Volume 2, Entry 7: So Close

This is that rare story in which my writing begins by researching the California penal code.

I imagine once the story ends, this will be a laughable admission, but, to tell my favorite story from college has always required this quick reference to PC 594 just to make sure the statute of limitations has expired.

And it has, of course—it has since 2011. But I always check just in case.

I think that’s part of the fun.

During college, I commuted to school every day. Barring traffic, this wasn’t a long drive but it wasn’t a short one either. Attending college this way was a sound financial decision—with scholarships, my degree ultimately cost only two quarters’ deflated tuition, gas, and a few textbooks—but it meant that my time on campus was almost always academic. I went to class, moved to the library afterward, and did my reading and work there until the next class began.

Sure, there were some good meals and conversations with Matt and Shannon and, eventually, Roseanne, and I certainly had favorite peers in my classes—Sam, Craig, and Khoa come to mind-slash-comprise the entire list—but that was kind of it. I lived in Elk Grove, I worked in Elk Grove, and I coached baseball in Elk Grove—those were my college experiences. And, while the holidays brought the massive annual scavenger hunt SH5M, those big events always felt separate from college, a throwback with high school people. (Am I proud of finishing fourth, then third, then second, and finally first in the last one? Hell yes. But those were winter breaks, not college. That’s a different future newsletter. But I digress.)

Because of this scholastic focus and minimal time spent on campus, my time in college was most defined by coaching baseball. Outside of Matt, Shannon, Rose, and Lexi, my closest relationships all came out of coaching with Babe Ruth. My Hurricanes won the championship in 2005 just a few days after finishing my final exam for Multi-Variable Calculus, but every season brought new people into my life and these players, coaches, and families became the characters in the stories I tell about my life then.

Even though the teams and rosters always changed, there was always a connective thread from the first team I coached (DRO in 2004) to the last (the Trojans in 2010), a fact that I was proud of. Joey was first, then followed with Andrew, Mikey, Cody, and Cameron. Cody and Cameron carried forward into Kalin and Derek whom Tyler replaced before giving way to Skyler and Jordan at the end.

In the middle, though, was one player whom I coached across four separate seasons but whom left my team mid-season in 2008: Fuzzy. It’s hard to think about him without dwelling on the ending at Zehnder Park, a day and game that has been fully seared into my mind with impossible crushing clarity.

But this isn’t about that ending; this is about my favorite moment during college.

I first watched Fuzzy play while announcing at an all-star tournament. He was playing up an age level but threw hard and looked comfortable at shortstop for another city’s team, which was enough for me to remember his name. That fall, I saw that same name again on the signups list and, guessing it was him, I drafted him with the first pick.

It was indeed him, and he was indeed one hell of a player.

The impression I’d gotten from that all-star game was accurate: cannon arm, comfort up the middle, strong quick hands with a powerful right handed swing. He was a hard nosed kid who was intensely tough on himself and immature enough to get into arguments over small things—in other words: he was just like me. We got along almost instantly and, when that fall season came to a close, I offered him one of the frozen spots on my spring team in 2007.

The spring wouldn’t be easy for him as an arm injury stole pitching and shortstop away from him, but we adjusted, moving him to first base so he could avoid throwing. He eventually got healthy and onto a good throwing program that let him throw limited pitches, and we used him as both a traditional closer and an opener (one decade before the Rays did in MLB, I might add, our league featured openers).

That team, the Infinite Cardinals—yes, named after the abstract math concept—didn’t win the championship but remains one of the best teams I ever coached. And, while their success on the field plays a role in that memory, it’s the closeness I felt with the team that most stands out. For one, I’d spent three years with Cody and Cameron so that squad marked the end of the last group from the championship Hurricanes I had spent effectively all of college alongside. In addition, I was coaching with Greg for the first time, a guy who was funny and fiery and one of my first adult friends. I grew close with a lot of the team as well: even one of youngest players, Thomas, invited me to his middle school promotion and I still occasionally exchange messages with him via Facebook.

With Fuzzy, though, there was an even stronger bond. When I went out to catch other games, Fuzzy would meet me at the field or hitch a ride. We’d watch and talk the entire time, mostly about baseball but sometimes about other things too. School was a struggle for him and he was definitely an edgier kid (especially compared to me), so it wouldn’t seem like we would get along but we were like brothers. He had an older brother and I had a younger one, but I felt closer to him than I did to my own then. Watching games with him transformed that season from twenty-two games into an extended experience. I might not feel lonely now, but I certainly did in college; spending time with Fuzzy was an exception though. Sitting in the stands and talking about the one thing that I really loved during college with him was a gift.

