I don’t prescribe to Simulation Theory, but it is worth considering all the possible outcomes that could have come from me not going to a casino with my best friend on September 20th, 2011 — a day before his 21st birthday. We had time to kill before an early morning flight to San Francisco and ended up at the only 18-and-over casino (at the time) in Southern California, where we played, of all things, video roulette.
The memory is funny to me in a cute sort of way. Not only that the two of us actually planned out a vacation, but that we genuinely had like $400 apiece to last us a whole weekend. Further, we were playing video roulette, inserting $20 bills into what was essentially a slot machine, and blew through like half of our respective budget before getting a nice pop as our money was running out and leaving the casino with even money. It was truly some kid shit.
I don’t remember why we decided to go to a casino that night. I don’t know why as 21 year-olds we ended up spending such an absurd amount of time at a different casino, pretty much on a nightly basis. I see the images pass through my brain. I see thousands of dollars worth of chips in front of us. I picture the two of us in my truck counting down to the last $100 bill our shares on good nights. One for you, one for me, one for you, one for me.
I have not spoken to my best friend in like six years, which is kind of a shame and kind of the natural course of our friendship, I suppose. We used to joke that other people called themselves best friends but they weren’t really best friends. Not like he and I were best friends. But it was, I’d argue, one of those things where he and I would have been perfectly fine admitting it, that two other random hypothetical people we actually better best friends than us. We just never saw it. We would have believed it if we saw it.
And it’s probably for that reason that the two of us aren’t friends anymore, because we were so close. You can’t just go from the type of inseparable exchange where either side would literally do anything for the other, where we would spend like an hour on the phone every night even when nothing was particularly worthy of being talked about, where I would lie to protect him even though it alienated me from people I once cared about, and go through the kind of betrayal I felt and simply carry on as anything less than we were like nothing happened.
It has been something of a theme over the course of my life to burn bright with loved ones and inevitably burn out quickly. That has generally always been the tradeoff. During the quiet times I can be consistent and light the wick and have a lot of runway before it ultimately combusts. When it actually matters, though, when I care, the feelings are always so intense that there can’t be any room left for a slow and gradual buildup. One day it’s there, and the next it isn’t. The day might last six months or six years, or maybe only six days.
The thing that was special about having a best friendship like that was that it offered me, for the first and only time in my life, the best of both worlds. It was like a marriage: we burned bright, and we lasted long enough to where nothing can ever be erased.
But again, it just makes too much sense that we aren’t part of each other’s lives anymore. People tell me I’m prideful, that I have too much ego, that I am arrogant, that I am stubborn, but he always matched me blow for blow in each of those departments. It was like looking in a mirror. We were so different in almost every way, from him being an artist to me being a logical, rational type. He wore glasses and I didn’t. His hair is curly and mine is straight. He is a showman, I am a recluse. I was born on the spring equinox — March 20th — and he was born on the autumn equinox — September 21st — which is kind of a wild coincidence. When breaking things down to the bone, however, we’re made out of the same cloth. We are competitive, and all the good and bad that comes from it represented what brought us together and kept us so close and in the end turned us into strangers.
The history we made, together, became so much of the fabric that can’t ever leave us. At a very early adult age we grew completely desensitized to money. When you take a couple kids who were at the time making like ten dollars an hour and putting six thousand dollars worth of blackjack winnings in front of them how could it be anything else? I became desensitized to so many other things along the way. Witnessing what it looked like to lie, constantly, to loved ones, and being an active participant in aiding those lies, stole so much of my innocence and reminded me that trusting anyone, for anything, under any circumstance, was only an exercise in wishing for a world that does not exist.
And it was my own naiveté that made me believe for so long that I was exempt from all the lies. I saw it firsthand, over and over and over again, and somewhere along the way convinced myself that it wouldn’t happen to me. He wasn’t capable. I was too smart.
But he and I were playing two very different games, one where I was earnest in keeping it absolutely real with him at all times, and where he did what he does to every other object in his life and uses them to the point where he can do nothing else but resort to his own, true nature, and lie. I fell victim to that, even though I made my own choice and didn’t allow him to get away with it.
Life is so stupid, and so complicated, because even at the stage I am at now, I don’t hate the guy. I wish him no ill will. In fact I wish him the opposite of ill will. I would still do anything for him, or his family, because at the end of the day I accept him for who he is and I know any wrongdoing on his part was only done as a matter of fact, that he can’t help it, and long ago I understood that I cannot expect anyone to be anything other than who they already are.
I probably do not owe him this much respect, not for what has been done, but it’s how I feel. The two of us met as 10 year-olds on the bleachers while our older brothers played winter ball on the same team in Little League. When no one else knew me, and I was a complete loner during sixth period baseball as freshman in high school, it was him who approached me and became my throwing and stretching and weight room partner every day. When I passed my driving test and starting driving my little Ford Ranger to school every day it was him who joined me for off-campus lunch. We were best friends when we were sixteen, and I still call him my best friend even though we aren’t friends anymore.
He and I were in the streets together. The first time I got arrested, he shared a jail cell with me. I called him every night when I was away at Virginia Tech. When his girlfriend broke up with him, it was me who left work one day to drive him to the bank because they had a joint bank account and he was afraid she would do something crazy. When I totaled my black Subaru STi and almost died, it was him who I called at 3:00 in the morning to pick me up. When he was out graffitiing and the cops were surrounding the block he was on during the wee hours of the morning, it was me who answered the call and drove to pick him up. When he had his first child, it was me who waited with him all night. And when it was time to lie, I lied.
My story could not be written without him. It’s as simple as that. The two of us have gone our separate ways, and neither of us would regret that. I have missed out on a whole bunch of his life and he has missed out on a whole bunch of mine. I think if we ran into one another presently it would be the same shit it always was, just getting out of one cab and hopping into another. We wouldn’t dwell on any of the bullshit or nonsense. There would be zero conversation about anything that I’ve discussed in this blog. We would just shake hands.
Future Bets 
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