Young Forever
Paul Frabizzio
He stands on the balcony with a view of the entire club. The base vibrating his entire body. As more people pass, he invites more people in. He feels like the king of his castle. While the crowd dances on top of each other, down below, he continues to order bottle after bottle, walking around and talking to his newfound friends. They dance, they laugh, they snap selfies and swear to send them to each other. Hours go by in minutes and the clock strikes 5 AM. There are 15 people left in the VIP area as the bottle service girls approach with the $12,000 bill that had amassed over the evening. In that instant, everyone runs for the coat check. He’s left alone again. An empty VIP and a bill that’s half a year’s salary for some. All spent on false dreams of a family he will never have. He stares down again, but this time at the bill and his Amex card. “Why did I do this again?” he says to himself.
************************************************
“Beep-Beep-Beep.” It was barely 5 AM. As I yawned and rolled over to turn on the news and get ready for first formation, I noticed my cell phone lit up. It was Jay. “What’s up Sergeant! Just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you. Give em hell today! How many more days until you deploy?”
Instantly my mind went to one of two things: either he just got home from a club, or he’s been up all night doing drugs, or both. Jay was always good for a random pick-me-up message, or some over-the-top countdown to my welcome home party after a deployment. But in the years since his mother’s passing, Jay had taken a dramatic turn south. As I shaved and stumbled into my PT uniform, I thought about how I was going to reply. As I got in my car and headed to base, I finally took the safe route and replied. “Yooo! Miss you, my brother! By the tone of your text, you probably had a blast last night. Jealous as shit as I get in my car to go run 10 miles with the platoon lol. T-minus 2 weeks until we ship, PLEASE do not post that on social media or my unit will have a fit. Love you bro. Miss you, I am sorry I couldn’t get home for pre-deployment leave this time. Will party post-deployment and I’ll give you a call this week before we start pack outs.”
No reply. He must have fallen asleep. Despite my status in the military, we had shared many, many nights like that together, although I never had 12k to drop on anyone, haha. Although I was always far from home, and forever busy with the speed of Army life, my best friend always checked in on me. I went about my morning thinking about the last time I was home, and the way Jay had changed from the last time I saw him before that.
Jay was always the life of the party, the guy everyone in the room wanted to be around and the one all the girls ran to. In a lot of ways, all I ever wanted was to be like Jay. When I joined the Army, Jay looked me in the face and said, “You get on that bus, and don’t look back. I ain’t going anywhere. I’m so proud of you.” Those words saved my life at a time I didn’t know I needed it. Since Jay’s mom passed, all he had left was the friends he surrounded himself with, that was his family. I was on leave in Italy in 2012 when I got the call that his mom had died, which devastated me, as she was my other mother, and I knew I couldn’t get home until October to see him. She had left him quite a package to live on, and since that was Jay’s only real family left, he was truly alone for the first time in his life. While he suffered in silence, he filled his voids with expensive nights out entertaining pretty people and making his rounds with his godson and three best friends. The only family Jay had left.
While I was away for this, we always found time to catch up, a quick phone call at the weirdest times day or night, which I always found hilarious considering the time zone differences and different lifestyles we lived. I was going into my fifth deployment, and as my day of never-ending briefings and load-out operations continued, all I could think about was that random message Jay sent me at 5 AM.
This was my first deployment as a senior NCO, and I was a lot more involved in the meetings between senior leadership this time around, so my free time was nonexistent. I had not even had any time to start properly packing up my own apartment, which I had told the leasing office I would vacate a few days before we deployed. That evening, I was hoping to get out by at least 1800 hours, so I could get home, crack a beer, and start the process of boxing all my crap up again for storage unit for the fifth time. As the last meeting ended, my commander came out to me and said, “Hey Sergeant, I need you to head down to the motor pool and meet Chief, you’re going to inspect all the pack out Conex’s and report back to me with 100% up, copy?” I wanted to punch him in his West Point educated throat. “Good copy, Sir,” I replied. So much for packing up my own apartment tonight.
As the Unit Movement Officer, it was my job to inspect all the single-use seals on each Conex with our battalion Chief. This would take hours, so I knew I wasn’t getting home until about 2100 hours. I showed up in the motor pool, and Chief was nowhere in sight. That pissed me off, so I blew up his phone until he answered, which conveniently was while he sat down to eat his dinner with his wife. After being screamed at for interrupting his dinner and conveying the commander’s orders, he said he would be there in 45 minutes and to get started copying the serial numbers and doing inspections. I guess my commander didn’t even let him know and figured I would just figure it out. Typical officer. The sun was already down, and I grabbed a head lamp and made my way to the fleet line to begin.
