I don't give a fuck about Friends, nor celebrities. You know this. But Matthew Perry interested me because I'm interested in people with big holes in their hearts, or at least I'm compelled by them - however I can say that without making it sound like I think suffering is exotic.
He was a prep school kid from the tennis-playing, destined to be American university-educated suburbs of Ottawa. His parents were big-time TV journalists and got divorced in what I can imagine to be the most WASP-y way they could have, complete with Matthew seeing a psychoanalyst regularly from age 7 onward, though I couldn't say for sure. Apparently, he was a mean tennis player. So was his classmate, Justin Trudeau, who he once kicked the ass of for being better at sports than him.
Matthew dreamed of being famous. I watched an interview where his teenage run-ins with prep school drama club instilled a real serious desire for celebrity. He said he dreamed of having the best car, going to the best restaurants, having the best clothes. He soon started drinking a lot and landed a staring role in one of the biggest shows of the 90s. Then he got in a jet ski accident and got into Vicodin, and eventually amphetamines and the all the rest. He got married a bunch of times and divorced a bunch of times just like his parents. The drugs eventually fucked up his ability to get his dick hard. His stardom eventually washed up, and he turned to a life of camping out in his place in L.A., writing memoirs, doing speaking tours, nearly dying, trying to get better. The other night, he was found dead in his fucking hot tub in the Westside of Los Angeles. The first thing I thought of when I read that was the death of John Balance of Coil, how he died over drunkenly falling off his roof. This is all we have.
The California skyline is one I think about a lot. In my mind, the sun sets there always. It's the end of the world. The night sky out there has a crispness to it, unlike the heartland. I can imagine that was the sky Matthew Perry drowned under.
Last night, me and a girl who I've told you about ad nauseum got drunker than we were supposed to and held each other for hours. We tried not to cuddle or kiss, but we were only barely successful at avoiding just the ladder. I was scared shitless to say anything as if I couldn't give myself away. She wasn't, because why would you. We told each other we had to "pine" for each other for a little bit before we could do anything. I'm really bad with eye contact, but we stared into each other long enough to feel revealed. Even while intoxicated, it's this strange exegesis. Something true is made apparent, and in that, words fail. The alcohol gave the whole experience this disembodied haze, like sweet things were being whispered from nowhere, and everything was the colour purple.
For whatever reason, we watched the Chris Chan "Virgin With Rage" video on the TV - N---- to our right, and AJ and S---- (in a CWC costume) passed out cold to hers. It was stupid and very house-party, messy, and lazy in all the ways those images are. But this is all we have.
She Uber'd home with N-----, and I fetal positioned and passed out in the same leg of the couch we cuddled on, listening to Lou Reed's "Coney Island Baby". I thought of all the shit I had to do in what would become a metallic Sunday morning, where the sun finally shown on the dreary streets of Edmonton, where I would stumble to McDonald's after I said goodbye to my friends who had to drive back to Red Deer.
We all have big holes in our hearts, Matthew.
*All poetics aside, I know my fucking track record of relationships, so I'm taking this as slow as possible. I have a life to get together, so a project like this is a potentially jeopardizing move. But it doesn't have to be. "Pining" was a good call on her end. We drunkenly and sarcastically gave each other until January 6th to figure this out.
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I've done a lot of bad. To you, myself, and everyone else. There's a lot of Ben-isms that everyone has grown accustomed to that I don't like. I want to get better. I can get better. I owe it to myself.
It's completely possible to get better. The future is unwritten.
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Sh--- and E--- are making French toast in the kitchen as I write this, and she's singing cLOUDEAD songs. I love everyone so much. It burns me. I want the memories of everyone I know to burn me. I want to die having been an impressively packed and messy folder of those burns, as deep, intricate, funny, and beautiful as the flames were when I found them. In all the records and literature that exists and will exist, I want these burns to just be among them. I don't care if anyone remembers them like I do. I just want their record to exist forever, even amongst heaps of things more significant. I want there never to be a day where the earth can forget about there having been this fire. You are among this, Madison.
I miss you, and I love you.
