Burrow Down In and Blow Up the Outside World

13 years ago today, my best friend Jorge was killed after driving his car into a canal in Miami. Early last year, I wrote a very personal and revealing piece which detailed the events leading up to his death; at the time, I questioned whether these events actually contributed in some way to the crash that killed him. Writing this was my way of trying to come to terms with what had happened long ago and to posthumously apologize to Jorge for a sickeningly underhanded betrayal of him in his final days. What initially triggered this column was the apparent suicide of comedian Richard Jeni in March of last year; he was a guy Jorge and I liked quite a bit and the news of his passing brought up lingering questions I'd had about the mysterious death of my own friend.

Those who've read my memoir, Dead Star Twilight, will probably find this to be pretty revelatory, as it fills in several details from my distant past referenced only vaguely within the storyline of the book.

One more thing: This column was never finished, and may not ever be. Not long after writing it, I took it down from the main page. This is the first time anybody's seen the thing in almost a year.


Part 1: This Is The End, Beautiful Friend


I had every intention of reconciling with my best friend the following morning. Despite months of interpersonal tumult and near-Machiavellian machinations -- the kind which had turned our once brotherly love into little more than a cordial but glacial acknowledgement of each other's existence -- I was determined to make things right again; to repair the damage that I had done. On the night of May 4th, 1995, I gave my old friend a bittersweet handshake as I prepared to head home after a few hours of drinking with a large group that had gathered to celebrate a mutual friend's birthday.

"Hey man, let's talk tomorrow -- okay?" I said tentatively.

He paused for a second -- more than enough time for me to see all the hurt that I'd caused flash through his eyes -- then simply smiled and nodded. That was it; he didn't say anything and he didn't need to. As I turned away from him and walked out the door, I looked back one last time and suddenly saw the kid I'd grown up with -- my partner-in-crime since high-school. I missed him. I missed our friendship; I promised myself that the following morning I would begin the difficult work of repairing it.

The following morning, I watched a tow-truck pull his car out of a canal. I watched his body slump forward as the sickly green water drained out through the windows.

Less than twelve hours after I had shaken his hand and vowed silently never to turn my back on him again, Jorge Somarriba -- my friend and the closest thing to a brother I ever had -- was dead.

He was twenty-five.

As with most personal tragedies, the events of that morning now come back to me only in the form of flashes -- slivers of white light breaking through cracks in the hastily-constructed wall my mind uses to shield me from such searing anguish. I remember the sadistic irony of the way in which I learned about the crash: I watched it play out on WSVN's News at Noon, as I sat at my desk in the WSVN newsroom. I remember being the only one to realize what was happening -- whose car it was -- despite the fact that Jorge also worked at WSVN, on the night-shift. I remember the sound tunneling away as I stood up, stared blankly at our newsdesk and said, "That's Jorge's car." I remember my executive producer grabbing the radio and telling our reporter at the scene, Glenna Milberg, to get close enough to read the numbers on the car's license plate, and her saying that police were keeping everyone away; I remember the EP's response: "Just do it -- now." I remember the entire newsroom gathering around the desk in frightened silence; the plate being run through the auto-track computer; Jorge's name appearing on the screen as the registered owner. I remember each person breaking off from the desk one-by-one, like petals on a dead flower. I remember the quiet sobs.

More than anything though, I remember another producer approaching me and hesitantly asking, "Do you want to see -- just to make sure?" And I remember standing in an editing room as the raw video from the scene played on a small television, and seeing the arm covered with the sleeve of the same sweater Jorge had been wearing twelve hours earlier -- the last time I saw, or would ever see, him alive.

I remember my executive producer looking at me and saying, "Go home -- just get out of here."

I don't remember the drive home.

