I write to you all today, with sadness, for I am the bearer of bad news.

Do you remember when I freaked out about my birthday in May? And specifically, I told you all that you have to be very careful during your 27th year?

Well, one of my friends wasn't careful.

Last night Toastgirl called me, crying. She told me that our friend, Chris Menzer, overdosed on heroin on Sunday night in a hotel room.

Apparently, he had just met this new contact and Menzer and his girlfriend went to the guy's room to taste the goods. You can figure out the rest.

The part that floored Toastgirl and I was that they didn't call 911. Instead, the idiot GF took him out to the car and tried to drive him to the hospital. He died in the car.

I can't even tell you how often I've heard lately that someone died from an overdose because no one wanted to call 911. In fact, it happened three weeks ago at my alma mater. A girl had a friend up and they were shooting speedballs, the visitor died.

Let me break it down for you. When someone overdoses on heroin, there is actually a window for revival. Your best bet is calling 9-1-1. Even though it may take time for the ambulance to arrive, they are equipped to resusitate. You are not this equipped when doped up and frantically trying to drive the body to the hospital.

If you have a chance to revive someone, than you do so.

*~*

So I guess I'll take this opportunity to share a few memories of my friend, Chris Menzer.

I guess I met him when I was 19. I was a waitress and he was the cook, Toastgirl was the toastgirl, for the morning shift at a beach grill on the boardwalk.

He was crazy, and so was I. We both would kind of circle around each other, sniffing each other out, because we recognized *our kind* but we weren't ready to put it out there yet. He'd give me a hard time, and I gave it back.

The following summer, when I was 20, we became friends. My college friend and I ended up moving into the second floor of a beach house, with Menzer and crew living above us on the third floor. It was down hill from there. There was really no line between who lived on which floor and so we drifted back and forth through the days and nights.

Menzer LOVED to piss me off. Once, when I went to work the dinner shift, he and the boys came downstairs and they moved my entire bedroom set: I'm talking bed, bureau, paintings on the wall, AND candle sconces. I came home, exhausted, and went to lay down. My bedroom was empty. Literally, not even a throw rug on the floor. I walked into the dining room and I reached to pick the Garfield Phone (it came with the house) and it was gone.

This was the big clue. Menzer, could not keep his hands off of the Garfield phone. I see it's gone and I scream, "MENNNNNNNNNNNNZZZZZZZEEEEERRRRRRR!!!" and through the ceiling I heard voices and a scuffle, like they were hiding. Boys.

I run up the stairs, still in my apron, and I find them all in Menzer's bedroom, which is now filled with my furniture. Menzer has one of my shirts on and he says, "Dude, look at my room, it's PHAT!!!" He's in my bed with his GF du jour and I faintly make out the shape of toastgirl hiding under the covers of the neighboring bed where his roommate slept.

I looked around at my paintings and sconces hanging on his walls, and back at him in my shirt in my bed - speechless - I looked back at him.

He had the audacity to ask me if I want to use the phone, and from under the covers offers me the head of Garfield.

I burst out laughing, full body shaking laughter that make my sides hurt and my eyes tear and the whole time, Menzer kept a straight face and asked, "Dude, what? Dude, did you want to use the phone? Dude, what's so funny?"

I ordered him and his friend Shawn to move my shit back downstairs. I got everything back except the sconces, which I had to steal back later. The Garfield phone remained a battle throughout the summer.

*~*

The next summer, Menzer started to get a little crazier. Well, I guess we all did. I could tell you all about the obvious signs of what was to come, how we all would partake in crazy things but how some of us left it behind after that summer and cleaned up, while the other half of the group crossed over to the even darker side.

But I'd rather talk about the his zest for life. Menzer and I called ourselves brother and sister this summer because we both stripped our hair and bleached it white. He, of course needing to one up me, bleached his pubic hair also. Unfortunately, that only reached a burnt-orange color, due to the fact that he couldn't stand the burning the bleach very long. This, process in itself, was damn funny to watch.

Menzer loved extreme sports. And while some of us, if we got off our lazy asses, would boogie board or surf, Menzer loved to skim. You know, on a wooden board at the shoreline?

So one day I'm on one beach with Marnie2000 and some people. Toastgirl is further down the beach with other people.

I see on the beach next to me, all the guards running to assist an accident. I stand up out of my beach chair to get a better look. All I see is the top of white head of hair attached to a body that is strapped to a board. Under my breath, I say, "Menzer." But I think, no, it couldn't be...later that night Toastgirl tells me she saw the same thing and went up to guard and asked what happened.

