The End Of An Era

This is an extract of Max Milano’s upcoming novel “Tropical Punks”.

They call it middle age, as if a second half is guaranteed. But I'd chosen to ignore my own impending appointment with this existential milestone until a message on my Samsung brought reality crashing down.

Harry was dead.

We'd gone to high school together in the 1980s and caroused in the early 1990s as grunge kids with Nirvana T-shirts and Doc Martens boots.

"Harry died of a heart attack," my old high school friend Pat is talking from the other end of a video call, "he was only 53."

Pat's face is ashen. He looks shaken. Memories of another life come gushing in. I've not given too much thought to my high school days in the last few years, but here it is, kicking and screaming and letting you know that middle age is just another name for the end—the end of an era.

Pat posts a photo online of the old days. The image is a scan of an old 1990s photo, one taken with a disposable camera that one sent to a one-hour photo place. The pic depicts a trio of young lads standing on a wide boulevard flanked by palm trees. Pat, Harry, and another twentysomething with long hair. They look like poster children for the grunge era. Shoulder-length hair. Goatees. White rock concert t-shirts in the heat. Harry couldn't have been more than 24 years old in the picture. Three good-looking guys smiling at the camera.

Pat looks older now, but he's aged well. Middle age suits him. Maybe it's the beach. I see him stumbling about on the other end of the video call, looking for a bottle of whiskey in his kitchen. He's left his phone on a table, and the wide lens takes the entire kitchen in, like a security camera.

Movement now. The phone is in Pats's hand. He's stepped out onto his patio. It's nighttime over where he is, while the sun is barely setting here in California. I can see palm trees and a glittering beach behind Pat as he takes a swig right off a bottle of Johnny Walker while I follow suit, grabbing a bottle of bourbon from my kitchen bar, taking a deep swig, and letting the warm liquid settle in before speaking.

"Where did it happen?" I hear myself ask.

"I don't know," Pat answers, sitting on the sand as dark waves crash nearby, "he had a house in France, but I'm not sure if he was there..."

I don't know what to say, so I talk about Roman stoicism because Judeo-Christianity never did anything for me, and people seem to like to talk about religion when someone dies suddenly.

Pat starts mentioning a lot of people from our high school days that I don't remember. I feel guilty because I'd put those days out of my mind long ago. I'd only kept in touch with Pat because he'd been my best friend back then and because he'd become some self-appointed hub and historian for our high school years. It was annoying but harmless enough. He'd even managed to track down one of my first girlfriends, who turned out to be just as crazy now as she'd been back in the day.

"I really don't have any more details," Pat says, somewhat apologetically, "I just got this message from Harry's brother, James, about an hour ago informing all that his brother had died a couple of weeks ago..."

A blast from the past washes over me like the waves behind Pat's beach. Harry had an older brother called James. I remember now. James was tall, quiet, athletic, and older than us. He seemed to always be in the background. Not really participating in what we younger kids were up to, but only partially ignoring us altogether.

I abruptly recollect the day we recorded my demo song at Harry's place. It was James' stereo we used, with our friend Pedro joining in on acoustic guitar while a few of Harry's cousins, and possibly even his brother James, chimed in on the chorus.

I used those demo songs we recorded to attract girls while Pedro rambled about getting on MTV.

A flood of memories I never knew existed until today's news dredged them out come rushing in. I recall numerous parties at Harry's house that went on late into the night. Memories of deadly punchbowls where we'd poured half of Harry's father's bar content and a quart of pineapple juice. The type of parties where lights got dimmed or turned off entirely, and people sauntered to different rooms to make out.

I do not desire these memories to resurface, but I cannot help it. It is an involuntary reaction triggered by Pat's muttering from the opposite end of the video call.

He's making me recall one specific party I'd forgotten and would have preferred to remain that way.

I recall now. Earlier that day, I'd gone down to Melrose with my friend Shoshana who had a terrible weight problem and was rich. She would regularly bribe me emotionally by buying me clothes or taking me out for milkshakes and burgers in Westwood Village.

On Melrose, we'd gone into one of those punk boutiques that sold Comme des Garçons and Doc Martens.

I'd emerged from the boutique on Melsore with a haul of wide, harem-style pants and loud, late 1980s shirts, all chosen and paid for by Shoshana of the aforementioned weight problem.

