Promoted by Steven D
From my pal Tim:
I don’t know if you knew or remember this guy, but Jay M., Mark M’s little brother (both of whom worked at Christie’s for a while with Joe Kelly, Bobby Cocktails, etc.), is dead.
He was a smart, loveable fuck-up a couple of years younger than us who lived for years in Newport (they grew up in Fall River) who had some issues with drugs (who fucking didn’t?) and got into some trouble, but later woke up, grew up, and as part of his efforts to turn his life around and get on the straight-and-narrow, joined the US Marines. He ended up being shipped off to Iraq. He was living somewhere down south and had been back from a recent tour of duty (probably more than one, given the way the regime ruining/running the country has been abusing its American service people) and apparently had been suffering severe PTSD. A few weeks ago, he took his own life by throwing himself in front of an eighteen-wheeler on a highway. It had to be PTSD, because that guy, even in the depths of his drug problems, loved life and was too fucking cerebral to remotely fit any profile of a suicide case. Pauly told me a couple of weeks ago that he’d heard a rumor about it, but at the Fu Manchu show, Joe Kelly confirmed it. Joe, his wife, and Mike Livingston were up in Cambridge for the show, and he filled me in at the merch table. Joe still hangs out with Mark (“I’ve been making a point of spending as much time as I can these days,” he said), so he had, sadly, the best access to the truth.
It’s fucking awful, and as I said to Joe, it’s not Jay’s fault and it’s just the tip of the fucking iceberg. I am not religious but at times like this I really hope there is a just god and a place more horrible than any existing human conception of eternal hell for the criminal warlords like Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. to burn and suffer for the countless worthwhile lives like Jay’s that they have and will continue to ruin. What a sad, sickening mess. Words fail to capture it.
I called up Clinton’s campaign in Pennsylvania and read them this email. They told me they were sorry for my loss, urged me to have a wonderful day, and hung up the phone quickly. Arlen Specter’s office put me on hold, and never returned to the phone.
Why should they care? It’s not their kid. It’s not their friends…
