How To Be Less Alone

The End of the Tour & 1 Year Without My Best Friend

Don’t go bailing on me Ralph

Don’t leave me hanging on the shelf

Why don’t you answer your phone

I know you’re sitting at home

Trying to not be alone

— A song I wrote about Ralph, intended to be used as a ringtone.

JULY 11, 2015

The second weekend in July is Tuscarora National Picnic & Field Day. There’s traditional dances, live music of all sorts, a 10k and a 2.5 mile Fun Run. The new Tuscarora Princess is crowned. Vendors flood the picnic grove to peddle their wares. White people come to buy authentic Native American merchandise. Natives come to eat. Vats of corn soup. Indian Tacos as far the eye can see. Fry bread for days. And you can’t forget the unofficial Main Event: Fire Ball. Think Rugby or Australian Rules Football, and then imagine the ball is made of rags soaked in kerosene and set on fire — that’s Fire Ball.

I was helping my Sister put an itty bitty picnic table into the back of her Equinox. She had talked our Dad into buying it by saying, “You should buy that for Aiyana.” After all, why should she spend the money she had just won from placing in a beadwork competition? An itty bitty picnic table for an itty bitty girl. How could Papa say no? Plus, it had a bear on it, and when you are Native American and see something with your clan on it you almost feel obligated to buy it. When the infamous “3 Wolf Moon” shirt became popular a white co-worker showed it to me in between bursts of laughter. My reaction was minimal, I only told him that I see shirts like that all the time on my Reservation. He told me he had just ordered it and I told him if it had been bears instead of wolves I would have got one, since I’m Tuscarora Black Bear clan. He told me his Grandmother was half-Cherokee and I went back about my business.

With the itty bitty picnic table secure, we started discussing our gameplan/nap schedule for the rest of the day. And then Ralph came sauntering by — he never walked, always sauntered. He was my best friend of the past 10 years, but I hadn’t seen or even spoken to Ralph in quite some time at that point. We made brief small talk and then he headed back to the grove. “Come find us. Me and my Uncle Kris and my Uncle Sean, we got a spot right next to a tree. Alright?” he said to me. Not exactly the best directions, as the picnic grove was composed almost entirely of trees. I wouldn’t exactly have had an easy time of finding him. Then again, it always was some form of adventure, finding Ralph. But ultimately none of that mattered, because I just blew him off.

I never could have imagined that those would be the last words he’d ever say to me.

Ralph Fitzgerald had been my best friend of the past 10 years. Lately, however, I started picking up an element of toxicity between the two of us. What once had been good conversation had debilitated into him yelling at me. Good natured debate was replaced by arguing — not making arguments, just arguing. We used to come up with excuses just to hang out, now we made them up not to hang out. I thought you had to work. I didn’t think you’d want to see that movie. I thought you already saw that movie. We went to a bar and you don’t drink. When Ralph couldn’t think up an excuse he would just say that he was busy with “miscellaneous things.” And when we did hangout it felt more like an exercise in him yelling at me. The reasons for doing so always felt trivial to me. Because I said I didn’t watch TV any more. Because I insisted on pulling into his driveway to drop him off rather than at the side of the road. Because I asked whose car was that. Because I didn’t think UFC would devolve into human cock fighting. Because I said I probably wouldn’t talk to a girl again (he thought I would). Because I wasn’t talking to a girl. Even though I suspected he wasn’t really mad at me for those things, I wondered if I hadn’t done something else. I also began to wonder if he had any intention of trying to have a good time with me any more. Each and every encounter grew more and more taxing on me. I take things extremely personal; more personal than I ought to. Often the rest of my day would be shot. I’d spend it laying in bed counting my flaws. I’d ask our mutual friends if anything similar ever happened to them with Ralph. No. Must just be me. It only furthered my growing suspicion that he really didn’t like me as a friend, but accepted me as a reliable car ride for a cup of coffee, and perhaps not even that now.

The year before I had seen a therapist for the first time in my adult life, and it was long overdue. Ralph and I had a conversation the year prior to that where we talked about a lot of the symptoms and warning signs we had seen in each other over the years. At the time, of course, we didn’t know we were looking at a man in their twenties suffering from depression. But even then, in 2015, I was still beginning to understand the nature of my own mental illness, and more importantly discovering what self-care really meant. I was getting better, but I wasn’t ready yet.

He texted me a month later, in August, to see if I wanted to get a cup of coffee. I didn’t respond. I still wasn’t ready. One day, I would be. But I still had a ways to go. That was the last text message he ever sent me. By the end of the month, August 30, he was reported as a missing person.

There had been an alleged Ralph sighting at a Target, but the surveillance footage showed nothing. Several unidentified bodies had been reported in the area, a couple in a dumpster behind the Seneca Niagara Casino and one in the Niagara River. The body in the river had been recovered in Hamilton and they were taking their sweet time identifying it. I still expected Ralph to appear at every corner. It would not surprise me one bit if he sauntered into his Grandmother’s living room with a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee, completely gobsmacked that people were worried about him. Transient in nature, always coming and going — we didn’t call him The Grey Cat for nothing. He had always been hard to track down, and even in death it appeared he would be no different. But without any new sightings we were all left in a holding pattern until they identified the found body. A small part of me wished it was him, just so this daydream nightmare would end.

