Did you cry when your grandpa died?
I was on molly.
Fuck.
I paid my last respects rolling after the [redacted] screening at Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank. My jaw still hurt from chewing all the bottle service ice the night before.
Oh shit. My grandpa died and all I got were dress shirts, addiction problems, and half a bottle of Ativan.
My grandpa just died and I haven’t jacked off in a week.
My grandpa just died and I have a real crush.
My grandpa just died and I really need Solana to go up.
My grandpa just died and I am writing this on my phone sweating through withdrawal in bed.
My grandpa died and I’m fucking sad.
My mom told me Grandude isn’t doing well. Well he’s the only 84-year-old I know smoking five spliffs a day and still taking Oxy while on Methadone treatment. There isn’t a heavy enough pour for the boy. The only 84-year-old who has a nursing staff of an entire Filipino family where the grandchildren came to dap him up before he passed.
Summer 2023 I hung out with him six days a week. Drinking Tsing Tao. Then their entire wine cellar. Rolled a few hundred spliffs. All different kinds of dab pens and new weed ingestion mechanisms. Managed pain tolerance. Made jokes. Riffed on the news. Played games with the nursing staff. Gardened. Picked lemons. I’d drive him to Cedars to see my grandma who had an aneurysm.
I’d talk him through why she isn’t at home right now. Why we are spending so much time together. We cried on the reclining leather couch in a hot boxed room. He had days where he remembered. We’d call the NICU. Faded and muttering well wishes, swift recoveries, message of heartbreak and love. He had many more days where he forgot. Where I would re-explain one of the most rupturing days of his marriage. I watched him relive the pain of his entire life that summer. Forget it all. Live it again. He had days where we were just two guys in Brooklyn having a couple beers on our lunch break. Sometimes he’d think he’d be at the bank waiting to clock out. He’d talk to me about his clients long since retried. His friends from the neighborhood. He’d give me cash and say I’d have to pay it back to him. But buying all that weed is not cheap. And he didn’t drink Bud Light so. The beer wasn’t either.
Maybe the secret to grief is avoiding it - Nick after his dog died.
Maybe - me to him standing outside of the sauna waiting to sweat out what I can’t cry.
When my mom moved them to an assisted living facility I went to New York for a while. Sent them selfies. He wasn’t eating as much. Hard to go from a beautiful Spanish style house on Holmby to an apartment in Studio City. Hard to live with rules. They didn’t make it long there. My grandma got as good as she could and they went back to their real house. I came back from New York, new Brooklyn. We went to lunch at Xi’An in Beverly Hills. That was our spot. Martinis would get sent back. They were not dry enough. It wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready. Our last lunch out we had some beef and broccoli. A couple beers. He didn’t have any broccoli. We complained about the busted and botched 50 years also having the lunch special. Rite Aid for ice cream after.
He asked me to take care of the plants. To wear real shoes. To take care of myself.
He spent the next few months in a steady decline before hospice. They watered down his beer. Gave him sponge baths and restricted his ice cream intake. When he stopped being able to get up to steal from the freezer or uncork a bottle I knew it was over. There is no physical therapy you can do anymore. He’s never worked out in his life. He would go to the golf course to get drunk and smoke cigars. To go to the boy’s club. He told me you can say anything you want on a golf course. Times have changed though. You can say anything you want wherever you are. A member of the old guard of social norms.
He'd take us to Dodgers games. Handicap pass to get good parking. Pre-game at Taix on Sunset. He’d get the margs. We’d get the pea soup. Met him at the bar. Loud room. Loudest guy in the room. Biggest heart in the room.
My grandma would threaten us with finishing school because we didn't eat out veggies. We didn't hold our forks right. We reeked of smoke, red meat, wine, and laughter. A smell only off putting to the respectable around us.
He was from Brooklyn before it was cool. From Brooklyn where you say all the consonants. Not hipster Brooklyn. Not pop-up Brooklyn. The “I hate Italians” kind of Brooklyn. The “blacks are alright” kind of Brooklyn. The kind where you start drinking at 12. Commuting into the city to work on Wall Street with less than a highschool diploma. Working the kind of summer job that jump-started a national skin cancer diagnoses complex.
He would describe how cool taking acid was, how awesome the girls from the city were. When the war started, Vietnam, he volunteered before he got drafted. Getting drafted meant you weren't able to choose your position. And Grandude did not like to be told what to do. He got an illiterate from his neighborhood to sign up with him. Literacy is not a barrier to entry to die for the empire. And being from the same poor Irish neighborhood didn't mean that you were immune to life altering tricks. Grandude was a big fella. His dad was a dock guard. I don't really know what that means. They treated him right from what I've heard. The only other non-immediate member of his family was a cousin who wanted to become a firefighter. He was under the height requirement, so Grandude and his brothers had him tied and stretched against a doorframe the night before the exam. I don't know what happened to him.