He said that some idiot was flying down the coast on a skimming board and tried to do some type of trick, flipped off, and landed head first onto the wet sand - which is basically like hitting cement at that speed - and cracked his skull.

Toastgirl, asked, ummm, did this kid have bleached white hair and a goatee?

Yep, the guard said.

*~*

Menzer was the kind of guy would would do anything to entertain us.

We were at this big annual party at the bay, dressed up, and I asked him to jump into the bay. So he did it. In the middle of the party. And the crowd went wild, so he did it twice.

*~*

He was the kind of guy, who, if you walked by him at work and mentioned you had some acid for later, he'd stick his tongue out and take it, before the night even started. And he could stand there and cook, tripping his face off. And he appeared no more crazy, than when he was sober.

He loved the thrill of life. Every night he would beg us all to go to Atlantic City. Bars and clubs were okay, but he wanted to gamble.

He loved amusement parks, and there was always one trip a summer to Great Adventure.

*~*

When Menzer moved to Charleston, SC with the rest of the boys in our group, to go to college, I felt proud. Here was this Eminem type kid that I had really *grown up* with, getting his life together and getting a career. I worried about my boys, because they were silly and they took risks, but I figured they had a better shot at making it being all together.

None of them had really ever been out of Jersey and as they embarked on this adventure together I felt good sending them off together, as I prepared to figure out what to do with my life and ended up moving here to NYC.

But seeing the world, for this group of adventurers, might have been too much. Some of them got caught up in the world of pills and meth and Toastgirl and I knew things were out of hand. But they were out of our control now. They were on their own.

Over the course of that year, one of them got caught with pot by his parents. They took him out of school and sent him to an insane asylum for over a year and sold off all of his CD's, his car, everything. None of us have heard from him since. I don't even know if he ever got out.

One of the other boys, spent a couple of weeks tweaking on meth until he nearly whittled away. He ended up in rehab. So that left Menzer, with two friends left, neither of which played in the arena he was dabbling in now.

I saw him that next summer and he said he was done with the meth. I told him that shit was toxic. To get away from it. He said he knew and he talked about going to California. Talk of transfers and the beach in San Diego and life in the sun. He was impressed I had moved to NYC and kept saying, "Dude, that shit is dope, man. I want to come see you, dude. Give me your number, dude. If I come up, let's go to clubs and shit, Dude. I love that shit, Dude."

And I gave him my number and I hoped california worked out for him.

The following year, we had heard he was doing bad things. But Toastgirl was finishing up school and I was hear, and with him so far away, he was out of terrain. We couldn't police him into control long distance. We saw him maybe once that next summer, and he appeared the same.

Last year, Toastgirl and I thought he had finally gone and moved to California, until we saw him this summer at the shore.

He had moved home to clean up. He'd been using dope again and reached bottom.

This summer we talked and again he mentioned NYC. "Dude, that shit is crazy," he say, "I can't believe you live there." "Is it just crazy all the time and shit?"

I said, "Dude, it's a GOOD time. Dude, you have to come up." He said, "Yeah, man, can I bring my friend and we'll hang out for a weekend?" I said definitely.

Toastgirl gave him a gentle prodding lecture that weekend, telling him that we all expect that the next call we receieve will be to report his death. He laughed but Toastgirl assured him it's true, we all expect the call to come. She asked him if he was using and he said no, he's off the dope, but we *knew*. We *knew*.

I asked him when the last time he used was, and he said it was weeks ago. "I'm only doing X now, Dude, only X." I wanted to believe him, but I've know to many dope users to be naive.

And I looked at him and I told him to get off the dope. "Dude," I said, "that shit is going to kill you and that's all there is too it. I'm not fucking around. Don't touch the smack." He laughed and said to all of us, "Dude, I'm done with that stuff." None of us said anything. But Toastgirl smiled a small smile, because like me, she knew the truth.

And then he said, "But dude, that shit is WHACK. I mean you don't even KNOW a high like that shit. That shit is like numbing and shit."

And I knew with that admission, that he was far from done with smack. And there was nothing Toastgirl or I could do, to get him clean.

*~*

One more thing. That summer, when we were the "twins." Menzer's dyed hair made him look like Scott Weiland. I used to round the corner and scream, "Dude, STP, DUDE!" and he would scream back, "YEAH, DUDE!"

I told him, half jokingly, that in a death pool, I wasn't sure who to take: him or Weiland. Who was going to go first? He would laugh and say, "Shut up, Dude!"

The sad part to that story, is now I have my answer.

*~* Please read this and take a minute to leave a kind word, for my friend who just lost one of her best friends.

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