On September 5, I saw The End of the Tour, the film about writer David Foster Wallace being accompanied by journalist David Lipsky on the final leg of his book tour promoting Infinite Jest circa 1996 for an article for Rolling Stone. I was desperately looking for a distraction, and was pleased to discover this film was playing at a somewhat nearby movie theatre. I had seen the trailer some months ago and it seemed rather quite up my alley. As an added bonus it was at a movie theatre I had never been to before, an experience I always enjoy. And so of course this movie reminded me of Ralph at every turn. It’s not necessarily because each of us was so perfectly represented by a David, Foster Wallace or Lipsky. No, we both shared traits of each. But it was more in the types of conversations they had, the way they had them, and their dynamic.

Although I’ve tried several times I’ve never gotten more than 100 words into Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s most famous novel. Ralph found it catching some rays, getting faded in the back seat of my truck one time and he picked up and said the title aloud as if he had reconnected with an old friend. Ralph had read it. We were both smarter than each other in different ways. I graduated high school while Ralph dropped out and got his GED. I got an Associates Degree from Niagara County Community College and Ralph dropped out of there as well. I went on to State University of New York at Buffalo and dropped out after three semesters, including a 0.0 GPA my first semester. Ralph had got into Syracuse University, which he had an on-again/off-relationship with. Every semester it seemed like a battle to get them to allow him to come back. Eventually he dropped out of there, but did enroll at another school. Aside from all of that, he was always teaching himself how to play different instruments and learning different languages. We thought in different ways about different things. That’s one of the reasons why I felt we made such a good team. At times it seemed we were destined for greatness. I wasn’t musically inclined or talented enough to play in a band with him. I did think, however, that there was potential in some of our film and television ideas, and that maybe we could be the Tuscarora version of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. But while I embraced our differences, it always seemed like he had this need for me to agree with him. It was like we were in constant competition and that disagreement was akin to losing. From time to time he’d throw out these random opinions on things I really didn’t know much about and say “you have to agree with me on that.” But how can you agree on something that you know nothing about?

I remember having a conversation with him about tattoos, whether or not we’d ever got one. At the time we both said no. His reasons were more biblical, citing scripture. Mine were based in the anxiety of picking something out and where to put it and worrying about regretting years later, as well as always being able to find something better to spend a hundred dollars on. “Good, so we agree.” Yes, but also no. Is it really so important that we agree?

[CUT TO: July 2016.

I have three tattoos and am likely to get more. Two of them are about Ralph, and the other certainly applies to him.]

One of the elements about the film that really fascinated me is how both of the Daves wanted to be each other to a certain extent. Lipsky, an aspiring writer himself, obviously idolized one of the few rock stars of the writing industry in DFW, who in turn admired Lipsky’s quick wit and conversational skills. I’m not sure if Ralph ever wanted to be me. At best, he may have wanted to have small elements of my life, but not necessarily any of my characteristics. He may have wished he had some of my material possessions, or my knowledge of obscure pop culture, but little else. I admired so much about Ralph. He had a way of lighting up any room and had this great, booming laugh that made you feel funnier than you were. [He had a knack for laughing the hardest at my absolute worst jokes. Some of which weren’t even jokes, but that wouldn’t stop him from praising my timing and delivery and telling me I should be a standup comic.] He could strike up a conversation with anyone about anything. He played several instruments in several bands. His exploits on the dance floor are now a fixture of local lore. Several key aspects of my life — running, coffee and music — are a direct result of Ralph’s influence. “He wants something better than he has; I want precisely what he has already,” Lipsky says of Wallace. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I wanted to be Ralph, but I certainly wanted to be like Ralph. And that was to be liked by everyone. Or at least not disliked by everyone, as I often felt.

David Foster Wallace described himself as, “a combination of being incredibly shy, and being an egomaniac, too.” In a radio interview he adds, “I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the extent that it makes it difficult to be around other people.” The interviewer asks him to clarify, “Difficult for you, or difficult for the other people?”

“I suppose a little bit of both.”

I know I can be difficult to be around, but I had never considered it was because of my shyness. And perhaps years and years of being shy and difficult has led to this sense of being disliked, because I actually am disliked. Ralph wasn’t the only friend I’ve had a falling out with. It’s just that the others were more quiet and less obvious about it. They simply stopped returning my texts, politely declined my invitations while not inviting me to their things. When a child is shy, we think it’s cute. I think of my Niece meeting Matt Jackson, one of her favorite Pro Wrestlers and one half of the Young Bucks. Matt and I melted when she turned her head and buried it in me while she squeezed my hand. But in an adult, shyness can be criminally vulgar, as Morrissey said. All these years I only took it for a catchy lyric.

