all this time is ash and sand that's running through my hands...

“Adair died.”

The text message stopped me dead in my tracks. I went in the other room and stopped the record player. I picked up the phone and I dialed Frank, “are you sure?”

“Yeah.”




And it just makes me think, you know? Of a thousand things, and all of them feel the same, the way these things do when you’re in shock and you lose touch with reality for a second. I feel light, like a swelling balloon, like I might float away.

Sex, drugs and rock and roll, baby, they will fucking kill you one way or another. Drugs have effected me over the years in one way or another. Some of my friends, friends of friends, family, it’s taken all kinds.

My cousin Jonathan overdosed when I was in middle school. He was 23, I think. It’s strange to think about it now. 23 seemed so far away then and I will be 23 in less than a year. I won’t be a model for Calvin Klein, crank out a kid or travel the world on someone else’s dime, not like him. He had done so much by the time he left us.

I felt an extraordinary sadness when Jonathan died. It was new to me then, losing someone, anyone really. And drugs, they were so foreign to me.

They found Jonathan two weeks after he’d overdosed, accidentally, they said. And that was comforting, I suppose. An accident. They had an open casket and he looked nothing like the boy I knew. His face and neck looked like they were melting. It made me sick to my stomach.

They played “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes as we stood outside with the wind blowing my hair and my father blowing his nose for the hundredth time that day. The music was so beautiful and heartbreaking. Jonathan’s girlfriend held their young son Jakob in her arms. I studied the little boy, knowing he would never know his father, except for the photographs he left behind. So many photographs…

We made a lap around the casket before we left my uncle and my cousins to bury him alone. Jonathan’s girlfriend made the reluctant lap, holding Jakob in her arms. He ran his tiny hand over the casket and everyone who saw him broke all over again.



(Jakob now)

Drugs are fucking scary as hell. I have always been terrified of anything harder than pot.

This past summer I couldn’t help but notice the comeback that cocaine is making in the clubs and bars around Detroit. I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere, but I feel like it’s the 80’s all over again.

I’m not sure if that’s what Adair overdosed on or not. Frank and I can only make guesses at this point.

Only weeks ago I felt my stomach sink into my feet. It’s impossible for me to watch people I care about make dangerous choices without feeling terrified. It shook me to my core, hearing them tell me how excited they were to try cocaine for the first time, knowing that there was nothing I could do to make it stop. No matter how I begged and pleaded, I knew it wouldn’t make a goddamn difference. I hung my head and tried to swallow the fear. My sadness was instantaneous and profound. When you truly love your friends, it hurts to watch them hurt themselves, to watch them play with fire, to ingest substances into their bodies with abandon, knowing that it could hold such devastating consequences.

Adair is gone. Like my other friend, he had just started sampling the harder stuff. He always lived his life the hard way. He smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish and yet his eyes were telling of the old soul that lay at the heart of his reckless 19 year-old body. He always seemed indestructible to me, one of the few people I felt had a fighting chance under absolutely any circumstance. A part of me always knew he would go young, and I think he did too. Frank has always said he would die young but I have always felt that he would live on, longer than he’d probably care to, and that Adair would be the one to burn out quickly, suddenly, like this. But still, it feels wrong. I think it’s gonna take a lot for the shock to wear off, for the reality of his absence to sink in.




He was an enormous talent. I loved his music, loved that he shared it with me before the rest of the world. Few could say that, and I felt proud and lucky to be in his inner circle of trusted friends. The circumstances that brought him into my life were strange, and even now I wonder at how easy it was for us to write lengthy emails having never spoken on the phone, not even once.

I never knew him as well as I would’ve liked to. But it’s too late for that now.

What I want more than anything else right now is to know that my friends and family will be more careful, that they might consider who they’d be leaving behind before they act so recklessly. I include myself in the mix of people who’ve made poor and terrifying decisions. I have driven when I shouldn’t have. I always made it home safe, but there were many times when I was surprised as hell that I got home in the first place.

It makes me feel foolish to think of it now. And I’m only writing it here because I don’t want anyone to feel like I’m sitting on some kind of high horse.

I mean it when I say I want my friends to be careful. I’ve changed a few things of late, tried to start living my life a little differently, a little cleaner. I quit smoking and I cut back on drinking. For me, it’s been a result of my own personal need to clear my head, to start fresh, to make sense of the course that my life has taken as of late. It’s been a tough semester for me to swallow for a few reasons I’d rather not elaborate on quite yet until I figure it out for myself.

But my point is, I’ve made some changes. I’m making smarter decisions, safer choices and I am begging you, the reader of this rambling entry, please be careful.

No matter who you are, there is someone, somewhere who loves you. I might even be one of those people. So, from someone who cares about you very, very much, I am begging you, pleading with you, I’m on my knees….please be careful. You’re beautiful and I love you and I want you around. Please make smart choices and make it home safe so I can see you soon.