Brian

A Valentine to a good friend I left behind in Boston:

My friend Brian can make friends with anyone, anytime. He is a self-professed Boston boy and knows the city like the back of his hand. This knowledge, gleaned from years riding in his father’s jalopy of a dump truck on their work outings, has served him well. He is prone to going off on wild adventures at random so it’s useful I suppose to always be able to find his way home. When I first met him, oh, twelve years ago, he was, at 6’4, the tallest hippie I’d ever seen. He’d thankfully outgrown that phase by our next meeting, some two years later. Bored, at a backyard party, I glanced around and saw his half-familiar face and frame emerging from some bushes. He was covered in blood and laughing as if he were having the best time ever. Something about him told me we’d be friends for a long time right at that moment. It turned out I was not wrong.

No question the defining event in Brian’s life was losing his mother at an early age to a brain aneurysm. For most people, this might have ended their childhood and it’s stubborn freedom to only follow where the day takes you. For Brian, it may have just cemented his life into a love affair with all that is ridiculously, sublimely carefree. I’ll never know for sure. He only speaks in metaphors, beautiful ones at that, when describing anything remotely painful or to do with the emotions at all. Such topics he rarely touches upon. It is, however, absolutely correct that at any given moment, he will have at least five, wild, absurd and true tales to tell. He knows every local character and is on the fast track to becoming one himself. He is one of the funniest people anyone knows.

The beer and pint bottles littered around his apartment have also been staple for as long as anyone can remember. They are a constant like the fear we all have that this party might one day come to a very sudden end. The artwork he makes on a near daily basis is always out of found objects. Just whatever was handy and struck his fancy. This makes them, like their creator, delicate, messy and likely to end up somewhere unworthy of their brilliance.