“I’ve Got Some Shit To Say Just For The Fuck Of It”

That was one of Andy’s lyrics. Andy was my friend. I knew his older brother at church. He bought my Squier P-bass and that’s when I saw Andy he was this weird little teenager. In high school Andy and I started hanging out and playing music together. We did everything together for a long time and were pretty inseparable. He always looked up to me, always wanted to play music like me and be like me. And I just let him down every time. I was never that good of a person to him or to anyone. Whatever he saw in me wasn’t really there. When we got older the music projects got more serious and we took it more seriously but there was something going on that I didn’t understand at the time because I hadn’t been exposed to it.

Andy was strung out on drugs. Downer type drugs like fentanyl but somehow worse. He was buying research chemicals off the dark web with bitcoin. Which sounds like something Neo from the Matrix does except this makes you die instead of wake up to the horrors of heteronormative capitalism. And that’s what Andy did he fucking died. He was in and out of rehab maybe 7 times but man once you’ve seen it all it’s kinda hard to say oh yeah God has got my back. It’s hard to believe in God when life is just hell on earth. And the NA and AA people basically wanted him to admit to a higher power. None of it ever worked for him and honestly he never truly wanted to get sober. He even said that to me on the phone. He doesn’t really want to be sober he just doesn’t want to die. And he kept using every time he got out of rehab and he would call me on the phone and I would just be ok with it. Just put up with him talking absolute utter nonsense because he was like my son and you accept your kids no matter how fucked up they are because you’re so desperate for that connection with them.

I wish I had fucking intervened. I wish I had driven to nashville and punched andy’s boyfriend in the fucking dick. But i didn’t do anything and I know it’s not my responsibility to save junkies, and truth be told i was there for him for than most people. I gave him a safe sober place to be. But it’s never enough man. Nothing ever fills the fucking hole. And then he got out of rehab that last time and I didn’t even know it. And before he went in I had said “I’ve accepted your death.” which sounds really hurtful in retrospect but when you’re talking to the A number 1 junkie in middle tennessee you kinda have to say shocking things to make them give a fuck about something besides getting high. And I think it hurt his feelings. But he got out of rehab and immediately used something. I don’t know if he was alone. I doln’t know where he was . I think he was in a walmart fucking parking lot which is like just really hard for me to accept. That he died in a fucking walmart parking lot alone and nobody was there to narcan him back to life for the 11 hundredth time. And it took like 48 hours for his piece of shit boyfriend to muster up the courage to send me a FUCKING INSTAGRAM DM about andy being “gone” no details. He couldn’t even face the dude’s parents. My friend had to tell the parents. Because boyfriend couldn’t be bothered to inform the immediate family of their son’s passing. If I ever see that guy again, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll say mean things for sure though. He didn’t show up to the visitation.

What Andy’s parents did was worse though. They tried to exclude all of us from the funeral. They tried to treat us like we were the reason he died rather than the reason he lasted as long as he did. I know Andy’s dad will never take responsibility for the emotional toll his relationship with Andy took on Andy. Andy’s mom is slightly less horrific but without Andy alive to protect, she turned on us it seems like. They did not invite us to the funeral. They did not tell us about the funeral. It was posted online that the visitation was public. That’s how we discovered the location and time of the visitation. His parents then apologized, but the damage was done. IT was obvious they didn’t want us there. I don’t care anymore now but it hurt at the time. His sister apologized profusely. She seemed to know something the rest of us didn’t.

So I’ve just been wandering around in limbo writing songs about Andy is in his coffin talking to me about the old days. He was always so nostalgic, Andy. Always thinking about the past and the good old days. I hope wherever he is now he’s stopped that because you have to make new good days you can’t just think about the old ones. Fuck.