As the days passed, those who knew and loved Jorge mourned, and cried, and ached, and remembered, and laughed, and questioned, and cursed the heavens. His devastated mother and father, desperate to somehow keep their firstborn's living presence secure inside their shattered home, invited as many of Jorge's friends over as often as possible. His father rarely cried -- his entire being instead expressing an agony too visceral for tears: eyes wide and darting around the room as if seeing ghosts; body frozen perfectly still; chest occasionally heaving like someone had just put a .45 slug into it. He was a man whose grief had plunged him into a world the rest of us couldn't even fathom -- a black hole of perpetual torture and inescapable madness. He was, quite simply, in hell.

Yet each time he spoke, it became more and more apparent that this broken man believed that there was something out there which could alleviate his suffering.

Answers.

He just wanted to know what had happened to his son on the night of May 4th, 1995 -- and at 5am the following morning, when police say he drove his car down a dead-end street in a desolate part of North Miami, through a metal barrier and into a canal.

He made us run through the events of the evening over and over, hoping to glean some new detail from the spaces between the words each of us repeated consistently: I left early. Jorge stayed out and continued to drink. He finally left the group at around 4:30am. After that -- nothing. Everyone assumed he was going home; no one knows where he actually went or why. Jorge's father would repeat these facts to himself -- turning them over in his head -- hoping to mold an answer that made sense. He concocted complex scenarios in which his son was being chased and found himself forced to drive to a part of town miles away from home in an effort to elude his pursuers. He wondered aloud if Jorge was simply drunk, lost and tired, and had pulled off onto a dark street to get some sleep (that would've been the responsible thing to do -- right? right?)

In the end, it was nothing more than a tragic exercise in futility; Jorge had died utterly alone -- in the middle of nowhere.

It was this fact though, in all of its potential interpretations, which whispered the one possibility that no one seemed willing to acknowledge, simply because there was no comfort to be found in it -- only an eternity of torment.

Maybe Jorge had been on that dark and desolate street because he wanted to be there. Maybe he had driven his car through that metal barrier because he wanted to sink it into a canal. Maybe he had died, because he didn't want to live anymore.

It just seemed at the time to be far too early for someone to simply give up.

As the years have passed though, and I've grown to the age Jorge was never able to see, I've thought a lot about that personal, imaginary Rubicon I happen to believe is located somewhere deep inside almost everyone -- the one from which there's no turning back and past which there's only the perceived promise of pain and hardship. If twenty-five is too soon to abandon all hope for the future, then what age is, if not acceptable, at least understandable? Thirty-five? Forty-five?

How about forty-nine?

That's how old Richard Jeni was when he walked into his own bathroom on a Saturday morning earlier this month and shot himself in the head.

When I heard the news, I was stunned and heartbroken.

I don't claim to know much about Richard beyond his brilliant stand-up work throughout the years, but it's the very face he showed to the world which always made me feel as if I knew everything I needed to about him. Put simply, Richard Jeni was one of my favorite comedians and one of the sharpest and brightest minds working the circuit. Back in the early 90s, I was fortunate enough to see him in-person twice -- once in Palm Beach and again in Miami -- and each time I was impressed not only with how astonishingly funny he was, but how he often managed to wrap polemical social themes in an easy-to-swallow coat of sweet affability. No matter how controversial the occasional joke may have been, it was impossible not to like the genial guy telling it.

In 1992, Richard Jeni taped an HBO special called "Platypus Man;" it inadvertently became part of a seminal period in my life.

That same year, I landed my first job in television news and consequently moved into an art deco studio apartment on South Beach. It was my first attempt at living alone and as such the decor with which I'd chosen to surround myself was less than cohesive to say the least. It was essentially an inchoate mass of appalling styles and designs -- crates for bookshelves and a borrowed couch/bed and a giant patio rug to cover part of the hardwood floor -- which were puncuated by huge Reservoir Dogs and Faith No More posters. It wasn't perfect, but it was home -- my home.