I do know what happened to my soon to be warfighter grandpa. He bailed. Like any real American. He hopped the fence of the recruiting base and ran west. Steinbeck reader. Blow her stienback out before I leave this city forever. A good old boy. The beater of a car broke down in Phoenix, Arizona. Back when you could drink and drive. I'm not sure he ever really quit doing that until his license expired. Never let a DUI take you down. Lesson there.
The car broke down in front of a bank. One that has since been absorbed into a greater financial management conglomerate. Might as well work here, he thought. After a few years of boozing and laying the groundwork for every future ASU graduate. He packed up and went to LA. Because in Los Angeles. Anything can happen. And Phoenix isn’t one of the real cities in America. He picked a good time, buying a house on Curson for 60k with his cool new wife. Lougodbout. My grandma. Funny girl. She met him at a party. Stole him from his then girlfriend who never had the same room filling ability, brooches, and love of hosting. Not the same laugh. Nor the heartwarming smile of a stern French woman reformed by having grandchildren.
They would drink Colt 45’s on the stoop.
They would smoke and play cards while he worked his way up to be an investment banker. Taking risks on big clients like a pedophile politician whose primary scandal was that the 15-year-old he was fucking was Black. Working with Chinese real estate developers to destroy Santa Monica housing prices. Making life time friends along the way. Mostly with other Irish guys from Brooklyn. Moving up to be Vice President. Corner office in Century City. He brought me to work one day. Told me you only need a couple pairs of pants, but a lot of shirts, because when you call someone into the office they only see you from the top up. He had pressed shirts, nice ties, slacks, company card, company car. He said that was his favorite to drive. Because everything was comped. A different time. A lesson there.
He had a brother in LA too. Uncle Jack. Now uncle Jack did go to war. And then to war again when he came home. That war being against the Neocons stomping out the personal freedom to both be a public-school teacher and sell psychedelics from his garage. There was no aluminum allowed in his house. He kind of scammed me when I bought a MacBook from him in middle school. Fun guy. They never hung out much. My grandpa would get the good stuff from him though. Pre-legalization.
As I grew up the cigar smoke changed to kush smoke because I had learned what that was and now it was okay. I’d go over and get nugs in highschool. Take his Cheeba Chews and go to practice. Sleep over and take an Ambien or an Oxy. Nod off watching the news with him. Wake up and have pancake breakfast. He got me drinking black coffee when I was eight. Into politics around the same time. Taught me a firm handshake. Eye contact. Not really how to do my hair. He was bald. Not really how to take care of myself physically. He was pretty ill.
He didn’t eat sushi and all I ever wanted was sushi. He’d take me and get the blackened Cod and four beers. I’d sneak a few sips. We went home. I’d play flash games on the computer and help him uninstall porn viruses. Clean up his iPad camera roll filled weird fake plastic bimbo Latinas. I guess he was supporting that industry. Made him an UberEats account so I could buy shit on it. He would give me ‘walking around money’ he knew where I was walking.
He let me do my own stock portfolio. It paid for my college. It paid for my chemical dependencies. Most people wouldn’t trust a 10-year-old with a Charles Schwab account. Most people also aren’t slammin’ Cadillac margaritas at 10am just to order more before the flan comes out. Most people aren’t really fucking cool either. And that's what you get for not taking risks.
At the Palm Desert house when I was 17 I crashed his golf cart barred out trying to find a cutty spot in the country club to smoke weed. He was more upset about my finger nails being painted. I used to rack up his bar tab and play Bocce Ball. Snapchat dick pics to girls in the master bath. Cried in his shower when I read Edelman. He gave me beautiful copies of Jung, Nietszche, and Steinbeck.
He was an avid reader. He died with that day's copy of the LA times on the table. He died watching presidential debate highlights. He died with an ABG sitting next to him.
The last book I remember him reading was the River of Tangier. He was a history head. Knew about war. Cared about the future. Obama was slick. MSNBC on loop. Didn’t like Trump. Saw himself in Biden.
Daughter that loved him. My mom who spent the last year arranging in home medical care. Driving them around. Helping with the very tangible. Things like finding him caretakers that weren’t me.
His memorial site is in Coachella. So next time you’re down there. Geeking next to an ABG from UC Irvine. Remember him. He’s looking down on you. Smiling. Doing the same thing up there.
RIP Grandude
Getting this uploaded with formatting took four tries :(
Rip🙏❤️