After all-stars that year—coaching Fuzzy’s team and finishing in second place, the rare positive postseason experience for me—Fuzzy chose to play tournament ball over the summer and fall rather than on my fall squad. He would be returning to my team the next spring, but there was to be a season between without us working together.

We stayed in communication, though. I didn’t send my first text message until 2010, so communication was very different. Epic conversations sometimes happened on the phone, but most often they happened via AOL Instant Messenger online, the social lifeblood of my time in high school. But, by the mid 2000s, a more common tool of communication was the earliest form of modern social media that I knew: MySpace. This was how Fuzzy and I kept in touch.

On a random Saturday night, he sent me a message and asked if I was busy. That I was on my computer and attentive enough to MySpace late on a Saturday night to find his message answers that question, and I told him “No” and inquired why.

His response: My friend and I want to TP our friend’s house. Would you drive us?

And, even though I hate TPing and grew up watching the mess next door every time someone hit Mikey’s house, I was excited to be invited to do something, even if it was just chauffeuring two fifteen-year-olds to TP a friend’s house. I was surely not their first choice but a convenient choice, but I didn’t care.

I said yes and left immediately.

It was probably about 11:30pm when I pulled up and found Fuzzy and his friend in all black waiting on the corner. They each had a backpack—“We took all the rolls we had!” the friend said—and, from the back seat of my Ford Contour, they shared the epic story of why their petty vandalism was actually an act of chivalry meant to avenge the cowardly TPing of the home of some girl Fuzzy liked. I was fully in as their get-away driver and we hatched a plan with full deniability: I would drop them off a block away and drive around the neighborhood until looping back to find them on a different corner (Mission Impossible stuff, I know). We only had one problem:

We had no idea how to find their target’s house.

They had both been there and even knew the address, but I had no smart phone or GPS then, and it was dark—well after midnight in fact. And the neighborhood in question was labyrinthine and impossible to find our way through with limited vision. We drove for 45 minutes fruitlessly before pulling into a grocery store parking lot to regroup.

With no solution in sight, I resolved to let one more person in on the crime...and called my brother. The amused (and definitely still up) high school junior looked up the address and then read us the turn-by-turn directions off Mapquest.

We thanked him and resumed our plan.

It took a few drives past the would-be scene of the crime to cement things but, around 1:15am, I pulled discreetly to the sidewalk one block away, let the two of them climb out, and then drove around for ten minutes until heading to our rendezvous point. As I pulled up to our predetermined location, I couldn’t see them at first but the shadows eventually emerged from the darkened street and Fuzzy and his friend ran and dove into the back seat, both breathing hard and telling me to drive with urgency better suiting a bank robbery.

I responded to their panic and tore off in the wrong direction, but that gave us some extra time to drive and catch our collective breath. They were laughing in the back seat soon, raving about their favorite tosses and proud to have used up every roll they had brought along. (Hopefully no one at their houses had stomach problems the next day.) This was a rare occasion in which my car was filled with giddy euphoria—and I was somehow proud to have aided and abetted their crime.

As we drove back to drop them off at the friend’s house, conversation inevitably slowed and, with only a few minutes left in our clandestine mission, Fuzzy suggested I play “a song”. I had an iPod Classic connected to a cassette tape adapter that I played music through and, from the dozens of carpools I had run with the team, everyone on the squad knew my musical taste was fairly weird. Fuzzy knew this and yet he still asked. At the time, my favorite song was the corniest of all: “So Close” by Jon McLaughlin from the soundtrack to Enchanted starring Amy Adams.

This was an incongruous choice to cap off a night of juvenile vandalism, but both Fuzzy and I were aware of the irony and I knew that, although Fuzzy would laugh, I wouldn’t feel one ounce of judgment. So, as we closed the final stretch on Elk Grove Blvd, I sang “So Close” in my car while the two of them, cloaked completely in black, grinned in the back seat, still glowing from the execution of their plan.