And then there’s the flip side to that: the egomaniac in me. What you are reading right now is a perfect example. If I had my way everybody would read this, except for the people I know. There’s something unnerving about being this personal and honest with someone who I might actually have a face to face conversation with several times a year. But I have no problem sharing with the anonymous masses. I think Ralph shared these characteristics with me, they just manifested themselves in different ways.

There’s also a lot about depression and addiction. Sometimes it’s hard for me to think objectively about depression. When I hear other people talk about theirs I always compare it to mine and think, Well, mine isn’t that bad, maybe I don’t have depression at all. Which often leads to almost a desire to have it that bad. Depression often gets romanticized. We always hear about the tortured artist, fueled by depression. We want to be like them at any cost. I know firsthand that depression is hell, and I wish it on no one. But I also have trouble remembering exactly what hell feels like when I haven’t experienced it in a while. Lipsky’s job as a reporter for Rolling Stone is to romanticize Wallace’s depression; or at least the sexier aspects of it, in this case his alleged heroin addiction. DFW is quick to dispel those rumors, citing his only addiction to be television. Ralph struggled with addiction as well. I really could not understand it at first. He would tell me how he couldn’t be around alcohol or he’d binge until he blacked out. So just don’t drink, what’s so hard about that? He usually didn’t drink around me. It was kind of like how Lipsky wouldn’t drink in front Wallace. But he didn’t drink in front of me because I was a recovering alcoholic. It was because I didn’t drink and he thought I would judge him. The few times he did drink in front of me I noticed he was more prone to yelling. I think I only saw him drunk one time. He said, “I feel like if I drink anymore I’m going to pass out.” My girlfriend-at-the-time took the beer out of his hand and said, “OK, well then stop.” I’ll never forget that look on his face, like the idea of not drinking alcohol that was right in front of you was a brand new concept to him. He seemed relieved.

I think in my 20’s I was addicted to depression. I felt it made me unique. And maybe if I had it long enough I would eventually get those super human creative powers. But the thing is, whenever I was in a depressive episode, I was absolutely locked inside my head. Not a single thought could escape. That’s not what you would call a condition conducive to creative writing. David thinks his depression came from achieving his goals and realizing that it didn’t make him happy like he thought it would — like he was counting on to make him happy. Mine may have been more along the lines of knowing I would never achieve those goals, and also knowing that there was no guarantee it would make me happy. Or, maybe, self sabotaging myself so that I didn’t ever get to feel that particular disappointment, but in doing so I did more harm to myself.

I don’t know if my friends knew how bad Ralph suffered from depression, or were able to understand what he was going through the way I did. (I don’t think they knew I was struggling with depression, either. I think they just thought I was an asshole.) I also think that I genuinely appreciated Ralph in ways our other friends didn’t. I also don’t think he ever believed how much I appreciated him. My praise was often met with biting sarcasm, a reduction of my statement that made it a backhanded compliment. He often reiterated to me that he did not trust other people, myself included. In turn, I sometimes felt like he was trying to manipulate me by complimenting me on something, like my guitar playing which I objectively sucked at. There’s a scene in the film that I think perfectly captures this dynamic. It’s about the difference between patronizing and a genuine compliment. It’s about perception. Projecting one’s own insecurities. Lipsky is calling out David on his social strategy, feeling that he plays dumb to the crowd all the while knowing he’s smarter than everyone else. They dub this perceived act The Faux Thing. “That would make me a real asshole, wouldn’t it?” DFW responds to this accusation. Becoming the type of person who does that sort of thing — the type of person who wants to be in Rolling Stone rather than agrees to it — is one of David’s greatest fears. In fact, he says he’d rather die. There’s a scene earlier in the film where Lipsky asks Wallace about his trademark bandanna. He alerts him that it’s seen as his way of trying to connect with a younger audience. “…now I’m worrying that it’s going to seem intentional. Like if I don’t wear it, am I not wearing it because I’m bowing to other people’s perception that it’s a commercial choice? Or do I do what I want, even though it’s perceived as commercial — and it’s just like one more crazy circle to go around.”

The more he tries to convince Lipsky of his authenticity, he comes off as proportionately more faux to him in turn. Lipsky says he’s using The Faux Thing to disprove The Faux Thing. In an attempt to prove he doesn’t think he’s smarter than other people, David compares his own intelligence to that of Lipsky’s, saying he can’t quite keep up with him conversationally. Lipsky can take this assertion one of two ways. He can take it at face value, as an immense compliment from his idol. Or, add another exhibit in his case against The Social Strategy of David Foster Wallace. Lipsky just can’t bring himself to even consider the first option. How could this brilliant man, a writer of unending praise, whom his then girlfriend read more of than even his own work, possibly think he is smarter than him? Surely, he has got be fucking with him. It’s easy to see why Lipsky would be dubious of DFW’s claim to be not as smart as him. But I never could understand why Ralph didn’t believe me.