Uncut

 It’s been two years to the day since it happened, the day that will live in infamy through my thoughts, like my own personal 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. It was an event of such crashing reality, I shudder to think of it, but still can never fully shake the heart-wrenching memories, the questions, and regrets. I’d never known someone to die, not really. Only old decrepit grandparents, or distant acquaintances my mother swears I should remember, but never do. Never had I personally known someone completely ripped from the pages of life, from young, lively and jubilant to suddenly six feet under in cold earth. When someone old, sick, or reckless dies we are slightly comforted in knowing the processes of life and death are continuing with some cause, some purpose. However when freak accidents hit, we are left stunned, unable to process the velocity of our existence and how fast it can be taken away. 

 Chris Brightman was a 23 year old who had just graduated college; he had the world at his fingertips, all of life still ahead of him. A point in life I am about to reach myself, mere weeks away from obtaining my degree, half way through my 23rd year on this planet. I was with Chris on the last night he would ever see, a typical night of drinking at the bar we both frequented far too often. We were always welcomed at Angels and Kings the dive on 11th and Avenue A, as regulars, with warm smiles and cold drinks. I had first met Chris at a pizza shop down by Union Square, coincidentally the last time I would ever see him alive was too at a pizza shop. I guess you could say we had the two fundamental interests in common, beer and pizza. Chris and I had many mutual friends, which was how we became introduced over tasty slices of cheese melted onto carbohydrates. Most of these friends were in some way involved in music, either a lover of it or actually employed in the industry. Chris worked at a venue in New Jersey; I was never quite sure what he did there besides stage-diving into energetic crowds of fans every chance he would get. It would be rare to ever see him without a shirt or hoodie with one of his favorite bands printed on it. Chris had pearly white teeth that often gleamed against the color of his ebony skin. Everyone knew Chris, being one of the few black members of the New York pop-punk music scene certainly helped to identify him, but it was his charismatic nature that caused everyone to naturally gravitate towards his glow.

For the past 24 months my mind has drifted back to Chris often, an attempt to replay our moments, capture them all, hold on to them and preserve my friend. I remember the night he was my prom date, not my high school prom, I decided I was far too cool to attend that, but prom night at our favorite bar. It was a big to do, every May the bar would be decked out with a cheesy disco ball and tacky decorations. In the corner would even be a designated photo op with a backdrop of palm trees, everyone would make the cliché pose or one of their own it was good fun. Chris and I went as friends, him in a casual black tie and me in a short black ruffled dress with grey trim; I think I even attempted heels that night, a rarity for me. This was about three years ago, a time I am moderately certain I wasn’t even old enough to attend, but that bar was notorious for under-agers, and I had gone so often no one would dare question me. Chris was an excellent date, on top of many other things he was a brilliant dancer, a skill I had never developed and would only even attempt when heavily intoxicated. He could do all the classic moves, and would frequently display them on the dance floor of our favorite bar Angels and Kings. But the dance I liked best and would often request him to do just for me was called “the Muppet,” where he would put his arms out like Frankenstein and shake and shimmy to the point of almost convulsion. How it made me laugh to see. 

 In the months following the burial, I got a phone call from an unknown number. I answered it, burning curiosity usually prompts me to answer these kinds of calls. To my surprise it was Chris’s mother. She had looked through the contacts on his phone, specifically those he had talked to that night, and my name came up. She asked me questions about the last night I saw him, the pizza place, if he had mentioned any plans, or where he was going before he got in his car to drive home. She then said something that would haunt me forever, words that broke my heart and continue to everyday. When I started to describe what I could remember of his drunken responses at the bar, she helplessly cried “My son doesn’t drink.” I wanted to say are you kidding me lady, do you know your son…?
Of course I couldn’t say any of that. Chris had obviously hidden his drinking habit from his mother quite effectively, convincing her he didn’t touch the drink, a façade I hated to shatter. But I knew Chris was obliterated that night, worse than I had ever seen him. We were usually the last ones to leave the bar, and by the time I had returned from having a few drinks somewhere else, he was already sipping water to sober up. Chris lived in New Jersey, so he would always either take the PATH train in or on some rare occasions drive into the city. Bartenders in New York don’t generally anticipate people driving in Manhattan and are perhaps a little more lenient in the rules of when to cut patrons off. And of course he knew the bartenders, we were regulars, but the moment Chris confessed he was driving home was when Betsey served him nothing except water, but the damage had been done.

