Joe Gallo was a friend of mine, and I don’t have many. In the 1990’s he wrote a zine called Gulp Life, in which he chronicled his lousy job at a 7-Eleven, and every other aspect of being a fat misfit. It was handwritten but perfectly legible, and it was rude, anti-social, revealing, and funny. I will tell him now, again, that he was a damned fine writer.
We met by mail, circa 1996, because I was writing a zine too. I lived in San Francisco, he lived in New Jersey, but we traded zines and letters, and eventually he decided that Frisco sounded more fun than Jersey, where he’d been born and raised, so westward he came.
Back then, San Francisco was where you’d go to reinvent yourself. It worked for me, and it worked for Joe.
I don’t like people, and even people I’ve liked via mail (and nowadays, email) I don’t like so much in person, but Joe was an exception. He had a sad soul and a sour outlook, but so do I so we became best buddies. He settled into the same rez hotel where I lived, one floor below me and across the hall, and we often went together to the movies or a doughnut parlor. Or simply sat and talked in his room, or in mine.
For a few years I saw Joe almost every day, and he was my best (arguably, only) friend in that stretch of my life. We must’ve been quite a sight, two enormous white guys walking side-by-side on the sidewalk, visiting the zine stores, riding the bus to a double feature at the Balboa or taking BART to a ball game in Oakland.
Joe walked slow and precarious, because he had a disease, the name of which I’ve forgotten, but it’s related to multiple sclerosis. He never used a cane or a walker, but walking was mildly difficult. The long-term prognosis, he told me, was that it would get worse, and walking would be harder as he got older. “So I’ll be in a wheelchair, but what the hell, I’ll go fast and everyone better get out of my way.”
Over the course of just a few years being in-person friends in San Francisco, Joe told me all about Joe, his upbringing, his politics, his best stories and his worst.
By far the worst was that he’d fallen in love with a woman, but she’d been sexually abused all through her childhood and couldn’t give him or anyone anything but friendship. They ran away together for a long, chaste road trip, and he’d fallen deeper and she, of course, simply couldn’t. They’d parted with a kiss on the cheek, and then she’d disappeared from his life, and from the world, and he never saw her again, never heard from her again.
After that, perhaps because of that, Joe drank a lot. When we were pals it was always the three of us — Joe, me, and a 40-ounce malt liquor. He explained to me once that malt liquor has the highest alcohol content for the lowest price.
I’m a very rare drinker so I’d have a Diet Coke, and we’d sit in his room watching TV, watching VHS, reading zines, whatever, and he could hammer home amazing quantities of malt liquor. Three 40-ounce bottles in one evening, though two was his usual. He had a stable job and liked it, and being with Joe when he’d had a few 40-ouncers wasn’t any different than
being with him when he hadn’t. Or perhaps I never noticed the difference because he always had malt liquor in his veins. Whatever, neither he nor I considered his drinking a problem.
Other than the booze and the movies and the laughs, most of the specifics of my many days with Joe have faded into time. What I remember that matters is, Joe & I could and did talk and joke about almost anything — the news of the day, his job at the video store, an uncomfortable pimple on my buttcheeks, anything.
Both of us were lonely, but then, same as we’d found friendship through zines, both of us found love through zines. I met and married a zinemaker named Stephanie, and we lived happily ever after. Joe met and married a zinemaker named Shauna, and she’s a great lady and was great for Joe, and they thought they’d live happily ever after.
For the next few years, the four of us were friends. Sometimes we all did things together, but just as often it was me & Joe spending an afternoon eating too many burgers and fries after a movie or a baseball game.
There were always a lot of “Ya bastards.” We called each other that perhaps too enthusiastically. One evening, the four of us were dining in style at Burger King, and Joe arrived a few minutes late, so I said something like, “About time, ya bastard.”
And he replied, “Ah, stick it, ya bastard.”
I don’t remember which of our wives said, “Love the male bonding and all, but could you guys male bond at 25 decibels instead of 75?”