It was on that borrowed couch/bed that I watched Jeni do his "Platypus Man" special; it was at that moment that I felt a kinship if not with the man, then at least with his comic mind. The routine centered around Jeni sitting on his own couch, exactly as I was, watching a documentary on the platypus: how it lived alone; how it attempted to mate but rarely did; how it fed at night. The punchline of course was that the platypus was him. He called himself "Platypus Man" and called his crummy hole of an apartment "The Platypus Cave."

From that point forward, to me and even to the first girlfriend kind enough to spend any time there with me, my apartment became known by that very same name.

Richard Jeni's career seemed to slide after 1992. Throughout the next several years he took bit parts in movies and landed writing gigs on various sitcoms, but never seemed to achieve the success which culminated with those HBO and Showtime specials of the early 90s. Although hugely popular with his fellow comics, and a regular guest on Leno, his audiences leveled-off and his talent went largely unnoticed by the masses.

I never forgot the Platypus Cave though, nor the comedian who coined the phrase -- even after I bought some stylish furniture, moved into an attractive apartment in Miami Lakes and began hosting weekend parties which typically involved good friends, cool music, a large supply of ecstasy and, inevitably, the dangerous demolition of barriers between what was and wasn't acceptable interpersonal behavior.

This is what led me to betray my best friend.

For all I know, this is what may have led to his death.


Part 2: We Choose No Kin but Adopted Strangers


I remember the moment that I knew Jorge Somarriba and I were going to end up being good friends; it was the same moment that I realized he was as big an asshole as I was.

It was our sophomore year of high school. The two of us happened to be sitting next to each other at lunch -- outside, at one of the rows of picnic tables which created a gauntlet of calamity between the classroom building and the gym. We were part of a group of mutual friends, yet for some reason had rarely spoken directly to each other. At some point during lunch, a very tall, gangly kid with bright white skin and fiery orange hair walked by and took a seat next to a collection of equally tall and gangly black kids. Together, they made up the Pace High School basketball team -- a team which held a reputation for athletic ineffectuality that only the Pace High School football team could surpass. The sight of a red-headed guy whose generic whiteness was practically to the point of translucence, surrounded by a sea of mini-afros, was hysterically surreal in and of itself. I had no intention of commenting on it however, until I heard a bemused voice from my left; it was Jorge.

"You think he realizes how white he is?"

Without taking my eyes off the strange scene -- "He's gotta. Jesus, the kid's practically reflective."

"He looks like one of those tabby kittens that's being raised by rottweilers," Jorge responded.

And at that, I started laughing.

This drew the attention of a friend of ours who was sitting across from us; he immediately broke off his conversation to turn a stern eye toward the two misanthropes on the other side of the table.

"What are you two laughing at?" he scolded. "Do you guys even know John? He's a great guy!"

Then, just to prove his point, our friend got up and walked over to where Big Red was sitting, shook his hand and struck up a conversation with him.

For a moment, Jorge and I sat in silence. I admit that I felt a little guilty; we had after all been poking fun at someone we didn't really know. Our mutual friend apparently put a higher value on social justice than on the potential fun to be gleaned from a little light-hearted mockery -- and I wondered if he was indeed a far better person than me for it. I turned to Jorge with a look that probably resembled that of a tongue-lashed third-grader. He just faced me hesitantly for a moment -- then he smiled, his expression suddenly changing to one of indignant amusement.

"Eh, fuck 'im," he said.

That was all it took. From that point forward, we were Hawkeye and Trapper. I spent the rest of high school wondering how I got so lucky as to have met someone with whom I apparently shared a brain. Our friend meanwhile -- the defender of the down-trodden, the ridiculed and the tabby resemblant -- went on to become a card-carrying socialist and remains one to this day.

By the time 1992 rolled around and I had taken up residence in the Platypus Cave, I was mercilessly teasing Jorge about the fact that he was still happily living with his parents in their modest ranch-style home in Hialeah. He made no excuses for the import he placed on free laundry service and a refrigerator which served as a bottomless reservoir of Tyson microwavable chicken breast patties. He remained comfortably cocooned in Hialeah even as I left my cave and moved to tony Miami Lakes.

