Of course we'd been drinking.
I don’t do a lot of callbacks here, but it’s Sept. 19, four years and a day after Doug Bastianelli – one of my best friends and a constant fixture during my Chicago days – suffered a massive heart attack and died almost immediately. You can read my more immediate reaction, posted just a couple of days ago.
It’s funny; we still talk about Doug all the time in my family. Maybe it’s because Evan’s middle name is Douglas, in the big man’s honor, or maybe it’s just because he was so big, larger-than-life big, that Doug managed to associate himself with… I don’t know, with everything. I don’t want him to become some sort of mythic creature, which is why I’m glad four years ago I wrote partly about how flawed he was (and, even so, how he made me a better person).
I miss Chicago sometimes — well, a lot of the time — and part of it is that I remember it as a cloudy, sometimes rainy, sometimes snowy place where I would be pulled from going full-on introvert by Doug and his laugh and his encouragements to get out and drink and meet people and enjoy life. Through him, I met Tara, whose heart (maybe even love?) got me through an immensely difficult time. I made friends with Cher (not the singer) and Jenny Calligan (whose heart I should have pursued, something Doug never let me forget) and Jimmy Z and all manner of new friends.
I learned (somewhat) how to dress to impress.
I cried on a couch — we cried — over lost relationships as Annie Lennox wailed “Why?”
I stumbled into work bleary-eyed many a day after one of his epic Wine Nights.
I lived, I guess. He made me live a life over the course of a few years.
Really, go read the other post. I’m sore-hearted today from missing my friend.
