1979-2006
At 10:22 pm tonight, it will have been three years since I lost my best friend, writing partner, travel companion, and intellectual goad Parker Zane Allen. Three fucking years…
The last two May 12s have been… Well, they’ve been bad. I’ve done a lot of screaming into the void and thrashing about at a world that could be so fucking unfair as to deprive itself of one of the greatest men to ever walk it. But not this year. The rage is gone. The sadness is still there, of course, that he can’t see what we’ve all done with ourselves - what I’ve done with myself. But the point is, we have done a lot. His friends have moved on to do big and awesome things. And he was a part of all of them, even in his absence.
See, the real friends are the ones you don’t have to see all the time to remain friends. The ones that you know you could lose touch with for 6 months and pick back up with as if there was no time lost - probably in mid conversation. And that is who PZA was, and is, to me. And everything I’ve done in the world without him, from starting a new career to making peace with San Francisco, from accepting my growing older to reaching a point in my life where I can say I’m truly happy, Zane was there for all of it. And Zane was the inspiration for all of it. I got two tattoos about a year ago, blackbirds on my arms, in honor of him. And I turned myself into a daruma, the Japanese good luck charm, by coloring in only one of the birds’ eyes. With a daruma, you color in one eye and set a goal for yourself. When that goal is accomplished, you color in the other. My goal is to live up to what that man would have wanted me to be, and when I get hit by a bus in 30 years with both eyes colored in, I plan to run into him again, beer and backgammon board in hand. And I refuse to let his passing prevent me from living a life that will make him say, when he kicks my ass at my favorite boardgame yet again, “Hey dude, good job down there.”
So, tonight, when I meet up with all his old friends, I will not be mourning the man I lost, but celebrating the friend that still drives me to do and be my best. I am forever grateful that I got to spend as much time with him as I did.
