I’m sitting amongst a mass of very loud drunk people. I have to hop a plane back to NYC at the butt-crack of dawn tomorrow, so I’ve been keeping things understated because there’s not much worse then mass transportation with a hangover.

I spent this weekend going a bit crazy, riding out one night with a big bonfire, watching the sun rise and sleeping on the sand. It’s a certain type of morning misery to wake with the sun in your eyes, hungover, with people stepping over you and I fully explored that slice of life this weekend. With this out of the way, I am clear for the rest of the year to spend my time doing boring, geriatric and repetitive things to my heart’s desire.

While getting blotto and devoured by mosquitoes, I was told that my best friend, from way back when, Jakob Ohlsson, a guy I knew and spent all my time with fifteen years ago, had died.

The last time I saw him was about five years ago, shortly before I moved to NYC. We bumped into each other in a bar and he told me that soon, he’d also be relocating to Brooklyn. I gave him my email address and I hoped we’d touch base later, after we’d both settled in to the city.

I never heard from him again. I assumed he was in New York City and once or twice a year, I’d Google his name and see if I could locate a means to get in touch with him. Just last month, I’d tried searching again. Time had gone by and we’d stopped hanging around, but he was someone that I always wanted to keep in touch with. Maybe once a year have a beer and smoke a joint, paying homage to the derelict train-wreck pair of adolescents that we were, then just shake hands and go back to our respective responsibilities with the knowledge that we’d turned out okay, despite what people predicted. We came out on top and yet we were still crazy enough to be cool by our standards. That’s what was supposed to happen anyway.

This morning, someone emailed me his obituary. It had his photo and there’s just no getting around the fact that my friend Jake is gone. He’d died of asthma complications almost two years ago. He was thirty years old and had a baby daughter. I don’t know where he’s buried.

Jake and I were troubled teenagers, bonded together over the fact that collectively, we were pharmaceutically much more reckless than our peers. We shared an interest in music, art, drugs, being punk rock and seeing who could more successfully interpret “fuck it” into a working lifestyle. Jake was a smart kid. He was calm, laid back and when I think of him, the first thing that comes to mind was his seemingly omnipresent smile and laugh that totally belied his aggressive exterior.

We were angry. We were crazy and we had problems. But, above and outside of that, we were friends. We hung out, doing drugs and being reckless, to escape and to distract. I had my problems and many a person might have looked at me and seen a spoiled whiny brat with a big mouth, destined for a career in convenience store management, but with Jake, his issues seemed heavier. He had a lot going for him, but conversely, much against him. He played the cello, was a talented artist and extremely likable and intelligent, but he also had a drug problem. He was adopted and raised by good parents who gave him everything he needed, but he was the only African American in his town, possibly for several towns. I’m sure it must have presented issues, but he never said anything. Vermont was and is still predominantly white. It was more so back then. For many years, he was the first and only black man I knew, not that I ever once thought about it back then. To me, Jake was the coolest shit, always down and always in style.

Jake ran away when I was about seventeen. He’d violated his parole on a drug test and rather than face the music, he took some money and made off for the west coast. Not the best of decisions on his part, but at my age, the guts that it took to do that had me in awe. I received one letter from him, but for the most part, he was M.I.A. When he did finally come back, two years later, he was still Jake, but changed. He told me he’d been addicted to crack, robbed stores and joined the Crips out in L.A. He’d been squeezed through the wringer and lived, but some things had taken a toll and left him different from the kid I knew from before. He told me he found his birth mother, but I didn’t ask what became of it. Things had changed, but he was still my friend.

I saw less and less of Jake as the years went on. I often thought of him, but did not know where to find him and often I thought that if I did track him down, would I have anything to say to him? I was surprised however, when I bumped in to him in the summer of 2000. He had a girlfriend, seemed to be doing okay and was psyched about coming to New York City.

I don’t know anything about Jake’s last moments. I don’t know where I can go to visit his body, if in fact, a place exists, so all I have right now is this blog post.

Jakob Imani Ohlsson was a good kid and I’m sure, despite his troubles, he was a good man. I will sincerely miss him. He was my friend and I will never forget him.

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