I received a phone call yesterday evening informing me of the death of an acquaintanice of mine. Death, or the news thereof, while never a happy occasion, sometimes fails to produce in one the choking, tearful sobs of profound loss. At times, news of a death merely brings numbness, or perhaps a dull since of negativity and a bit of sadness. This phone call produced exactly that: a “damn…that’s bad” feeling. I’ve not missed work or cried or dwelled on it extensively. As a matter of fact, I was more than a bit annoyed that the phone call interrupted my viewing of 24. But then, sure as day and night, I felt a pang of guilt at having an intial reaction of such…well…jerkiness.

This person was in his late forties or early fifties. He was a Mexican national who had lived in this country for quite an extensive time (think decades), working on his American citizenship that I am pretty sure he had eventually obtained. He once asked me if the US would check his past in Mexico, since he had done time down there.

He was a person that was entertaining in the best of times, clingy in others, and, quite bluntly, downright annoying the rest of the time. This person used to show up at my house uninvited and stay until 3 am despite my less-than-tactful attempts at showing him my keen desire to go to bed. At one point, I left the room and came back in pajamas. I told my wife “Let’s go to bed honey, (so-and-so) probably wants to go to bed and we’ve been so rude keeping him up like this.” He still didn’t get it until I asked him to leave.

Other times, I would resort to going into another room with the nifty gangsta (Gnif on blogspot, Cracka on NME. You know who you are.), listening to heavy metal and opera MP3’s on my old P-1 computer and leaving this guy alone in my living room until he would leave.

He often said God blessed him. He refused to work and was a monumental slacker (much like Cracka *dodges punch*), but yet he told me once the pecan tree in front of his boarding house sustained him with food. I told him he had to eat nuts off the ground because he was lazy and wouldn’t get a job. He floated around like a tumbleweed, wearing out his welcome in whatever town he happened to be in. At one point he married a woman he met in a halfway house. She ended up being crazier than a sackful of ferrets. I once chaperoned them around a couple of months until they got married. She told me her life goal was to get her kids back that the Human Services people in another state had taken from her. It was for good reason they took them. She was CRACKED.

And now, he’s dead. He was in a car accident coming back home to yet another ratty tenement slumhouse which they call La Casa Apestosa (‘the stinky house’) in town. I feel bad he’s dead…ah hell, we’re going to miss you D. I’m a jerk.

Perdóname camerada por haberte hablado asi tantas veces…