Jeff

Jeff by O’Neal Rodges

The last time I saw my friend Jeff, they lowered his casket into the ground.

I had first met Jeff at the Red Blood Club when I was about sixteen years old. He was a couple of years younger than me, and I think he couldn’t have been more than thirteen at the time. I had heard a lot of my friends talk about his band Armed Riot, and how badass they were for being so young. They were the usual kind of punk rock music but they were good nonetheless and Jeff was one of the best front men I had ever seen at such a young age.
During the show, which couldn’t have had more than thirty people at it, Jeff jumped off the stage with nothing but me between him and the ground. When he jumped his body went completely parallel, as if trying to crowd surf with no crowd. When he came down, his hand that was holding the microphone came crashing down into my mouth, chipping my tooth and causing me to bite my tongue. I could taste the salty taste of blood in my mouth as I spit out bits of a chipped tooth. All the while I could not stop laughing. I was having a great time.
After the show Jeff came up to me.
“I’m really sorry about punching you in the face,” he said with a mild sincerity.
“It’s alright; I’m not worried about it much.” I said, “You guys played a badass show, I had a good time.”
“Thanks,” he said.
That is what sparked my friendship with Jeff, a show and an accidental punch to the face. I have never been happy about getting hit in the face, but I’m glad that it happened. Over the next few years Jeff and I would become good friends. We would see each other at shows and at parties after shows, always having a laugh and a brew. Jeff would never forget to apologize for smacking me in the face every time he saw me. That’s why I grew to love him like a little brother.
The next few years were great, and I have the best memories of Jeff from them. Drinking Mickey’s forty ounces in parking lots of shows, going to parties just to drink more, playing shows together, and having loads of fun the whole time. All the while Jeff never forgot to apologize every time I saw him for the crack to the jaw. That was just how Jeff was. After all our years of friendship I couldn’t believe he still felt bad about it, but he did.
That’s about the time that word had gotten around through our friends that Jeff had started doing drugs. Heroine, smack, junk, boy, shoot, whatever you want to call it, that’s what Jeff was doing and I didn’t want to believe it. Heroine is a semi synthetic drug derived from morphine. The name comes from the German word “heroisch” which means heroic or strong because heroine is stronger, or more potent, than morphine. It was discovered in 1874 and was introduced commercially in 1898 by the Bayer Company. I never thought that a stupid fucking aspirin company would ultimately be responsible for the death of my friend.
I remember the first time I confronted him about it. I think all of our friends did. I took Jeff aside one day when we were hanging out.
“Jeff, I need to talk to ya,” I said, trying to look as concerned and serious as possible.
Jeff’s facial expression changed when he saw mine trying to understand why it was I was looking the way I was. To this day I don’t know what my face looked like. For all I knew he thought I was pissed at him but he still wanted to talk to me and looked at me in the most serious way.
“What’s up dude?” he said.
“I heard you were doing junk dude. What the fuck is that shit about?! Dude you know that shit will kill ya, I know I don’t have to tell ya that. So why the fuck are ya doing it? I mean at first I thought you just did it once or twice but it’s changing the way ya fuckin’ look man. Can’t ya see that?” I told him, trying not to yell but almost doing it anyway.
“Shit, man,” he remarked, putting his head down in shame. It seemed as if he was about to cry because he was so ashamed of what he was doing, just like a little kid caught in a lie.
“No bullshit bro, that shit can and will fuckin’ kill ya an’ I don’t want to see ya go out like that,” I finally stated after a long silence between us.
“Yeah, I know it will man. It’s just that this shit is hard to kick man. I’ve been trying but its just fuckin’ hard man.” He told me sounding defeated, like a person with nowhere to go.
“You’re my boy Jeff, and you’re better than that shit. If you ever need anything don’t hesitate to ask me alright.”
“You know I won’t,” he replied with a smile, his eyes still looking watery and the look of shame still fresh on his young face.
I know I’m not the only one of our friends that said something to him about it. A lot of us did. All of us did. We had all noticed him change from the goofy, happy go lucky drunk kid, to a guy with big red bags under his eyes, who always wore long sleeves, and never seemed to have any time to talk, always rushing off in the middle of sentences, still having a conversation with you while he was halfway down the street. Not like he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but it seemed like he always had something better to do with his time even though he wanted to talk he had to keep going.
