Remembering Dave H.

There is no specific reason that I should be writing about Dave H. today, other than a post I made on Scribbler's Debris a couple of days ago. I had drawn the topic "Death of a Friend", and had written about my friend Eric. If you read that entry, then you know that Eric killed himself around Easter time. The very next year, after Easter, I learned that my friend Dave H. from college had killed himself by means of carbon monoxide poisoning in his parents' garage. It was a morbid anniversary of Eric's death, and for a few years after I wondered who would be next whenever the celebration of the sacrifice came due.

Dave H. had the kind of manic genius that you encounter in about one in a thousand people. He was constantly looking for the next extreme with which to completely engage life. Of course that would make his ultimate fate all the more ironic. I met him in undergraduate school at Pitt, and we quickly became friends. We talked about books, music, and film and chased girls together. He was in the Honor's college in the school of philosophy. It didn't seem that Dave ever slept, as he was constantly searching for the next exciting stimulus. After a period of six months (a long period in the halcyon college days), we saw less of each other due to circumstances that had nothing to do with our friendship. But whenever I ran into him, we would continue as if we had seen each other the day before.

One of the most memorable days I ever spent with him was during a trip we took together to Washington DC. It was during the first Gulf War, and there was a huge protest march. Dave had heard about van transport that we could take for ten dollars, and he asked me if I wanted to go along. It didn't take much convincing for me to decide to skip classes for the day and join him. The drive itself was memorable because the van was chock full of Lyndon Larouche drones, and we were a captive audience. A woman who must have trained to be a cult programmer tried to brainwash us for the entire four and a half hour ride. We tried to be polite in our responses as we were counting on the same van for the ride back. Dave was pretty wound up by the time we got to our nation's capital. After some time spent watching the marchers, we decided to walk around the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. All Dave could talk about was wanting to find some acid and vandalize something. By the time we were ready to meet up with the cultists for the return trip, we had a plan. This time the tables were turned, and we used everything we could come up with to deconstruct the woman programmer. It proved to be less of a challenge than expected... our harsh methods proved to be overkill... it was too easy for us to bring her to a state of tears. But we weren't much inclined to mercy. We kept at it until she broke down. For the last hour into Pittsburgh she refused to utter a word to anyone. We left her alone to weep in silence. When we stepped from the van back onto campus, she pretended that we weren't even there, and we never saw or spoke with her again.

It wasn't long after that roadtrip that Dave H. was kicked off campus for trying to light his dorm on fire. I never got the full story about why he did that, and I didn't see him for several years. Eventually he got my phone number from a mutual friend, and he came out and stayed with me in Pittsburgh. He had been staying in Philly in the interim, after a stint in the merchant marines. He was currently employed as an ambulance driver in the city. He spoke of the horrors of his job, and his dalliances with hard drugs. He never slept more than three hours at a time during the days he was visiting. He seemed excited by everything, and was newly infatuated by the music of the Doors. His favorite song was "Break on Through", and I suppose I should have seen that as portentous. But to me he wasn't much different than the Dave I had known in college. He seemed about as manic as ever. There was no reason to suspect that I would never see him again after he left. Several months before he killed himself, I groggily received a late night phone call. Dave seemed pretty stressed out, but I was half asleep and couldn't follow much of what he was saying. He told me that he would call back, but we never spoke to each other again.

News of his death hit me hard, but I didn't give much voice to my grief as I was called upon to give emotional support to one of our mutual friends. I didn't go to his funeral, but I did have a mini-wake for him as I did with Eric. Sometimes I'm reminded of him, and I wonder what he would have gone on to if he had not made his final choice.