I remember the sad look in Betsey’s eyes the next time I walked into the bar, a place I had been avoiding for weeks. There was an air to it that felt all wrong now; I walked in not feeling at home as I always had, but in an eerily familiar dream. We talked about Chris briefly, I knew instantly that I didn’t blame her; through our conversation it was apparent we both mourned the loss. Above the bar there was a mantle with his picture on it, one of the photos taken from prom night, a little candle burned beside it, in an attempt to maintain Chris’s presence in the bar. But without his moves on the dance floor, the place would never be the same. For all the time that passed afterwards I had to ask myself what would have happened if things went differently? How the horrible question plagued my thoughts.
There was actually a time I was aware of in Chris’s life where his mother’s idea of him was correct, and he abstained from alcohol. It was around the time of my 21st birthday, we had all gone out drinking so much by that point it was odd to celebrate my official induction in the world of legal bar hopping. But for the sake of formalities we did, I was having it at a burlesque bar in Williamsburg, and the core parts of my party attended a dinner beforehand at a Mexican place not far away. By some form of luck or perhaps the length of my dress the owner decided to bring my table two free bottles of tequila, the waitress was serving the drinks to the table and when Chris turned it down everyone including the waitress seemed confused. He made a joke of the situation and clarified that he was a recovering alcoholic, but I knew the real reason he was laying off the booze. Chris had been in a minor car accident not long before my birthday, he was able to hide the incident from his family I suppose, but it had certainly shaken him enough to take it easy for awhile. Oh how I only wish that wave of consciousness would have lingered, not giving up the drink forever of course, but making the connection that drinking and driving simply do not mesh.

I remember arriving at the funeral home, the first I had ever been to, and feeling severely out of place even though I had arrived with friends. There were only two rooms people were grouped into, a smaller one with photos and music of Chris and friends playing in slide show, and a larger one where the his family sat, a few feet away from the body. Everyone there was from some part of Chris’s diverse life; he had childhood friends, college buddies, church folk, family members, and the somewhat protruding music crowd. Hardly anyone in that room had seen him his last night, no one else was dreading the moment they would look into his mothers eyes and think, I could have saved your son’s life. I went into the smaller room first, comforted by the photographs of the smiling Chris I had known so well, most of the pictures were taken from his Facebook albums, quite a lot were photos taken in the bar he died leaving from. The next room I hesitated going into, an open casket wake came as a shock to me, I saw the body from afar but wasn’t sure if I could approach it. His body looked more or less unscathed, just cold and stiff, the illuminating light gone, it doesn’t make any sense when you’re kneeling there, gazing at someone you wish would just wake up and realizing they never will again.

 I don’t believe in religion so praying doesn’t cross my mind, but I did try to send my thoughts to Chris, I could think nothing but sorrowful remorse, a feeling of failure, like I had simply missed the cue. Getting up from his coffin I faltered, my body had gone numb, I placed my hand to my mouth for some reason but my mind was not accurately connecting to my body anymore. My friends and I sat in the back row, listening to a brief speech from a minister, I thought the tears would come but they never did, mostly I just felt nauseous. As we were leaving the funeral home, a friend of mine who was also with us on the night, decided to say her peace with Chris’s mother. When I looked at the face I had been so afraid of, I realized it was the same face of my soon to be buried friend. The likeness was remarkable, the exact same features but on a petite and older woman, she was incredibly brave that day, even displaying the exact smile I had already come to miss.

The funeral service itself was much more emotional for me; perhaps it was the uncomfortable element of being in a church, or the procession march with the coffin, burying Chris in the ground and throwing flowers at his grave. But when the tears streamed, I knew I had come just a little closer to a release of the guilt I had pent up, prying at my every thought. The truth is we all make our own decisions in life, Chris had been in drunk driving accidents before, and might have again had he survived this. There was no way I could have known he would somehow take a wrong turn, drive down the highway at the wee hours of the morning in the wrong direction, to collide head on with another vehicle. One speech that moved me in particular about Chris was the one told by his girlfriend at the funeral, she talked about the tattoo Chris had on his collar bone, a quote from his favorite movie, it read “Goonies never say die.” And Chris didn’t die; not really, he’s just on another adventure. I have no idea what comes next, but I like to think of him in this way, still smiling and dancing somewhere, even if just in my memory.