“Everyone I thought was cool is six feet underground.” ~Johnny Winter
There are times when destiny and disaster collide, and you can’t help but think, that could have been me. Well, this was another one of those times.
It’s been two years now, two very long and uneasy years, since my lifelong friend took the plunge into the abyss, pulling the plug on his very existence. Until now, I haven’t been able to talk about what happened. Processing this chapter and struggling to find the right words has been like wrestling with a ghost in a swirling, dense fog. I can only hope that I can make some sense of it.
There was a brief conversation with my mom and sister shortly after his body was found and after that with his mother, Nancy–poor, fractured Nancy, who's been tiptoeing at the precipice of reality since Ronald Reagan was Governor of California. Our discussions were not all that productive. They never are, with so much left unspoken.
Billy's death continues to haunt me like a phantom in the mirror, a reflection of the disorder that bound our lives together. Our stories run parallel back through the twisted alleys of the past. His father, Bill Sr., and my stepdad, Rod, were partners in crime—Bill was an early recruit in Rod’s crew of armed robbers that violently ripped a broad path through the Bay Area in the 1960s and '70s.
He swore off junk, found God anew, and threw himself into volunteer work. But addiction is a tenacious bastard. My friend couldn’t help but fail and fall flat on his face time and again. God’s ready forgiveness was like putting a band-aid on skin cancer.
Bill Stephen and Rod Harrison were Cubberley High School's most advanced delinquents, running the gamut of criminality in the deceptively tranquil streets of Palo Alto, a suburban utopia with a decidedly rank underbelly. And my mom? She’s been tight with Nancy since their own raucous Cubberley days, bound together by a kinship that weathered the very same abuses and neglect at home.
Billy’s life and mine were intertwined by fate and folly. Our families were a tangled mess of mislaid loyalties and felonious pursuits. We couldn’t help but follow in our elders’ footsteps, but only so far. We knew better. We learned the hard lessons by observing. We understood that prison was no place to be.
The two of us managed to get by, for a time, on sheer dumb luck, and then somehow, we began to flourish despite the damage done. Our role models? A gallery of rogues and human trainwrecks. Rod and Bill—notorious junkies. My mom, Geri, and Billy’s mom, Nancy? Equally hooked, shooting smack for the first time just a few years after high school. Nancy, the blonde bombshell, took the express lane to the rockiest rock bottom, selling her body on the streets for more than half a century. She is still out there today.
The street smarts my friend Billy and I picked up were laced with poison, but we somehow managed to avoid the worst effects. We heeded the warning signs and took a hard turn in the opposite direction. The maps our parents laid out were clear: Don’t Follow Us Down This Path. But no amount of clear-headed resolve could dislodge the filth they left ground into our souls. We had marinated in the madness far too long, and some of it soaked in deep, lodged in our DNA.
Our future struggles weren’t the same. They were very much our own. I was a decade older than Billy, yet we were a lot like twins–cut from the same tattered cloth. Our successes and failures—mirror images flipped. Billy found domestic bliss—a wife and a son; I am a bachelor and childless. He ran a successful tattoo shop; I chased dreams of Hollywood fame. He engaged in a thirty-year dance with a monkey on his back; I survived by binge-drinking myself into oblivion in my spare time. I thank my lucky stars that addiction never latched onto me.
Billy's old man tried to plant the seeds of creativity early on. He used to show Billy my cartoon drawings when he was just a toddler, pushing his hand toward the ink and paper. The kid soon found escape in art, just as I had during the most challenging years of my life, but Billy took to it like a true prodigy. It became something extraordinary, far surpassing anything I ever accomplished. It was something to be proud of in a war-torn world short on victories.
Billy had many close friends; everyone loved him. He had a big, giving heart. He was forgiving to a fault and would do anything for anyone. All they had to do was ask. We were a lot alike in that way. We earned our good reputations, and it was a point of pride. We strived to be good people, to be trustworthy and honest. Basically, to be the opposite of our father figures.
Physically, Billy grew into a beast—a bodybuilder and MMA enthusiast. At one time, he was also an extreme skateboarder with pro potential—until one too many jabs of the needle stole that dream away from him. Even with his growing struggles and descent into darkness, he managed to pass on his best traits to his son, a shiny sliver of hope in the smoldering wreckage.
Despite running to the shelter of a church building and the friendly folks inside, Billy couldn’t outsmart his demons. He suffered relapse after relapse, leading to a bitter divorce and tearing his world apart. Rare visits with his son were a fragile lifeline, which his ex-wife kept threatening to sever for good. He swore off junk, found God anew, and threw himself into volunteer work. But addiction is a tenacious bastard. My friend couldn’t help but fail and fall flat on his face time and again. God’s ready forgiveness was like putting a band-aid on skin cancer.
Billy's last year on earth was an out-of-control, wild, and jagged ride. One day, he was King of the World; the next, a broken shell of a man crying for help on social media. His born-again buddies grew tired of his boomerang recoveries and “lack of commitment to God.” I watched as they morphed from virtuous friends into vulturous fiends, their thoughts and prayers twisting into scorn and vitriol.
"You're not going to kill yourself! You would have done it already!” one mocked.
“You just want attention. I’m tired of your stupid games. Grow up!"
That was when I attempted to reach out and speak some truth to him, to cut through the bullshit, but I wasn’t effective from a distance. It went in one ear and out the other. He kept insisting that God was going to turn him around. So, I booked an appointment to get a tattoo from him on my upcoming visit to the Bay Area. I thought that I could possibly have an impact in person.
Meanwhile, the taunts from his Christian friends continued on Facebook:
"STOP IT BILL! You know you’ll never kill yourself. You love yourself too much! Turn to Jesus and stop being such a crybaby asshole!"
Another said, “If you follow through, you’ll just prove that you never trusted God in the first place. Do you want to go to Hell? Is that it?”
“Why don’t you just do it then? Pussy. We’re all tired of your lame pity party!”
A few days of silence went by, and then his ex-wife was contacted by the police. They found Billy dead inside his tattoo shop, sitting in the best chair in the house. They couldn’t say if he had overdosed on accident or on purpose. His mother believes it wasn’t intentional; she has to believe that.
But I’m convinced it was purposeful. He was determined to follow through on his promises. He wasn’t playing a game. It was a life-or-death battle that had raged inside him for all of his adult life, and he finally lost the war.
Billy surrendered. He had given up for good, and that is exactly what he kept telling everyone at the end–when he posted his final goodbye.
Never take talk of suicide lightly. It’s deadly serious.
Dial 988: The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
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