Shoshana's dad was relieved she had a boyfriend, or at least a boy who was also her friend. He didn’t even mind that I wasn’t Jewish. Not really. I guess I was Shoshana’s beard. I never even kissed her, even though I often stayed at her house and slept in her bed. Their house was massive, with a full staff that prepared us great lunches served poolside. I remember Shoshana wearing a huge white T-shirt when she swam in her pool. Her dad was an agent or something.

I liked Shoshana a lot because she was a social hub. She always knew who was throwing a party and when. So she invited me to Harry’s party later that day.

Shoshana knew I had a girlfriend that was not only normal-sized but quite pretty. I knew this had to kill her, but she never seemed to mind. She oozed a weird confidence that most pretty girls lacked.

Back then, I liked to borrow sweaters and perfume from my girlfriend. It was all unisex, anyway. We all aspired to look like Robert Smith from The Cure. Boys and girls equally. We just had to do it in a tropical way because of the LA heat. Our Comme des Garçons sweaters were of light cotton and pastel colors.

For the party that night at Harry's, I made sure my spiky punk hairdo was stiff with gel, and my new Comme des Garçons sweater smelled fresh of the Benetton cologne I'd pilfered from my girlfriend, Sarah. The same insane Sarah that Pat had made his mission in life to reconnect us with all those years in the future.

That night, some new girls were at the party—Harry's cousins visiting from the old country. I flirted shamelessly with them while chugging the punch like my life depended on it. I'm unsure if they spoke English. But they smiled, and one of the cousins paid particular attention to me and smiled over the thumping music.

As the lights were dimmed and the music switched to slow dance, I remember heading to the punch bowl for two more drinks. I filled our cups and took a couple of swigs before setting off to look for Harry's cousin in the dark. Air Supply was playing on the stereo, and countless couples were slow dancing in the middle of the room.

I couldn't find Harry's pretty cousin, so I downed both punch cups in frustration. Dizziness followed until I collapsed onto a couch. I must have dozed off for a while because the music was off when I opened my eyes, and the room was dark and completely quiet.

The party had ended, but Harry's pretty cousin from the old country had somehow found me in the darkness and was cuddled against me. I couldn't believe my luck. Usually, these conservative girls from the old country only went to parties with chaperones and never stayed too late, but here she was. I basked in her warmth and began caressing her soft hair in the dark. I don't know how much time passed, but she seemed to be enjoying my caresses. Small moans followed my more assertive caresses while my head spun, still quite pickled by the punch. At this point, I began feeling a strange hardness in the girl's body—a muscular chest instead of soft breasts, hard, athletic legs instead of creamy, feminine thighs.

My inebriated mind recoiled in a wild moment of recognition. I leaped from the couch, stumbling through darkened hallways, searching for an escape. A voice followed me, begging me to stay, to stop "being foolish," and "let it happen."

Finally, I reached the front door and fumbled with the lock until it gave way. The cool night air snapped me back to reality, and I stepped outside into a world of swaying palm trees and streetlights piercing the canyons below Mulholland. It was Harry's brother, pleading with me to stay. This was the longest conversation we'd ever had.

I turned away from Harry's brother and into the darkened street. I knew if I kept walking downhill, I'd eventually wind up near the Chateau Marmont on Sunset. For a moment, I feared that Harry's brother would follow me down the hill, but he maintained his dignity and went back inside.

The memory of that night had been buried deep until Pat called to let me know Harry was dead. Harry's brother had delivered the tragic news to Pat. The same brother from that darkened couch so many years ago.

Sadness wraps itself around me with the realization that I hadn't thought of Harry's brother for all this time. I feel even worse for Pat, who seems quite shaken by the news of Harry’s death, and no amount of talk about Roman stoicism will lift his spirits tonight.

"It's how fast it all ends," I hear Pat mutter from his beach, "I'm still trying to figure shit out in my life, and now some of us are dead...what’s the point?"

I offer a few words of wisdom, but they feel hollow, and I can't shake the guilt that Pat's news has stirred in me. It could be because we are all middle-aged now, no longer the beautiful youth captured with a disposable camera photo. Or it could be the uncertainty of whether Harry's brother or Shoshana ever found happiness after all these years.