Crash
December, 2001
According to everything Kurt told me, they were supposed to have a good time yesterday--just two lonely guys out on the town. Kurt wanted to give Craig something fun to do to take his mind off of Kelly for a few hours. He also wanted to meet some chicks and attempt to jump back into the dating scene again. On top of wanting to shed the sound of my voice telling him he sucked as a husband, Kayla told him to never call her ever again unless he had a house and diamond for her. Even though I’ve made my fair share of relationship mistakes (like, for example, pretending to enjoy mountain climbing in scary animal infested forests just so Kurt would fall madly in love with me), even I know Kayla’s a friggin’ idiot to make demands like that! Seriously, it’s like the girl’s boobs sucked the common sense right out of her brain. No dude worth marrying is going to give in to an ultimatum like that. Ever.
First, Kurt and Craig hit up a sushi restaurant in Palo Alto and had a great time doing sake bombs on table tops with the pretty Stanford girls. Initially, it took some convincing to get Craig to join in on the fun, but one co-ed in particular had a way with words and it gave him one of his first genuine smiles since his wife died. After that they continued their ego boosting/mind distracting tour at a nearby pool hall where seemingly pretty white trash girls hit on the two of them. I say seemingly pretty because had the boys managed to keep their alcohol consumption to shall we say…less than what an entire stadium full of football fans would drink, they would’ve realized the pool hall girls were total ho’s.
The two guys drove separately to Palo Alto. Kurt had a meeting with his biking club, (please…don’t even get me started) in nearby Menlo Park earlier that afternoon, so Craig made the drive over the Dumbarton Bridge to meet him. By late afternoon it seemed like the ego boosting/mind distracting mission had been accomplished because the boys were cracking jokes and laughing like it was 1987 all over again. It was just what the two of them needed.
Now, I’ve enjoyed my fair share of beer with Craig in the old days and on Kelly’s porch, but he was never one to push the limits. Especially since Kelly died, because he was the only one left to keep a close eye on Kendall. But yesterday Kendall wasn’t with him. She was at his parent’s house. A place Craig didn’t relish leaving her unless it was super important because they weren’t as sharp as they used to be--they were freaking old! In fact, Kelly used to jokingly call them his “prehistoric parents.” But, Kurt deemed yesterday’s festivities necessary and convinced Craig to go against his better judgment and party the day away in Palo Alto--so he left her there. Then, Craig went against his better judgment again when he got behind the wheel of his car and drove back home to Freakmont when the party was over.
Craig knew better than to drive drunk. In fact, it was always him who policed us in the old days. He’d be the first one to stop drinking to make sure everyone who was, either stayed the night at his house or was okay enough to drive by the time they left. But, at around seven-o’clock, the drunkenness that for a brief time made him forget about his heartache faded into a somewhat coherent buzz. Kurt told me he started missing Kelly again, and he started to get anxious about getting back to his parents’ house before they dozed off--something that usually happened around eight o’clock. He promised Kurt once he got there he’d tuck Kendall into his old bed and sleep on the couch. He thought the foolish deal he made with himself to just make it to his parent’s house was practical and he gave himself the green light to drive. Kurt stayed behind at a coffee shop to sober up and as far as he can remember, Craig appeared in control when he said goodbye. How would he have really known though? He was way too hammered to be the judge of anything. The two guys gave each other a goodbye bro hug at the coffee shop and made plans for a round of golf on Sunday. That was the last time Kurt ever saw Craig alive.
After four cups of coffee and a nice little cat-nap on a park bench, Kurt was sober enough to return to his brother’s house in Freakmont where he’d been shacking up since his break up with Kayla. Personally, I’d rather call that park bench my home than live with anyone in his family, but we’ve already covered my revulsion of the Gibbons clan, no need to digress.
Traffic was super backed up on the bridge, and what would normally be a thirty minute drive to Freakmont, was more like two hours. Finally, when he got to the other side of the bridge, just a few feet west of the toll plaza, a tired and frustrated Kurt saw what all the fuss was about. There appeared to be a two car collision and by the looks of the stretcher with a haphazardly covered body on it, it was a fatal one. Driving by at a mere two miles per hour, Kurt who was totally sober by now, but a little nervous about the smell of his breath, hunkered down low in his seat as he slowly passed the cops who were milling around the crash site. He got so low that his eyes were directly in line with a hand sticking out from underneath the sheet--a hand wearing the watch he bought for Craig as a wedding gift. Despite seeing what he knew was Craig’s lifeless body, he acted just as I did when I was told Kelly had pancreatic cancer, he tried to save him. He jumped out of his car, ran to the stretcher and immediately started performing CPR on the mangled and bloody body. Paramedics ran to pry who they thought was a crazed stranger away, but Kurt tried to fight them off so he could continue his hopeless effort. He was finally subdued by the police, and after calming down and explaining who he was, he was told what happened to his best friend. It appeared that Craig plowed into an abandoned car stranded in the right lane of the two-lane stretch of the bridge. Witnesses to the accident were shocked that Craig didn’t notice the bright hazard lights of the broken down car, and they said it appeared he was driving about eighty miles per hour, twenty-five miles per hour over the limit. Despite his seatbelt and air bag, he was dead on impact.
Head swirling with the news, Kurt was finally allowed to return to Craig’s stretcher where he cradled his best friend in his arms and repeated over and over again, “I love you, man. Please come back. Please come back. Please don’t leave Kendall…” At last, the paramedics painfully told Kurt they had to take Craig away and peeled him off his body. Without thought, he got into his car and drove straight to me.