We assisted each other on occasion, as the specter of adulthood gathered like storm clouds over our heads: I got him a good job at WSVN; he took some of the extra cash he was making and offered to help me put a down payment on a new BMW. We remained the closest of friends.

I don't recall where we got the ecstasy the first time we did it at my place in the Lakes -- I only remember that, as that particular drug is prone to do, it completely blew us away. The evening culminated with two very lovely young women practically naked in my bathtub -- all inhibition gone, literally, down the drain -- and the rest of us vowing that we must do this again. It was a vow that we kept.

What started as a curious diversion, borne more out of boredom than anything else, quickly established itself as a weekend institution. The "tribe" involved grew and its participants fluctuated -- some coming, some going -- but the culture which spawned it remained intransigent: the candles; the music; the intimacy -- physical, cerebral, psychological and spiritual; the overwhelming, rapturous euphoria of the drug; the good, good friends. It seemed impossible for there to be a negative consequence to such bliss.

Years later, I would read an Alex Garland novel called The Beach, and find that I understand the motivations of a group of people who, once they find paradise, will do anything to protect it -- even if it requires sacrificing one of them. I would already know from experience that all the intoxication in the world can't overcome the most corrupt of human instincts. Adam and Eve forfeited Eden simply by indulging in something that was expressly forbidden.

I had always chided Jorge for his inclination to fall in love with any girl who'd give him the time of day. I'd spent quite a few evenings consoling my friend -- a task which, more often than not, meant wiping vomited bourbon out of the inside of my car -- after he'd been neglected by one object of undying affection or another.

Darcy was no different.

She worked as a tape editor at WSVN, a position in which she stood out conspicuously, not so much for her abilities as the fact that she was a thin, attractive brunette -- as opposed to the rest of the editing staff, which looked as if it had been plugged wholesale into a cannon and fired into a brick wall. I had talked to Darcy once or twice and found her to be smart, competent and ambitious -- certainly the kind of motivated force that would work well on the producing staff -- so I began helping her train to become a writer/producer. I was dating a co-worker at the time whom I cared for very much, and I can honestly say that my intentions were pure when it came to Darcy.

I don't remember at exactly what point Jorge took a personal interest in Darcy -- nor at what point that fascination achieved critical mass and erupted into full-blown infatuation; I'm sure that I rinsed out the rag and put the rubber floor mats back in the car when it happened. I do know that by the time Darcy agreed to a first date with Jorge, she had no idea that he'd already decided he would never love any girl more.

A couple of dates later, Jorge approached the tribal council and suggested allowing his new inamorata to join in all our reindeer games. I was nervous about bringing an unfamiliar face from work into the fold, considering the illegality of what we were doing, but despite Jorge's obsession with Darcy, I assumed he was at least lucid enough to not want to risk getting us all fired.

Our response: "Yeah, sure."

That's how Darcy joined the party -- the beginning of the end, so to speak.

It wasn't long after, on a weekday -- the downtime between our ritual gatherings -- that I was cleaning out my entertainment center and came across a videotape of Richard Jeni's "Platypus Man." I sat down and watched it, marveling at how far I'd come since the days of being a Platypus Man living in a Platypus Cave.

I ate well.

I mated often.

I was never alone.


Part 3: Closer to God


I've always had a somewhat strange fear of heights.

I feel the need to qualify this statement because, in fact, my fear isn't of heights at all -- at least not in the usual sense. I don't have an aversion to high places; quite the contrary -- I'm drawn to them, which is where the problem lies.