I remember not seeing Jeff for a couple of months and starting to get pretty worried about him, when I ran into his older brother Michael. I asked him how Jeff was doing, and he already knew what I was implying.
“Ah, man he’s great now!” he exclaimed with a smile, “I got in his face and told him to leave that shit alone, asked him if he wanted to die or be a piece of shit the rest of his life. Even turned on the old water works. We talked about that shit long and hard so he decided to give it up, and he’s been clean for about a month now. I’ve been helpin’ him get offa that shit but all in all man, he’s doin’ real good.”
“Great dude,” I said with a smile, “That’s good news to hear.”
“Yeah I know dude. He was worryin’ me for a while, but he’s gonna be okay man. Thanks for askin’ about em, I’ll tell him you said hey or whatever. Later dude,” he told me as he walked away.
Another month went by, and almost everyday we were at the Red Blood. Still there was no sign of Jeff. After not seeing him around for about two to three months, he showed up and everyone there was ecstatic to see him. I have to admit I was excited just to see him and to see that he was okay and healthy again. It was like seeing someone come back from the dead, or at least the living dead. As if we were all in a zombie movie and Jeff was bitten and was going to die, but we found a magic potion somewhere that made him come back to normal. I remember one of the last times I saw Jeff. He was wearing short sleeves again, the bags under his eyes were gone, and the smile that had left his face for so long had finally returned and everything seemed to be going back to normal. When I saw him he gave me a big hug and, yet again apologized for busting my tooth all those years ago. I was glad that we finally had our friend back.
Another month went by, with everything seeming normal, when I came home from work with a note tacked to my door which read:
“Joe called said it was really important. Said to call him back A.S.A.P.”
I recognized my mothers’ neat and flowing cursive writing, and I wondered what could possibly be so important. Joe played drums in my band and I was pondering what he could be freaking out about. Maybe it was an upcoming show, maybe it was practice, or just maybe he wanted to know when we would be recording. I didn’t know, but I had to find out, so I went and got the phone and dialed Joes’ number. After waiting for a few rings Joe picked up the phone.
“Hey, what’s up?” Joe asked.
“I don’t know man, I just got off work. So what the hell’s so important man?” I asked him without much sincerity seeing as how I thought it was all band related and such things don’t require sincerity.
“Jeff’s dead,” he said shakily. I could hear in his voice that he had been crying.
My jaw dropped open wide enough for anything that wanted to the chance to crawl or fly in could, and thinking back on it I’m really surprised I didn’t catch a few bugs, or at least a fly or two.
“Wait what?” I asked in disbelief, “Jeff is dead? Which Jeff, Jumpy Jeff? Our friend Jeff? No fucking way! What?”
“Yeah dude,” he remarked, seeming to know what I was going through since he had already been through it himself, “The funeral is gonna be this weekend sometime. I’ll give you a call and let you know when. I don’t know what to do man, this fucking sucks!”
“Yeah,” I said, still not being able to come up with any words to make him or even myself feel better.
“Well I’ll call ya,” he said ready to hang up.
“Yeah, later dude,” I replied hanging up the phone still in disbelief.
Jeff had overdosed on heroine the night before. When you overdose on junk a lot of things happen to your body. When you inject heroine, 68 percent of the drug is absorbed in your brain. It all acts on key receptors in the brain causing euphoria, extremely small pupils, low blood pressure, a weak pulse, and tongue discoloration. Your breathing begins to be slow and labored like you don’t know how to do it even though you’ve been doing it your whole life. Your mouth gets really dry and you lips and finger tips turn a bluish color, much like your already dead even when you’re still alive. Stomach muscles along with other muscles begin to spasm sending you into convulsions. When you o.d. recovery can take up to twenty four to forty eight hours, that is if they get you to a hospital in time to inject you with another drug that counteracts the heroine along with a laxative because you get extremely constipated when overdosing. They didn’t get Jeff to the hospital on time. His brother Michael had woken up and went to the room he was in. He saw Jeff lying on the bed not breathing. His eyes were rolled into the back of his head and Jeff seemed like he was already dead. Michael tried to give him C.P.R. but after pushing down on his stomach blood began to spew out of his mouth and nose. It was already too late for anyone to do anything. I remember, I didn’t cry when I found out. The first thing I did was punch a couple of holes into my wall because I was so pissed at him for dying at the time. To this day I don’t know why anger was my first reaction, but I guess in times like those when you hear one of your friends is dead because of something stupid you told him not to do in the first place, things seem weird at first. I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it, and I think my denial only made things harder for me to handle in the end.
