I knew I were dying. I would do all sorts of nasty things to dudes, but that’s not the kind of guy Gary is. He’s kind of a stand-up guy compared to me, actually. I knew that in that third grade even when I didn’t know what gay was or what stand-up was; the only thing I kind of knew was that he was going to be a kick-ass keyboard player, for sure. That’s what made him so hard to replace.

 

But we eventually found sex appeal to replace him. That’s another good gimmick if you’re going to be famous: long song titles and sex appeal. Her name was Ingha with a silent H. She was a bit of a drunk and druggie, but she had a super-hot tomato ass. So what we did was set up the keyboard sideways and kind of inward, so everyone in the audience could get a good look. There were usually only about fourteen people in the crowd, twelve guys and the two girls that wanted to make out with me and Gavil. But the point is Ingha was good enough on the keyboards and good looking enough to take Gary’s place. And she was the only one to audition besides Torkle. We made this huge fake sign-in sheet to make it look like it was a tough competition. Gavil did it, and it was all Russian names. It didn’t matter, because Ingha wasn’t a part of Observant. That was the name of Gary’s new band: Observant. It was the only other band at our school. Gary, Torkle and this poser named Steve. I told Gavil, “Never trust anyone named Steve.” Gavil nodded obediently. 

 

Along with her super-hot tomato ass, Ingha had a lot of fresh average ideas. She wanted to do a punk version of that blues’ classic “Down in the Pines.” It was actually pretty awesome and even better when we did it at our first gig, Bobby Fluke’s first annual Spring-kegger. Ingha got so wasted that she went on an unrehearsed keyboard solo in the song, and then boom, she’s on the ground half-passed out. Only her fingers and hands were still awake. She was dead to the world, sprawled out on the soiled-concrete garage floor and playing away in the air. It was the last song anyway. I took Ingha home and we started making out in the car after she woke up a little bit. But it didn’t last long because she was a darting-tongue kisser. I don’t know if you ever had that kind of kissing but it’s weird because you’re not really sure how to work out the timing of it. One second you’re trying to be the suave sensitive kisser and boom, a tongue just shot in and out of your mouth several times like an automatic weapon. Then you try to catch it with your own tongue and it’s too late and, oh never mind, you don’t want to hear about this, but you wait and see when you get one of these whack-job kissers. Seriously, you just wait.

 

I went to see Observant’s first gig. It was at Gary’s first-annual High School graduation party. Gary hit a high A and said, “We want to start out with our newest song, I hope you like it. It’s called ‘There’s a star called New York City that’s six-million light years away that I’m going to go to when I die, and I hope none of you motherfuckers are there.’” It was pretty damn good. Steve had some killer rhythm with his back-up vocals. His guitar skills were merely campfire dangerous, but sometimes all you need is a couple catchy chords and a guy like Gary kicking ass on the keyboards. 

 

Gary’s dad kept hanging around all drunk like always. Gary’s mom wasn’t there. She died giving birth to Gary. His dad always blamed him for losing the love of his life, but the truth is Gary’s mom would have probably left that asshole anyway. I clapped and howled the loudest after Observant’s last song. They were really good. 

 

I was going off to college in Boulder, Colorado, at the end of the summer. Gary wasn’t going to college. He wanted to stick with music, plus his dad would never pay for an education that he would never be able to use since he was going to die soon. Before I left we got the band back together. Cardboard Robot’s last gig! There were about twenty-eight people in the audience and every one of them rocking out like it was the end of the world. We ended with our third-grade song. “I want to sing a song, our oldest song.” I said and smiled over at Gary. “A song written by my best friend in the world, that guy over there kicking ass on the keyboards. And watch out guys, he’s single.”

 

The next time I heard Gary’s name was when I was in my second semester at the University of Colorado. My mom called me in that concerned-mom voice. “Gary’s dead,” she told me. I figured it was from his rare disease but it wasn’t. Turns out that he finally came out of the closet and he was beat to death outside a club in Vancouver. I always knew that he was going to die soon, so I was unsure why this hurt me so much more than him dying naturally of his disease. Maybe the violence? The prejudice? Maybe because it wasn’t the way Gary or anyone else expected him to go? Maybe it was because it wasn’t the way that Gary should have left this world? The injustice of a special human being? I don’t know. I thought about how Gary probably wouldn’t have been a part of my life anyway after college because that’s just how life works, and now I’m sad, but not for me or Gary; I’m sad for everybody.

 

I went back to Seattle for the funeral. There were hundreds of Gary’s friends there and justly so; he was a great guy. He was the exception to that “Gary rule.” I told Gavil that he was the exception to the Gary rule. Gavil nodded obediently. Gary’s dad was there also. But he kind of stood in the back, kind of near me. I heard him mumbling something at one point while we stood in the cold cemetery. I looked back and there were tears coming out of his eyes. I read his lips and it seemed like he was repeating the words, “dumb fucking idiot.” Gary dead, Gary’s mom dead, Gary’s dad alive. Maybe because soon is always just too soon.