I've never been afraid of falling; I've been afraid of jumping. For as long as I can remember, I've allowed myself to be plagued by the belief that when confronted with such a simple and absolute means of release -- an infinite abyss which would require nothing more than a single step from the safety of a ledge -- something deep inside me would snap, and make the ultimate decision before I even had the opportunity to think the better of it. I'm afraid of losing all control for one split-second and never getting the chance to regret it. I'm afraid of taking control for one split-second and never getting the chance to regret it. I fear my own impluses. I fear myself.

I fear death -- which is why I fear that I've already quietly embraced it.

In the waning days of 1994, my means of courting the inevitable nature of my own mortality revolved around nothing so noble or grand as casting myself into a serene and weightless freefall.

It involved consuming enough drugs to destroy me ten times over, then defiantly daring my body to die.

I overcompensated for my fear of death by assuming the posture of fearless indestructability.

It was as dark and seductive as it was irresponsible and selfish -- and when mixed with Darcy's own brand of nihilistic narcissism, the resulting amalgam was positively toxic.

I didn't know this the night that she first walked into my apartment, on Jorge's arm; at the time I was far too busy noticing the blue dress -- that fucking blue dress. It was the first time I'd seen Darcy outside of work, and it was like a revelation. I had to silently swallow an involuntary gasp and quickly recast my expression as something more resembling warm hospitality and less resembling cold, hard desire. I had tried my best to take it all in as matter of clinical fact: the dark hair lying gently across bare shoulders; the delicate flow and shimmering chill of the cobalt blue fabric against her tanned skin; the way the sheer material highlighted the lack of any other clothing beneath it; her perfume; the softness of her face when she kissed my cheek. The overall effect had been nothing short of inebriating.

It was only a few minutes after my introduction to Darcy's true allure that I stood in the elevator of my apartment building, relieved to be out of her presence. I was icily running my top front teeth back and forth over the inside of my bottom lip -- breathing deeply -- trying to ease the tension and bury whatever was rising to the surface inside me. A friend and fellow member of our little group stood next to me; after what seemed like an eternity of deafening silence he turned his head in my direction.

"Don't even think about it," he said.

As it turns out, I wound up taking his advice.

I didn't think -- I just stepped off the ledge.


Part 4: But Gravity Always Wins


Had I been in my right mind at any point -- not doing drugs, not allowing myself to initially be distracted by Darcy -- I would've noticed the obvious: my friend was changing into something unrecognizable. While our weekend festivities tended to safely insulate our group within the confines of my apartment, Jorge was becoming restless; his own vision of the ecstasy culture was fueled by what was happening in England at the time -- namely the kinetic energy of the non-stop party or any kind of activity which revolved around a dance floor rather than a living room floor. He was simply tired of staying indoors every weekend.

So one Saturday evening, we made the democratic decision to humor our friend.

Each of us was familiar with the downtown Ft. Lauderdale club called "The Edge:" its unimaginative name and location in the heart of Broward notwithstanding, the place was a relatively decent concert venue and popular weekend haunt for those who considered The Offspring's Self Esteem to be the pinnacle of adventurous tastes. Despite its propensity for catering to the musically naive however, The Edge did offer one surprisingly daring conceit -- namely, an all-night weekend rave. Because of Broward's strict laws against serving liquor past a certain hour, the managers of the club were forced to get creative; what they came up with was stunning in its clever simplicity: they closed the club at 2am on Saturday night/Sunday morning, then re-opened it at 3am playing nothing but house and trance and serving nothing but copious amounts of bottled water (for which they charged an exorbitant amount of money, safe in the knowledge that kids on ecstasy would pay anything to avoid dehydrating and subsequently passing out and dying before getting the chance to hear the Rabbit & the Moon remix of Humate).

This was our destination.

Chomping at the bit for a night of perpetual partying, Jorge came prepared for our little tribal field trip by arming himself with a knit-hat, wallet-chain, sunglasses and baggy jeans; eager to avoid a night of perpetual partying, the rest of us prepared by reserving a hotel room about three blocks away from the club. Once we all arrived and the drugs began to really kick in, it wasn't long before the dividing lines were drawn: Jorge was all-too-happy to stay and dance into the wee-hours; the rest of us wanted nothing more than to get back to the hotel room and get away from the noise and the crowd -- the rest of us including Jorge's would-be girlfriend.