Two days later we all went to his wake. Everyone we knew was there. Just about every street punk kid in the Dallas scene was there. We all walked past his body with family members and friends crying their eyes out. The only thing I could think about was how Jeff was going to sit up at any moment to tell us that we should have seen our faces, and how bad he had us going because we thought he was dead. But he didn’t. He just laid there motionless with his face looking much to fake from all the makeup the mortician had to cake onto it. It depressed me more than anything to see him like that, looking like a doll in a box at a toy store, so plastic and fake after I had seen him so full of life just a few weeks before. If you’ve ever been to a friends funeral, especially one that is younger than you then you know what I mean.
Another two days after that was his funeral. I remember it was on a Friday. I had to take off of work and it was damn near impossible since my boss was an asshole, but after telling him that one of my friends had overdosed and I really needed to pay my respects, he didn’t have a problem and let me have that whole weekend off. Part of me thought he might know exactly what I was going through but I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want anyone asking me about Jeff, so I figured it might be mutual if I was right.
During the funeral we all got up and told our stories about Jeff. The ones that made us laugh, the ones that made us miss him, the ones that made us remember how caring he was, and the ones that made us remember how human he was too. Jeff’s brother Michael had gotten up to talk about his brother, and I was prepared for some kind of long speech about how he was going to miss his brother. But the only thing Michael said was, “Jeffery…..Jeffery….He was my best friend.” Then he walked away from the podium and sat down.
The last person to talk was Jeff’s dad. He went up to the podium with tears in his eyes, trying to hold them back and said, “Jeff was a performer. He loved going and playing shows and he loved music. But I also know he loved every person here. Look at all the different people in this room all brought together by one kid and how much love he had to give to the world. I’m going to miss Jeff just like I know all of you will. So let’s give Jeff one last standing ovation and show him how much he meant to all of us.”
At that moment everyone that was sitting down, seeing as how it was standing room only, stood up and began to clap and cheer for Jeff. That was when I couldn’t take it anymore and I burst into tears. I just couldn’t take it anymore. It finally clicked in my head that he was gone and that we weren’t going to get him back. The last thing I did when I walked by was give him the bandana that was tied around my head. After that I walked outside, and a few minutes later we all walked over to the grave site.
They wanted us to say something about Jeff before they lowered him down forever and I couldn’t think of a single word.
When they lower caskets into the ground they put these straps on it and kind of just let it go, slowly but surely, so you know they’re going down. There’s some kind of weird pulley system too, but I’m not really sure how it works exactly, but while they were lowering Jeff one of the pulley’s got hung up on one of the straps and it seemed like the coffin didn’t want to go down. “He doesn’t want to go!” someone shouted from the crowd. We all laughed in the middle of our tears, Jeff giving us one more good laugh, that was just like him. After that his parents asked us to grab a handful of dirt and throw it on his casket lying six feet beneath our feet. I picked up a big clod of earth ready to heave it onto my friend below me. When I got to the hole and saw the pine box inside I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t be responsible for putting dirt over my friends head. I didn’t want him there and I was going to be damned if I was going to help the undertaker do his fucking job. Those were my initial thoughts, but I know that wasn’t what it was about, it was just about closure, which I probably needed.
I sometimes question the after life. I don’t really believe in life after death, or god, or Satan, or any of those conventional ways to think about your own demise, but Jeff made me question my own beliefs for a while.
We were convinced Jeff had something to do with us locking our keys in the car. Seeing that our friend Lance that was driving never locked his car because he didn’t care if it got stolen or not, it made us wonder. If you’ve ever seen four punk kids trying to break into a car in front of a funeral home, then you would know what I’m talking about. Me and Lance ended up breaking the back window with our hands. I cut open my thumb and Lance slashed open his index and middle finger. We were just wondering what kind of people gets scars from a funeral, and I still don’t know the answer to this day. But I can tell you one thing. Jeff brought smiles wherever he went. Even at his funeral we all couldn’t help but smile at how much of a great dude he was and how much we all loved him.
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, I miss you Jeff, thanks for all the laughs, and I’m sorry I didn’t say anything at your funeral. I said everything now. Till we meet again bro.