It was shortly after 1900 hours as I made it to my first Conex when I felt my phone vibrate. As I pulled it out of my pocket expecting it to be Chief telling me that he would be another hour (or until I finished the entire job so he could come down and just sign off on it), to my surprise it was Jay. “What’s up, Douchish?” he jokingly said. He always had some stupid nickname that changed every time we spoke. “Nothing bro, fucking Commander got me out here in the dark inspecting serial numbers on boxes going to Kuwait next week and my chief is home eating and blowing me off for the signature to go home,” I said. We did the normal catch-up routine that went on for about 20 minutes while I walked each container and inspected each seal.
Suddenly, after talking about his last $50,000-night on the blackjack table at the Borgata, which Jay-Z song is the best, or how last meet up with our best friend Shawn and his son SJ was, Jay’s tone dramatically changed. “Bro, you know I love you right?” he said in a depressed voice. This caught me off guard because that’s not something Jay would just randomly say. “Of course, I do fucker. Where the hell did that come from? You miss me being big spoon on your couch?” I tried to reply with a joke. For the next 15 minutes, Jay proceeded to question everything in his life, apologized for things he did back when we were in high school, and questioned people’s loyalty as friends around him.
Jay and I had been through just about everything together in life. We had been best friends going on more than 20 years at this point, and I knew when Jay was this depressed it was not a good sign, but being the strong, independent, successful man, I always loved, I didn’t think much of it and replied “Jay, between the two of us, we have made enough mistakes to get five life sentences to hell each. You have nothing to apologize to me for. You’re the best friend I ever had. Furthermore, I am your family, the people you love most in this world are your family, and we will always have your back as you did for us, time and time and time again.” This was a very unsettling conversation because emotional talks with Jay only happened when he was either really fucked up on something or starting to feel hopeless. He began to cry, reminding me of a memory he told me when his mother died (she was HIV positive, and we knew the end was inevitable one day) that he would pack it up and go somewhere far away off the grid, away from everything, in this case Costa Rica. Far away from everything, as if he never was born into that section 8 housing in Amboy.
As he began to talk about this while crying, the most annoying sound in the world backfilled my ears. Chief had finally made it to the motor pool to sign off on everything and I didn’t even realize that two hours had passed talking to Jay. I struggled to interrupt him and felt horrible for doing it, as it was not every day Jay opened up and spoke in a vulnerable way to me. “Jay, Jay, JAY! I love you bud, I got to go. Chief just got here.” I fought my way into his sentence. Chief was on my shoulder already complaining when I hung up the phone mid-sentence while Jay was saying “I love y…” Now I couldn’t tell a Chief Warrant Officer to go fuck himself for interrupting a very serious phone call with my best friend, so I turned and saluted him, and asked, “All the boxes are sealed, and are to standard as per regulation, Sir. Can you please sign this stupid packet off so I can finally go home?”
He moaned under his breath about something completely unrelated while he rustled through the packet looking for each signature block, he would have to sign. “Everything checks out, Sergeant. Good job. Sorry I was a dick before. This deployment has my nerves through the roof,” he said to me. “You got it, Sir. Me as well, I still have to go pack up my fucking apartment. Have a good night.” I saluted him and made my way to my car. On my way home, I attempted to call Jay back again to finish our convo, but to no surprise, he didn’t answer. That was typical of him, as once he started to actually feel anything emotional, he ran to a bar, club, or his stash of Roxy’s and Xanax that he had become all too familiar with over the past year.
The next morning, I expected to wake up to another message from Jay with his usual, “Sorry bro, got lit and passed out on my couch” message. I didn’t think much of it when nothing was there and went about my day, consisting of another grueling set of pack outs, briefings, and legal preparations, as the first wave of main body flights for our brigade to Kuwait were only one week away. I was called to my commander’s office at around 1500 hours, already pissed off and expecting another long night of details for my platoon, which I was desperately trying to avoid, to give my soldiers a chance to rest, relax, and catch up on their own personal packing as they would have to lock out their barracks rooms before we left. To my surprise, I was met by my commander with “Sergeant, you are a fucking well-oiled machine. Your platoon is the only platoon ahead of priority one taskings, and I want you to get your soldiers the hell out of here today and get you home. Go get your apartment done, well done.” I immediately stood up, rendered my salute to my commander, and replied. “Roger that, Sir. I take no credit; my soldiers are the well-oiled machine and these soldiers have never let me down once. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow for PT, Sir.”
Finally, after a week of staying at work past 2000 hours, I was free before 1630 hours. I jumped in my car, sped off base and stopped to pick up a 6-pack and small bottle of Jameson so I could get home, crank up the music and start to clean out everything and start packing boxes that would go to the storage unit over the weekend.