When we reached their final destination, I found myself aware of a strange feeling of contentment. I felt a little like I eventually would when Michelle, Ethan, Megan, Brock and I reached the river at the end of Steven’s Trail: elated, relieved, and proud. I had participated in a crime, but those raised stakes had only helped prove myself to Fuzzy, this kid that I had bonded so much with and cared so deeply about.

As I looked in my rear view mirror, I saw that Fuzzy hadn’t yet unbuckled his seatbelt and I imagined that he felt the same bond, the same brotherhood. Fuzzy knew me, and he knew that I was as straight-laced as they come—I’m rarely confident of anything involving other people but I do feel certain he understood that my participation in even a small and silly crime was proof that...

The thought struck me in that moment: I want to remember this. Sometimes my instincts are terrible, but even then I knew something special had happened and that I would want to remember the feeling it brought. I only had the weakest of camera phones and it was dark and we had just committed a crime...but I wanted something tangible to hold onto from it. But, in those fractional tiny moments, I held back. I talked myself back; there would be more times. There would be more games and there would be the spring season and, who knows? Maybe we’d one day coach together—that’s the kind of thing brothers and friends do. The future sat before us; another day would gift us a photograph of a different moment but the same feeling.

So I just smiled. I responded with a “You’re welcome” when they offered their gratitude, and I lingered in the street until both were safely inside the house, “So Close” still playing on repeat in the background. I took my time driving home, too, listening to the music and holding onto my share of his glow.

I didn’t have a vocabulary for it back then, and I’m confident he didn’t either. My words are different now because I’ve grown up and I’ve attended Challenge Days and I’ve learned how to connect with people. I’ve made many more friends, I’ve lost many others, and I’ve grown close to large groups of people, whether classes or teams or even a particular organization. Some of those connections still thrive today; others have faded into shreds of memories and small photographs.

I would imagine that most of those people know how I felt about them, though. But back then, everything was in front of us, so I said nothing. I just felt that moment’s specialness and let it pass by. I didn’t know that seven games into the season, I would never see Fuzzy again. That I would never get to point out what is so obvious to me now that it hurts. I jumped at the chance to help him break the law because it was the one way I could show him he mattered to me. I wasn’t capable of being his coach and friend and brother and mentor all simultaneously, it turned out, but none of how things ended changes the obvious truth that I loved him the same way I do my friends today—friends whom I tell this too over and over and take photos with constantly so as not to make the mistake of letting our special moments pass by again.

I know: I shouldn’t judge my past self for decisions he wasn’t capable of making. I want to try to find Fuzzy and send this to him so that he knows, even now thirteen years too late just how much all those games and conversations and that random night meant to me, but I’m afraid. I’m afraid that it might not make sense or might not mean anything to him, for one, but I’m also afraid he may have died somehow before turning 28 and I would be faced without the possibility of him never knowing.

These are mostly irrational, but it feels safer to just close my eyes and remember that night, to let it block out the inevitable ending and both hope and believe that the kid knew in that moment what my driving over to pick them up proved.

*****

Tears filling my eyes, I start a new playlist and add a few songs. The fourth one, on this day, is “So Close.” When it begins, I think and realize I haven’t heard it in almost six years. Will I remember it at all?

McLaughlin’s voice starts singing and I open my mouth with uncertainty.

The statute of limitations for prosecuting their “vandalism” expired in 2011. It’s ten years later.

But I remember every single lyric.

I remember all of it.

