I used to work with this guy at one of the many, many bookstores I've lurked in over the years.
He was...well. He was a personable asshole. Like me, really, but whereas I fall rather heavily on the personable side with...tendencies...he lived on the other. He used people, women mostly, and couldn't at all control his desires for, depending on his mood, cheap vodka and hard drugs, the kind of guy who, three drinks ago and before the sun came up, was a functional alcoholic.
I didn't like him, not if I thought about it, but I worked with him, so. We were civil.
The thing is, his name was Jack, too, and his birthday was disconcertingly close to mine, off by a few days. We were a running joke.
Jack's dead. I don't have details yet, but apparently he offed himself last night, probably through some combination of the things that kept him upright, functional and sane in his waking life.
At the risk of making his sordid excuse for a life and unexpected death about me, I'm having a hard time processing this information. I've watched people far closer to me than him die much more painful and prolonged deaths than his without so much as a blink, but this time...I feel cold. I'm not surprised, not by a long shot, but something about this makes me feel conspicuously mortal.
It was his 27th birthday; it was the end of the world.
Now what the fuck.