As I walk in my best friend of the last couple of years comes over to meet me. He's not in the band, although in the next year he would become one of the most talented young guitar players I ever knew, he's just here to hang out with me.
"Dude..." he says "You have GOT to listen to this"
Of course, we're Venezuelan and this was happening in Spanish, so I'll be translating for the story. what he actually said was more like "MA-RI-CO... Brother...escucha esta vaina"
We sit at the edge of the auditorium stage as a few other people wonder around, people we're completely oblivious to. He pulls out a DiscMan and hands me the headphones. I offer to share one as we've done before but he rejects it saying "You gotta experience this properly man". He holds the DiscMan steady to make sure it doesn't skip.
He plays track 6 of Dream Theaters "Metropolis Pt2: Scenes from a memory" to me. The song is called "Beyond this life"
(make sure you play it loud for full effect)
This was the most intense intro to a song I think I'd heard at age 13. If you stick through the 11 minutes of this song (another bewildering concept for me at the time) you'll hear crazy guitar, keyboard, bass and drum solos. Just the rhythm at times seems so complicated (if you can't be bothered to listen to all of it I suggest listening to the two minutes or so from 5:55 on). It introduced us to the whole idea of prog-rock. It was also a kind of turning point for me and Gerardo.
For him, it meant selling up a bunch of his "Magic: the Gathering" cards, buying an electric guitar and quickly becoming masterful at playing it. I asked for a bass for my birthday that year and utterly failed at playing any Dream theater on it (it doesn't help that John Myung plays an 8 string bass). For us as friends it became a mayor bonding point. We were already jointly obsessed over "The Legend of Zelda", "Final Fantasy" and "Lord of the Rings" and other things generally nerdy that we had loved since before we'd met, but over the last year or so we had undergone a transformation together from nerds into nerdy metalheads that had been initiated by our previous discovery of Metallica.
Now Dream Theater was the obsession and we spent countless hours listening to the whole album start to finish (its a concept album with a continuous story and most of the songs blend seamlessly into one another). We stayed up all night at his house watching the live concert DVD and watching and re-watching some of the solos. Gerardo was one of a relatively small number of people in the world who pre-ordered and received the original version of "Live scenes from New York" that included an image of the New York skyline, twin towers included, on fire; before this was recalled as it was released on 9/11. A few of the copies had already gone out in the post, and he got one which he kept sealed and bought a new copy to actually listen to. I'm going off on a tangent... point is, we loved them. It raised our appreciation of technically proficient musicians and bonded us closer to each other.
Over those years I remember a hundred conversations had with complete and utter seriousness about what our future would be. I picked up a little skill at drawing from my older brother and had it in my head that I would be a famous Marvel comics artist one day. He was modelling his guitar career around Dream Theaters John Petrucci. Having heard that the members of DT had attended Berklee college of music in Boston this was now G's dream. We discussed how we would live in Boston because I could probably do comics work from anywhere and sure it wasn't that far to go into the Marvel headquarters in New York for meetings sometimes. We researched it; looked at the fees vs what a comics artist made and part time work salaries and thought "yeah we could do this" with the total clueless mentality about adult expenses that young teenagers have. Over the years the plan adapted as our understanding of the word improved. Now we thought we would get scholarships and I would go to a school of art in the area. Later, when we we're both expelled from school for bad grades and a politically unstable time hit Caracas in 2002 I moved to Ireland (because I was among those lucky enough to have family and a place to go abroad) the plan just adapted and molded. I would get my own place, and if he could jut raise the money for the flights, G could live with me in Ireland. There was good music programs here, sure it might not be Berklee but how fussy could two Venezuelan kids be realistically? We held on to that for years, compromising on the details but holding on to the core. We would be roommates and we would follow our dreams and we would succeed.
Of course, he couldn't really raise the absurd costs of the flights. Nor the college fees for an international student. His family struggled financially, something we were sheltered from but now became more apparent. He also didn't have a visa of course, something we would worry about and try to get him later. But again, to no avail.
His life had become static and mine continued to move forward. The viscous realities of our home's politics and crime we're ever more intrusive. His father died, his body giving way to years and years of cocaine use that he had somehow managed to keep secret from his family. The resulting fallout shocked him and, maybe as a twisted way to understand his father better, G became an addict himself for a few years. I've often thought about how circumstances beyond our control, like our families different means and the accident of birth that allowed me the right to move away from Venezuela but made it impossible for him impacted our lives. I was no more deserving of opportunity than he was. I guess that's probably true for a lot of people, but its striking when you can so clearly see the forks in the road that separate you from someone who would otherwise be so similar.
We spoke often, on the phone, online through chats etc. a couple of times I visited home and saw him often when I did. He did his best to hide it but life had not been kind. He was thin, his jobs didn't fulfill him. He spoke three languages fluidly and could read Latin, had absorbed more literature than anyone else our age that I knew. Made philosophy jokes and laughed to himself when nobody got it, but worked as a waiter and had never managed to get his high school diploma. I often told him that if he could just get his head down and play the game, get the stupid diploma, he'd find himself teaching or writing professionally before he'd know it. Easy for me to say, I didn't live in his life.
We could still talk about Fantasy, Metallica and of course Dream theater. We would try to introduce each other to new bands, games or books, usually to find the other had already found it and loved it. He could play some of the DT riffs now on his guitar nearly as well as the album. In every breath he exalted intelligence and talent, and it frustrated me like nothing else in my life that I couldn't help him achieve all that I knew he could.