It was there, in that hotel room -- lying on a bed -- that Darcy, my own girlfiend and I got into the kind of intense and personal conversation that only high people can engage in or, for that matter, understand. Our group had accepted Darcy as one of us, and therefore felt no threat or sense of impending dread; even my own early lusts had cooled as she became just another member of our wonderful weekly tribal ritual. That said though, I had always been careful to keep a respectable distance from her. Jorge was madly in love with Darcy, and in spite of the automatic intimacy and what would otherwise be improper physical contact abetted by ecstasy, I had tried to keep the lines between us from blurring too terribly. Unfortunately, that changed with this one conversation. Darcy had undergone surgery years previously which left her with a series of small scars across her chest -- a fact she was more than comfortable sharing with us. After a half-hour or so of deep conversation about the operation, what it had done to her, how she had felt since, I asked if she'd mind showing me the scars. Given that my girlfriend had already seen them and, as far as I could tell, it wouldn't require Darcy exposing any part of her body that would rightfully earn me a gut-punch from my best friend, I saw nothing untoward in making such a request. She agreed, my girlfriend agreed -- so Darcy took me by the hand and led me back to the bathroom area (in hindsight, this should've been my first clue that whatever was about to happen, it likely wasn't as innocent as I was imagining it to be).

When she was satisfied that we were tucked far enough away from the rest of our group, she turned around, gave me a mischievous smile -- then in one fluid motion pulled her t-shirt over her head and let it drop to the floor. There she stood, wearing a tiny pair of running shorts -- and nothing else.

"See, they're not that bad," my girlfriend said as Darcy and I walked back into the room a moment later.

"No -- they're -- they're not bad at all," I responded, still shell-shocked.

It was a week later, with Darcy and I lying out by my pool on a steamy Saturday afternoon, that the two of us had what I've since come to refer to as the "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" moment.

Her red bikini was Phoebe Cates; our conversation -- all Stacey and Damone.

"Jorge is crazy about you -- you know that right?" I said, attempting to reinforce the wall between us -- the one that was crumbling before my eyes.

"I know, and he's really terrific -- but I was talking to this friend of mine the other day and I noticed something," she responded. "All I wanted to talk about was you. I finally said to her, 'I'm just completely falling in love with this guy.'"

The wall came down -- and the plan was subconsciously hatched.

Jorge wanted to go out to the point of becoming angry and impatient. He was drinking constantly. He was becoming increasingly paranoid and possessive of Darcy. He was beginning to spin out of control.

He needed his best friend to be there for him -- to help bring him back.

Instead, his best friend used these very factors to suggest that he was becoming a burden -- a breach of the peace and a demoralizing threat to the Beach-like paradise we'd discovered and needed to defend at all costs. I lobbied the position that his excesses were drawing unnecessary attention and putting us all at risk.

The rest of the group understood and agreed -- and Jorge was quietly expelled. He was never aware that any kind of official and binding decision had been made -- had we admitted that to him at the very least no one could've called us cowardly; we simply stopped letting him know that we were getting together.

I now had Darcy all to myself.

Few ever admit to their part in inhrently evil machinations -- at least not while such machinations are underway -- but had I been honest enough to confess the truth of what was happening as well as the personal beliefs and designs nurturing my actions, it would've been perfectly clear:

It wasn't our paradise, but my paradise.

I wanted something, and would allow little to get in my way.

I was indestructable.

Fuck everybody.

On a Monday morning -- after my apartment had cleared out from the most recent weekend gathering and we were finally left all alone -- Darcy and I got into bed and didn't get back out until hours later.

I got what I wanted, and looking back, I'll never forgive myself for it.

Never.

Someday: The Conclusion