Obituary for a Non-Celeb.

youngflizz at gmail dot com

Sometimes it’s in the blood, but blood isn’t fate.

Timmer, the once normal guy in bad flip-flops, then ‘roided guy – still in bad flip-flops – passed a week ago Friday but really dude died about 3 years ago.
We used to talk books and reporters – his dad used to get him excited about reading. 50 something Tim though, Tim never graduated from High School, never met a drug he didn’t like.

He got clean for a few years, had a wife, a job, a kid or two and an email address he’d send boring forwards from. I guess you could see it coming before that 3 year mark though. “I”d love to be doing what you’re doing, but I’m not smart enough, I fucked up,” he used to say, and he made a convincing argument. He had the usual debt baggage, a job in a recycling plant that worked him hard – school? Reading, writing? I don’t know where he’d have found the time for dream chasing, what with the near comical wreckage of the past breathing down his neck.

Timmer stayed up on the drugs breaking suckers and knocking them into rehab and 12 Step programs. He spoke of their ruin with the sort of jealous lust usually spotted in fire-breathing preachers condemning homos (catch you in the washroom!). “You hear about that synthetic drug oxycontin? It’s super addictive, way more than heroin. Horrible, horrible,” he’d say – but you knew he was dreaming ‘bout about some aweful fate befalling him so he could float away on a chemical cloud.

So Tim started working out. Jailhouse habits die hard. He caught an edge with ‘roids. Mistake number 1? No. You don’t fall into ‘roids. “Just say no,” is a little late.

He had it in him to fuck up. Addicts do. A few years back he and his wife started hitting near-beers in Jamaica. Next thing they knew it was a week later and they were flying back home with no clothes or tan lines. Ha-ha right?

Loving himself wasn’t in the cards for Timmer. Loving others? Well, his father did. His father died 3 years ago which satisfied the blood and the aweful fate. His wife had passed and he chose slow, purposeful death in a bottle. Got his finances and will straight, stashed bottles around the house and checked out. They found him face down in the frosty ground.

Finances being straight a busted up Tim found himself thousands of dollars richer. Enough to clean up himself, his finances and start anew.

So he moved to the drug capital of Canada, Vancouver. He never acknowledged the obvious punchline. Brand new start in junky heaven. He flirted with rehab, bought a home, had long distance phone sex with his ex, shot home porn with his new lady (sending pictures – look at her pussy! – so proud he was of his new life) he was happy as fuck, Timmer was.

So you knew he was dead, right? Fine, nobody likes a cautionary tale, but Timmer was living (at least) it, taking turns with his new girl calling in a cocaine psychosis (“She’s blue on the floor. No, she’s not breathing!”)

Then those calls stopped coming.

They found him dead and broke in a squat. His daughter – who he just bounced on – had to fly out to pick up his body, pay to have him cremated and go home.

It wasn’t a tragedy, it was an easy bet and now a stat and the worst part is it didn’t have to be like that.

RIP TIMMER

(and that’s why I don’t celebrate train wrecks)

youngflizz at gmail dot com