In 2001, the cost of San Francisco living evicted Steph & I, and we moved several states away. Joe & I kept in touch only via emails, but of course that’s not really being in touch.
He & Shauna moved from SF a few years after Steph & I, and they lived near Fresno until, in what sounds like a cliché from a sitcom, she realized she was a lesbian. They divorced but remained friends, and Joe eventually moved back to the east coast.
For years now, he’s been living with a potter named Virginia, and when he spoke of her it was obvious that Joe loved her. He complained about the boredom of living in very rural Pennsylvania, so far from civilization that they couldn’t even get a pizza delivered. “I’m a city boy,” he said, “so this life is weird, but Vee is worth it.” He never said an unkind word about the lady.
He also confessed that he’d recognized the drinking was a problem, and he’d joined AA. Sometimes in his emails he joked about the meetings, but he was taking it seriously, and had sobriety.
When my wife died, Joe being a mensch dropped everything and drove across six states to spend a week with me in Wisconsin. I hadn’t asked; he simply offered. He knew me well enough to give me ample space for grieving, but just the right number of hugs (which was two, one when he got there and one when he left, because we were tough guys).
He came again for an extended visit the next year, stayed a couple of months, and I hope he enjoyed it as much as I did. We rarely left the apartment; he stayed in his room, I stayed in mine, and we hollered wisecracks at each other through the walls. It was kinda like our time in the rez hotels in San Francisco, only without the roaches.
He made fancy tea daily, which had become his thing instead of the malt liquor, and he always offered me a cup, but I hate tea and only said OK once. The tea was actually good, though.
He made chicken thighs in the crockpot almost nightly, meals he shared with me, and it was always great and it was always chicken thighs. “Highest meat content for the lowest price,” he explained.
After he returned to his lady in Pennsylvania, we resumed emailing, not lots but often. We emailed about insignificant things, and he’d let me know when he’d spotted a typo on this blog. He commented here as “Captain Hampockets.” a name he never explained but I’m sure it meant something, probably something funny.
Having him here on the blog certainly meant something to me. It meant at least one person would get my jokes.
We sometimes had long, happy emailed conversations about the minutia of our memories of living cheap but happy in San Francisco, and we agreed that all else aside, it had been the perfect time and place for both of us.
Over the last few days, Joe & I emailed about a chunk of tooth he’d lost, and whether the biscuits in biscuits and gravy should be toasted before the gravy goes on, and I’d added as I sometimes did, “How the fuck ya doin’?”
He’d answered “Meh,” without any detail, and I never asked. “Meh” was usually the baseline for both of us. “Meh,” I think, is the baseline for almost everyone.
Then came this morning’s text message, “Joe killed himself.”
I know two other guys named Joe, and one’s my landlord, so my first thought was that a new landlord would probably be an ass. But the text was from Joe’s ladyfriend Virginia, which made no sense, and still makes no sense, but there it is.
Joe & I had talked about desperation — not recently and not often, but at great length. I’d told him he could reach out and I’d be there, and he’d said the same to me. But in desperation he didn’t reach out, so I say lovingly, Fuck you, Joe.
You could’ve emailed, could’ve texted, hell you could’ve even called. I would’ve turned my ringer on for you, old friend.
His suicide hurts like nothing else since my wife died, but I love the guy too much to second guess his last decision. There must’ve been something big and painful behind his “Meh,” and after saying Fuck you fifty times, guess I gotta respect his choice and simply say goodbye. And also, of course, Fuck you, ya bastard.
It’s a reminder that life is shit, and it gets shittier when you least expect it, and eventually the shit ends, but it always ends real shitty.
I say that with a smile and a laugh and a tear, though, and I know Joe would smile and laugh and cry with me. 1990’s Joe would’ve laughed with a malt liquor. 2020’s Joe would’ve laughed with a cup of tea.
I still hate tea, so in Joe’s honor I’m gonna go buy myself a 40-ouncer and drink it in my room, which will probably take all weekend because I hate the stuff. This one’s for you, ya bastard.
8/17/2023
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