My mother passed away and I found myself suddenly in Venezuela again. I couldn't reach him for days, his phone had changed, but at the funeral he was just there. "I heard today, I'm so sorry". My mom had been good to him and he was genuinely sad. His presence helped to ground me in a day where I felt the world around me change and crack. He had gone to rehab and put on a lot of weight, which compared to the thin addict from before was great. He told me how in his days of most intense withdrawal he had imagined, or perhaps hallucinated, that I was there chatting to him. That although he knew it wasn't real it helped him cope to pretend. He apologized for things he had done and said as an addict (part of his recovery process) and I forgave him without a second thought. We're in our late 20s now. I have a son and will be married soon. He's happy for me and I can tell its really real, he really wishes he could meet him. He'd be best man if he could make the trip. I say that and he thanks me, but we both know there's no way.
About 18 months later we talk again. The calls arent so frequent now but they still flow without any awkwardness as if we had just spoken the previous day. I tell him I'm starting a business, he tells me abut how he makes a bit of money by selling items in World of Warcraft online to people in the US. "Its only a few dollars but with the crazy black market exchange here I can get a lot for a few dollars" he says. It's a sign of how the Venezuelan economy has imploded and collapsed, but the people find a way. "a lot of people are doing it, pays a lot better than working in a shop". I don't give him advise or push him anymore. I can't even really comprehend the challenges of living in Caracas now, advice would feel unforgivably arrogant.
He asks if we can do a video call. We do. He's lost the weight, seems in good shape. He calls someone over.
A thin young man walks into the screen and hugs Gerardo from behind. "So yeah" he says "I'm bisexual" He introduces me to his boyfriend and it sounds like one of the more serious long term relationship he's ever had. I'm a little taken aback but I immediately tell him I think its great he found someone. We punch through the awkward moment with a couple of jokes and before long we're chatting like ever. Its still G, nothings changed, and he seems happier. We talk about Game of Thrones.
Sometime in mid 2017, a few months after the call, a friend of ours, Carlos, messaged me and asked me if I knew.
"Know what" I said.
Nobody really knew exactly, but Gerardo was missing. His mom, whom he lived with and took care off, had died. He wasn't home, his (now ex) boyfriend said he didn't know where he was.
After a couple of days a story was pieced together. From the guard at his building and what he'd seen, from what a journalist friend was able to find out and add to what another friend of a friend of someone else got from a cop. One of the most frustrating things about Venezuela is how there often isn't any system in place, no one to ask, and even when there is you can't always trust the answer. I'm sitting here over 3000 miles away calling and messaging friends trying to get a straight answer. Eventually Carlos found a cemetery record to confirm it. He was dead.
Gerardo died in a riot of sorts, stabbed (we think) in the communal cell of a police station. His mother was ill, and they couldn't afford to keep her in the hospital so they were sent home. His mother died somehow later that day and when the police were called they took Gerardo away. We have many theories as to why. The guard in the building thinks that she was in pain and, possibly, Gerardo had somehow helped her to die at her request. This seems maybe like the kind overly dramatic thing you could expect from a rumor but knowing them and their views its not impossible. Others think that she just died herself and Gerardo, who still smoked weed occasionally, was either stoned when the cops came or they simply spotted weed in the house and when they asked for a bribe he didn't have it. None of us really know exactly what happened. At some point he was arrested, and a couple of days later he was dead. None of us who knew and loved him where there, we didn't even know what was happening. Carlos had first contacted me I think two weeks or maybe three after these events had actually happened, when he had first tried to get in touch and wasn't able to.
Its hard to describe loosing someone that you feel so close to from so far away. Day to day life isn't affected since he wasn't a part of day to day life anymore. My wife had met him but didn't know him (and she met him at his worst not his best). Nobody else around me knew him at all. There was no one to really share the pain with and no one who understood. Over the following days there was a number of very long distance phone calls as I told some of our other friends living in places as distant as Argentina or Australia. Over the phone I cried and shared memories with people from a past life who I miss and probably will never see again. then we hang up the phone, and we all go back to our lives in foreign countries.
Last weekend, I traveled to London to see Dream Theater play for the first time. It's the 20th anniversary of that album I first heard in the school auditorium on a Discman that brought me and my friend closer together. I've never traveled anywhere further than a bus or train away to see a band. I took a bus, a plane and a train, spending money I really don't have and leaving my heavily pregnant wife with two kids to look after to see them. I almost didn't but she encouraged me to go and I'll always thank her for letting me have this moment. DT played the whole album back to back, and, like a total sap, in the middle of a gig where everyone had long hair and black t-shirts, I cried. He was there somehow, if only in my heart. We had that last moment together freaking out over amazing music; and then, as James LaBrie sang the words to "Finally Free", I said my goodbyes. Not only to him, but to that life. I said goodby to the apartment near Berklee that we never had, to the band we never started, to the books he didn't write and most of all the conversations we never had.
To all the afternoons listening to Dream Theater that never were, I said goodby.
Someday if things change, perhaps I will go visit his grave, or visit the old places we used to hang. Until then I remember my friend not in the places, but in the music we shared.
To any who knew him who may read this, I hope it helps.
Big hug.
"Move on, be brave
Don't weep at my grave
Because I'm no longer here
But please never let
Your memories of me disappear"