I ordered my favorite Tex-Mex from around the corner, fried fish tacos, and a tortilla. It always amazed me how the crappiest little place in Junction City, Kansas, had the best Mexican food I ever ate in my life. I had a drink, blasted my music, and started with my bedroom and closets. I was done with that so fast I barely realized it had been less than an hour, and I stopped to have another drink, eat my food, and sit on my porch and look out at the beautiful Kansas sky as the sun went down. Kansas may be a boring place, but lord is it beautiful when the sun comes up or it goes down. The prairies and flat grounds with no trees just let the sun take charge. I set my food up on my balcony and came back inside for my beer when I heard my phone ring. I ran into my bedroom and saw that it was my other best friend, Shawn. I was excited as I didn’t hear from Shawn as often and I wanted to tell him about the weird convo I had with Jay just the day before.
I hit go and proceeded to say, “Took you long enough, bitch! Your ears must be ringing cause I been thinking about calling you.” Shawn didn’t respond and took about 12 seconds before he finally said, “Are you sitting down?” My heart instantly dropped as I worked up the courage to ask him why he had just said that. In that instant he let out a horrible cry I have never heard in my life. “Jay overdosed! Jay overdosed! I am at his house right now!” Time stopped in that moment as I worked up the courage to ask the question, I already knew the answer to. “Is he? Is he?” I asked. “He’s fucking gone, bro!” Time stopped; my heart stopped. I didn’t even know how to answer him, I just started screaming. The ambulance was still at his house and Shawn had been called by other people who were with Jay the night before. I hung up the phone and lost it. This was not a reality I was willing to face, not my best friend, not after I made it back from Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, and now was getting ready to go to Syria. First, I called my mom, then the rest of our best friends. Then it hit me, I am deploying in 10 days.
I didn’t sleep that entire night. I cried, I screamed, I drank until I couldn’t see anymore. I woke up at 0700 and realized I missed PT formation and had 300 calls and messages from my platoon and company. I didn’t even waste time. I called my commander who met me with fury for giving me a break the day before only for me to AWOL the following morning. I broke down crying and proceeded to tell him, “Sir, I am so sorry. My best friend of 20 years was found dead last night, he overdosed. I didn’t sleep all night. I slept in.” My commander immediately went from anger to sorrow and said, “Sergeant, there are no words, I am so sorry. Take the day, we got you here at the company.” I worked up the courage to ask him a question I already knew the answer too. “Sir, I need a bigger favor than a day off and you know what it is.” I said, “I need you to authorize emergency leave. I need to be home to bury my best friend.” My commander paused for a second, then gave me the answer I knew was coming. “Sergeant, you know if it isn’t immediate family, I can’t authorize nothing. We leave in a little over a week. My heart is broken for you, and I wish there was…” I stopped him. “Got it… Roger, Sir.” I hung the phone up, I wanted to rip his heart out of his body, but I knew I would only get in trouble, so I held it back.
After I hung the phone up, I started making calls to all my hometown friends, looking for a reason to feel better. I was looking at the thousands of pictures of us together, playing the songs we loved, when it hit me. After my first deployment, Jay and I were in his car on our way to buy Christmas gifts while I was on leave. Jay-Z’s “Young Forever” came on in the car. Jay immediately went word for word with the song. He turned to me and told me, “If I ever die, your ass better make sure this song gets played at my funeral.” I don’t know why that memory came back so fast, I wasn’t playing the song, but I wasn’t going to let my best friend down. I called my little family of friends back home to ensure it happened.
My best friends had my back knowing I was deploying, and they went out of their way for me. My best friend Christina made sure the funeral home had internet and skype set up. I dressed in my dress blues naturally, he helped me get there. I was able to give my best friend his eulogy from Kansas, stuttering and crying and all. My family was there in my place, my mom laughing at the slew of Jay’s girlfriends in the front row all seated next to each other. Typical Jay, even in death he had them lined up together mourning him. I was a 1000 miles away, and my commitment to the Army prohibited me from being in the room, but my best friends back home made sure I was in the room, and they played “Young Forever.” They made sure his song got blasted to the rafters for the 3000 people that came out to say goodbye.
I deployed a week later. Go figure it was the deployment that hurt me the most. I still ask myself if it was ISIS or Jay that brought me more pain that deployment. Every time I left the wire, I blasted “Young Forever” and looked up to the Syrian sky. “I love you, brother. Keep me safe so I can stay young, forever.”
Dedicated to Jason E. Schatz. 1983-2015