WTF? NOT FTW.

My bff is having a bad day. A really bad day. I don't know what to say to him. We are not that close anymore. I have known him the longest of any of my friends. He's been living with HIV for over twenty years now. And recently he disclosed to me that when he was in the hospital and very sick, people around him thought it was his HIV. It was not. IT was his street drug use/overuse. The bastard was pretty much trying to off himself.
I feel sad for my friend. He is a forty something year old gay man who has had nothing but abusive relationships and he has abused drugs and alcohol his entire life. HE's intelligent and charming and makes people laugh; but his beginnings were so rooted in white trash/redneck surroundings it took him a long time to rise above...a lot like me.
He and I met at The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He was in high school, I should have been I guess. I was working at the Holiday Inn as a dishwasher. We did a lot together, a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol. A lot of partying, but also a lot of bonding/talking/exploring. Had we had our wits about us we might have made excellent urbane urban explorers.
At any rate, he and I parted ways when he met and hooked up with an evil boyfriend who monolopolized all of his time and cut me pretty much out of the picture. I was not the most attractive friend to have around at any rate. Always drunk, going from job to job and woman to woman... living on people's couches or in their closets, whatever I could glom.
We did lose touch, he and I but I found him not too long ago by internet. As if he'd left, he hadn't, still in that city where I left him.
I thought he had been doing well: gotten into Buddhism, seemed to be somewhat centered and all that.
But I guess not... from his last email I discern a certain fatalistic note and a definite air of severe depression of the sort you associate with manics. His cat is ill and he says that if the cat dies he has no more reason to stick around, he will go join the monastery OR 'the other choice'.
I told him to keep in touch either way... in an effort to make him laugh with my gallows humor.
I don't know what to make of someone who stakes their entire existence on the life of a cat. Cats don't live that long anyway, do they. I told him to go get a couple of kittens!
Seriously, I hurt for him. but then again, not everyone can be me, all stoney and stoic and full of determination not to let this fucking world get me too down.
I dunno, I just wish I was there to talk some sense into him but when people start talking about ending it all because their cat is dying or may die, I begin to wander off in my mind. It smacks of mental instability: and I don't think there is that with this man.
Frankly I think he just reminded me of my brother, who I am mad at for doing so many drugs that he died of AIDS way before he might have. And the reason for all this ennui and angst today was that my friend sent me a link to a song: "The Sound of Silence" and in the email he said, "This is how I feel: LISTEN please".
and I wrote back telling him that that was my brother's favorite song and it reminded me of his death and of the wake we gave him. I've already told my friend how mad I am at my brother. Soon I may be mad at him too.
It's been a while since anyone I was close to died of Aids: I'd almost gotten comfortable thinking that all that was in my past, and I hadn't allowed myself to get close to any new friends that are HIV+/ Not on purpose: just sort of in the back of my mind I have not exactly gotten close to any gay men period.
There was a time in my life when it seemed that ALL of my friends were leaving me one at a time.
And now here is another one teetering on the brink. Aids will get him, wether it's by complications due to Aids, Aids itself, or the drinking/drugs I have a feeling he's about to embark on today. I hope he stays home and doesn't go out...