Secret Walter

My friend Brandon died in October 2019. It was one of 2 ways; I still don’t know which but both are heartbreaking. I moved to Detroit right before he died and then the pandemic happened. He was basically my only friend here and then he was gone. We had a plan for him to meet my dog Marbles and then he was gone. He ranted about Trump and then he was gone. He was gone and then the world shut down and I was very sad and then I was very sick. A million people have died of covid since then and I can’t get over his death.

His sins were many but considering the life he was born into, he was a saint. He was blessed with the voice of deep and smooth and he peppered it with years of smoke and drink. It was what I called Walter. His birth name wasn’t enough for that bellowing tenor. Brandon Young White - Young was a family name and it was in relation to Brigham Young. His youth seemed a bit more hopeful than adolescence. Drugs and alcohol plagued his family. Divorce followed and money troubles followed that. He was left with trust issues, a sense of independence and obligation to provide for his sister and mother. Before his father left, he was able to glean how to fix cars, fix radios, fix machinery. He was aware how to charm and swindle and he used it later in life.

When I first met Walter, he was getting free daily venti iced vanilla coffee from Jackie at Starbucks and I had no idea how he pulled it off. While everyone else at work was waiting in line to pay, his drink was waiting for him when he walked in. Sometimes, he’d have people pick it up for him and the person picking it up would get a free coffee too. He was the first older man in my life who would truly empathize with me. I was once crying in front of him at work in the back hallway, embarrassed. Instead of making an awkward moment worse, he volunteered that he cries almost daily. I remembered the feeling, the revelation. It relaxed my shoulders and I remember my fears melting, I empathized for him and I was hooked.

He exposed me to music I’d never heard. At the time, Band of Horses was just coming out with their big album and we’d drive around and listen to it. Serendipitously, his car broke down and I remember driving him home and it was as if time stopped in my 99’ Toyota Corolla. His voice filled the air as he went on about Carl Sagan, the cigarette smoke kind of encircling him. After that, we’d secretly meet for lunch or we’d stop at a dive bar and he’d finish drink after drink while I nursed one. I was 24 and he was 30. I remember it was near his golden birthday and I made a big deal out of it. I thought we were more monogamous than we were. I was unaware of how much Walter’s orbit had filled up. My roommate had also taken a liking to him and it hadn’t ended well with the three of us. To make matters more dramatic, all of us worked together. Despite all this, I continued to orbit him. I stayed loyal until I had full confirmation of his exploits. He never lied but he did omit. As a knee jerk, I slept with the guy that persistently expressed interest in me at work, a friend of Walter’s. To boot, this one had a girlfriend (ah, our early twenties). In my heartbroken upset, I hitched my wagon to Chicago with the new guy and we broke up 6 months later. Somehow, that managed to still break my dumb young heart. Despite that, I maintained residence in Chicago for 12 years and Walter and I mostly remained in contact. Sometimes, it was just phone sex. Other times, it was love of music or crying or drunk phone calls. We were similar. Neither of us had family we could depend on and neither of us had an emotional roadmap of any kind. We didn’t ask for forgiveness, explanations or even life updates. We just kept on.

Walter’s family was in California and often needed money. His sister had several kids with multiple men and his mother was more or less a junkie. He tried to move to LA for a while but it wasn’t the same LA he remembered. He tried to live with his father who repeatedly disappointed him. After his mom died, he moved back to Detroit and it seems that’s when his drinking leveled up.

I began to understand my codependence on people and my desire to escape reality. Often, Walter was someone I would call for escapism and he was happy to help. However, I felt I was using him and I didn’t want that anymore. I didn’t want Walter to expect that type of relationship from me. I didn’t know how to have a healthy boundary with him or anyone. The last few years, he seemed drunk or high whenever we spoke. Perhaps he was always like that and I never noticed before because I was too. The last years of his life, I had been having chronic migraines and was barely drinking in order to keep them at bay. When I moved to Detroit, I was afraid to call Walter. I was trying hard to have a healthier life and even though I didn’t know what that meant, I knew it didn’t include drinking late into the night like I did when I was 24. I regret that I didn’t have the guts to talk to him about this when I should have.

I think about how he would’ve dealt with the pandemic, what he would’ve thought. Was it a gift that he died before all this bullshit? He would’ve hated anti-maskers, even though he would’ve been terrible about wearing a clean mask. He was terrible about wearing underwear. The man never owned soap as it was.

Would it have hurt his business? Would he have gone broke? He loved being social, would it have made his depression worse anyway?

Often, he would sit on his dirty Hamtramck apartment floor for days, mixing sounds on his iMacs, cables everywhere. His cats would cuddle around the technology as if it was furniture they were using for warmth. Cat hair and cigarette ash was gathering in corners. Dusty records and tapes were catalogued on shelves along with endless paperbacks he’d gathered from used book stores. He’d take time away to work, which was usually websites and various coding or design. He often freelanced in some way, just to get by. It suited his life. As he got older, his good looks, his hair and his confidence began to fade a little. I wonder if this affected his ability to get new gigs. The hip new designer look didn’t match up to the greying bald man with a pot belly and smoker’s teeth. He was lean but in bit less sexy way and more of thin old man way. At the time, I didn’t appreciate the aging process like I do now. I saw how smoking, drinking and poverty had aged him on fast forward compared to his peers. His cavalier attitude wasn’t adorable anymore, it was frustrating. What is more frustrating is that I’m getting older, perhaps a bit wiser and I’m seeing the 24 year old me. Maybe I’m seeing what he saw (without all the pheromones tied in). It’s difficult to forgive the me I was and the hurt I caused him. However, he never said a mean thing to me, never once. He delivered every word like a kindness pillow wrapped in a delicious voice.

Joni Mitchell performed at a folk festival out east last week. She was slower and lower and still enchanting. I thought of Walter and how he probably would have cried watching it, so I cried instead. I’m glad he didn’t have to be here for the death of John Prine, Bill Withers or Chris Cornell. There are a million bands he loved and I never understood. I imagine it had a lot to do with male angst and California 70s punk, mixed in with his parents’s taste, which always rubs off a little.

Walter was never without a book. How can you forget a person who prefers books as their media of choice? At his memorial, I was able to take his copy of Tropic of Cancer. I truly believe he would have been so happy to know that his books had a safe home. I found out recently that his ashes were spread on Belle Isle, along the beach on the Canadian side. I have so many things I could say about Walter, one of which is that he didn’t mind me calling him that, after a few failed attempts of correcting me.

Is this an homage? Homages are typically prettier than this and he would’ve hated pretty. I’ll give Walter what he deserved - a place in my heart that won’t be filled by someone else. He never owned a plot of land to call his own, but he will own a place in my memory forever and I will always feel his absence. When I hear a great song or see a good film or read something that breaks my heart, I wonder what he’d say or if he’d laugh his great laugh. He gets that rent free.

One last thing - I dare you to listen to Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell and not cry.