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Content Consumption

FILM

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

As I began to watch Judas and the Black Messiah, I wondered about I would receive a story whose ending I already knew. Would my awareness of the history being recreated in the film diminish the stakes of its story of informants and guns and a country on the precipice of war with itself? I can safely say it did not, with all facets of the ending inevitable from the start but none of that taking away from the urgency and rippling tension in every scene of invisible betrayal. // Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya) is the chairman of the Black Panther party’s Chicago Chapter in 1969, a face and voice of the movement. Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) is a car thief-turned-informant sent by FBI agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) to infiltrate the Black Panthers and get in the good graces of Hampton and his organization. While O’Neal struggles internally to fill his mole’s role, Hampton continues his leadership and activism—as well as a strong relationship with his girlfriend Deborah Johnson (Dominique Fishback)—until a series of dubious charges land him temporarily in prison. But, although O’Neal expects this to end his cooperation with the FBI, they have other plans that ultimately lead to violence. // Judas and the Black Messiah plays out with the feel of The Departed, a taut thriller where trust is never certain and allegiance a fleeting thing—an impression furthered by casting Martin Sheen as J. Edgar Hoover—but the inevitability of this amplifies the tension. Stanfield excels as the “Judas” O’Neal, driven by self-interest but growing closer to Hampton even while effectively serving as the invisible but deadly weapon against him; Stanfield portrays O’Neal as a man acting all the time, concern and affection and inner conflict seeping out in fleeting glances and small gestures that confirm that he knows he is Judas here. Plemons’ Agent Mitchell seems conflicted too but seems to let go of it in favor of acting out the role Hoover sets for him; I did feel like his character had a missing scene, but it’s probable that I wanted there to be more moral ambiguity than the character possessed. Fishback also does well with her small role, matching Kaluuya in rhetorical flirting but embodying both the fiery resolve and tender love for the man she loved. // Naturally, though, Kaluuya is the sun in the film’s solar system, his Hampton possessing a power but also an immense humanity in every electric scene. Hampton’s activism demands many speeches on many stages to many varied audiences, and Kaluuya’s voice and delivery crackle—when Deborah catches Hampton echoing famous speeches by Malcolm X in an early scene, I could only imagine Kaluuya doing the same, matching every cadence and inflection and imbuing recreated grand addresses with a historically-informed refresh. His Hampton has goals of prosperity and equality that we recognize from the start will lead to violence—the film doesn’t obscure this fact but it lets other lenses capture the man who was killed at 21. Not only did this duality showcase the tremendous range Kaluuya brings to every role but it also amplified O’Neal’s guilt before our eyes, forcing him to stare at Hampton sitting with Deborah on the floor talking about his future children and internally confront the reality that his own betrayal has condemned those words to be fruitless. // As someone who has rewatched The Departed dozens of times and is a huge fan of both Stanfield and Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah was a fantastic watch, thrilling and well-acted while carrying messages about systematic oppression that still resonate today. But the sobering reality of the story this film tells is always crushing, a pressure that never fades, and it’s why I finally found myself in sobs during one scene toward the end. This isn’t the glorious gangster comic book story of The Departed told with a slick heart-pounding sheen; it puts the guilt and betrayal out in front and instructs our hearts to fall as the destruction plays out on cue as history and we always knew it would.

The Little Things (2021)

By this point, there’s a formula of sorts I come to expect from serial killer movies. A string of crimes drawing attention. Detectives in pursuit feeling the pressure. A wily suspect surfaces. The chase forces tough decisions and moral compromises. Maybe I’m overgeneralizing after finishing The Little Things, an entry in that genre that brings an A-list cast and offers some surprises but that feels so familiar and conventional that I can’t help but attribute its every beat to the many films that trod It’s same path. // Grizzled small-town deputy Deke (Denzel Washington) left his homicide detective role with deep emotional scars, but the surfacing of a serial killer in LA twists his path up with that of his replacement Jim (Rami Malek), an intense family-man bent on catching the slippery murderer. That Deke saw similar murders during his time tangles the two up as they chase down leads and stumble onto Albert (Jared Leto), a crime-obsessed drifter who courts the status of being their number one suspect. Eventually the men risk their careers and lives in hopes of beating Albert before he can kill again. // Washington is eminently watchable in this as everything, giving Deke purpose in every step but a haunted knowing look all the while; we see the trauma of his past but also his grit and camaraderie as he finds a kindred spirit in Jim. Malek’s Jim is far more conventional, slowly breaking and losing his almost-arrogant confidence as the killer leaves him stymied; with a stiff jaw but emotive eyes, Jim definitely projects to a future like Deke’s. Much has been made of Leto’s turn as Albert but the character played as your garden-variety weirdo, speaking with unsettling cadence while speaking as though an immortal genius, and it felt like a character we’ve seen before at best and a caricature of broken-minded slimeball at worst. // The Little Things is a fitting title here: the film on the whole has its moments but it lacks sufficient little things to separate it from a ubiquitous genre. I never felt on edge for even a moment in the film and, truthfully, I sometimes heard comedian Will Forte’s voice from Last Man on Earth when Leto spoke. This is certainly a well-made film but the bar is so high for memorable serial killer-centered thrillers that The Little Things can’t find the traction to elevate to or above what came before it. Watch because Washington is always good but don’t expect the film to be anything transcendent.

