He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.

Whenever I try to explain who he is to people, they know who I’m talking about right off the bat. If you lived in this town, you’d know who he is also. You can’t miss him. He is a walking cartoon, a caricature of himself.

He’s six-foot-four inches tall, with bright orange hair. It has gotten a little less bright as he’s aged, but it’s still classified as orange. He’s skinny – at six foot four, he probably weighs no more than 140 pounds. He also looks much older than he is. His hard living has caught up with him to the point that his forty-five year old body often tricks people into thinking he’s near sixty.

He only wears black. Black Levi’s 501 jeans, black Chuck Taylor Converse high tops. Black long sleeved button down shirt, and black leather jacket. Sometimes, he wears a black trench coat instead of his leather jacket. Either way, if there’s a hole in his jacket, I can guarantee he’s closed that hole with duct tape in the liner. Top that all of with a black fedora, and he’s ready to walk out the door. There is only one time when he isn’t dressed all in black, and that is when he’s fishing. When he’s fishing, he wears blue Levi’s 501 jeans, cut off at the knee, and a white “wife-beater” tank top.

He likes Jack Daniel’s Whiskey better than anyone or anything. If it’s after three o’clock in the afternoon and you see him, chances are that he’s already had an airline bottle or two that he picked up from the liquor store, so that he could have a swig after his coffee. Speaking of  coffee, his favorite coffee is a twelve ounce unflavored latte with about ten sugar packets in it. After he gets his coffee, he walks to the liquor store and buys his two airline bottles of Jack Daniel’s. Next to the liquor store is the smoke shop, where he gets his Marlboro Reds at a discount. He likes it there because they also give him a free lighter.

He drives a 1988 Dodge Caravan with leopard-print seat covers. The doors don’t lock and there are no back seats. He bought it for $500 (which was likely an entire months’ pay) and the seats weren’t there. It’s just as well, because he needs the extra room to haul his amplifiers and microphone stands and whatever else it takes to make someone a true troubadour. Unfortunately, the “Amstervan” won’t take him from here to Seattle, and sometimes he likes to get away. In that case, he takes the Greyhound.

He plays a red guitar. He used to play an orange guitar until he smashed it. I don’t recall the story about how he broke it. It might have been when he was mad at a bartender for cutting him off, or he might have broke it when he fell down after getting cut off the same night. Either way, it was broken beyond repair and he had to buy a new one in a hurry, and the red one was the best one he could afford that week.

He also plays a harmonica, quite well. When I met him, his harmonica holder had a broken spring. It was held together with duct tape. His birthday was coming, so I called the music store and bought and paid for it over the telephone. We were going to meet for coffee later that day, so I asked him if he could pick something up at the music store for me. They handed him the bag and he called me and I told him it was for him. You’d have thought I gave him a hundred dollar bill for his birthday, when in fact I spent $15.00 on a cheap piece of metal.

His musical influences are Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, John Prine, Woody Guthrie, Tom Waits, and Johnny Cash. He makes his living playing music. He goes about this by hosting open-mike nights. He hosts two permanent shows a week, and picks up gigs on the weekends. Sometimes his gigs are solo shows, sometimes with the full band. I am in that band. I sing with him, sometimes I play my flute (although he has told his friends that they are to shoot him in the back of the head if he ever puts a flutist in the band), and I sometimes play the tambourine, albeit badly.

He’s a very patient fisherman, and he doesn’t drink while fishing. He won’t let anyone else that he’s fishing with drink either. He has a favorite fishing spot, about thirty miles east of here. The spot has to be hiked to and then you have to wade up the river for about a mile. He loves fishing and the last time he went, he found his new favorite fishing rod – one that someone else had given to the river. He’s relentless and won’t leave until he's caught the right one.

I say he loves whiskey more than anyone or anything, but that’s probably not true. He loves his mom, and she loves him. Talking to her makes me love him more. It helps to keep my soft spot open for him. Talking to her reminds me of the moment I met him, more than six years ago, and the friendship he offered me. Not many people understand it, but in some ways he reminds me of my dad. I love him still and he will always be the strongest influence on me. These influences are not only on my writing and on my music, but on my quest to understand people and to be a kind and loving person who truly enjoys my friendships.

Yes, my friend has put me through Hell on several occasions. He has yelled at me, he has said he loves me in the same sentence that he says he hates me. He has called me in tears asking if I will come get him and give him some coffee and a warm bed (not mine, mind you, but my couch instead). Yet, when I have been broken, when I have been hurting, he has been there. He has offered to loan me money on tight weeks when I know he’d rather spend it on Jack, and he has become my fishing partner. I have learned more about music than I ever thought I would. We have spent countless lonely Christmases together when my children were with their father that year, and we have watched each other endure endless heartaches and elations. I have cut him off from my life and then missed the alternate joy he also brings to me. My children love him, my dog hates him. He introduced me to one of my very best friends, who has since decided that she doesn’t have the patience for him. He introduced me to many of the people that are in my life today, including my boyfriend. His mom is a very special person to me, and I have helped him get music jobs. My dad adores him, and the last time they were both here, they stayed up until three o’clock in the morning singing John Prine and Bob Dylan and playing their guitars.

At the end of the one night a week we all get together to play music, each of us in our friends group has to determine who “has him” for the night. It hasn’t been my turn for a couple weeks, but I still look forward to when it is (most of the time). On his best night, he is the best friend a person could have. On his worst night, I turn off the lights and close the door and ignore him.

He has been my friend, one of my best friends, for over six years. I have stopped fighting it and have learned when to hold him close and when to hold him at arm’s length. I have learned countless other useful things from him, like how to project my voice and which songs I just can’t do, and how to fish without a worm. I will defend him when necessary and agree when what is said is true.  

We have talked until three o’clock in the morning about God and love and children and loneliness and beauty and music and hatred and dying until we were both so tired we couldn’t talk about anything else. Nonetheless, I can’t think of one time that we have had a conversation that we’ve run out of things to talk about, even on the nights when I just had to hang up on him.

Some people may call me an enabler; some may call me a saint. In the end, I just think I’m doing what a good friend would, because he is my friend.