Intouchables (2011)

If I insisted on a precise look at Intouchables, a 2011 French film later adapted into The Upside with Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart, I would have numerous issues to raise. The intervening years between its release and today have changed what I notice in films and there are certainly elements that are problematic in here. With that said and out of the way, though, this is a big-hearted film about a sincere and unconventional friendship fantastically acted and both fun and moving in parts. // Driss (Omar Sy) is recently out of prison and interviewing for jobs to earn a government benefit. One of these jobs is as a caregiver for Phillippe (François Cluzet), a wealthy widowed man who lost all feeling and function from his neck down. Phillippe chooses the unqualified Driss for the demanding role and soon Driss is living in the luxurious confines of Phillippe’s ornate estate and learning the ropes. Despite vastly different backgrounds that make Driss an odd fit with the team, the two men become fast friends and the wistful, self-limiting Phillippe slowly warms again to the world. // A part of me feels I should bemoan the predictability of the film; this is a heartwarming film through and through. Both men need something and both men find new purpose within themselves with the help of the other—something that comes as no surprise. But, despite that, the story is told beautifully. Race and socioeconomics are there for us, visible in scenes at Driss’s family apartment and his response to his new environs, but the film doesn’t condescend to its audience and fill Intouchables with grand speeches; it lets their friendship transcend those things, never denying nor dwelling on them. There are great, realistic conversations between characters, but their development is so often shown rather than told by a hand placement or a glance off to the side. Sy is phenomenal here, bringing winning charisma to the role. Driss might be a fish out of water in this world and crude in an unbecoming way (particularly toward women) but he connects with people and earns their trust with his connection to Phillippe. (Credit too to the writers for making sure to subvert his casual misogyny in the end). Cluzet, too, deserves applause, imbuing Phillippe with a real melancholy without forfeiting humanity, conveying so much without ever moving more than his face. Even films explicitly written to reinforce dignity in characters sometimes struggle to give them their due human roundness, but Phillippe is far more than a man in a wheelchair whose world widens with his new caregiver in tow. // Reading about a story like this alone could produce earned tears, but I loved that every tear I shed here was one of joy. This film made me feel optimistic. A worse film might leave a similar feeling but cheaply, glossing over the huge societal issues underneath it, but Intouchables lets us see them and reminds us both that they exist and they remain, but that some friendships can transcend them and bring out the best in both them and the world. This is far from a perfect film but it helps me think less about rain clouds and more about the blue sky peeking through them. Cheers to that.

MUSIC

Blood Harmony (2019) by FINNEAS
There are films that I love on the basis of single scenes. They may not be perfect cinematic experiences but they momentarily transcend their quality to be great for a short moment. Blood Harmony is this: one song that carries emotion powerful enough to graft itself onto important real moments and add apparent profundity to them. That moment is “I Lost a Friend”, the first song on the album. The rest is suitable with varied tones and I like it just fine, but the other nineteen minutes of every one of my four listens is just filler until “I Lost a Friend” plays again. I listened to it the entire way back from visiting Katelyn’s tree and it was the right soundtrack for the emerging blue sky as the flood of memories washed over me and the album became important to me because it houses this song, this piece that will forever join my memorial playlist with “Suitcase Full of Sparks”, “Free Bird”, “Always Remember Us This Way”, and the mashup for the bridge. That’s special, honestly. Maybe the other songs will grow on me—I am listening again to write out my review—but it’s fine if they don’t because the song Alyiah sent as a capture of the mood in one of my chapters also captures my mood contemplating loss and writing about it to Davina last night.

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The length of this piece surprised me. As I wrapped up the first draft, I worried over whether it was long enough to even comprise the heart of a newsletter…only to check and discover it was double the length of the traditional one. It doesn’t matter if it gets read—this was good for me to write. I’m aware that the timeline doesn’t line up for the TP and the song at all and yet I don’t care; the truth of this story is stronger than its details. And thinking about Fuzzy and finally understanding why that night and the ultimate ending has always stayed with me was important. Some weeks I’m trying desperately to share something, but other weeks I’m just charting a course through my heart and memory and allowing you access—such is a way that, in my heart, I continue to prove to you all that I trust you and care about you. If you weren’t sure, now you are reminded.