Charlie's Best Friend

Charlie and I were best friends
For a long time

Right up until I killed myself

We were on a little league team together
And from then on in
We were inseparable

Charlie wasn't the best little league player
But he was a great friend

We both got married around the same time
And then he got divorced
And remarried
And had a kid

I'm his daughter's godfather
Or, I was
When I was alive

Then one night
We went out drinking
And I asked him to stop at this bridge we always passed
On the way home

I got up on the railing
And started walking and talking
And saying shit I shouldn't
And then the next thing you know
I'm going down

The impact didn't kill me
The bridge wasn't that high up
But by the time Charlie swam out to me
I wasn't breathing

Did I think about my wife when I jumped?
Did I think about my kids?
Did I think about what it would do to my best friend
To have to pull my body out of the water
And try to save my life?

Nope

Didn't think about any of that

If I'm being honest

--And dead people do tend to be honest

--Then no, I didn't think about any of that stuff

Here's what I thought about:

When Charlie and I were in high school
His Dad took off
Which was for the best anyway
Because the guy was a fucking prick

But Charlie would come over to my house every night
Because his mom would get drunk
And pass out
And his brother would say mean shit to him
About how he should be running the family
But he couldn't
Because of what a pussy he was

Charlie had a bad home life
Real bad

So he'd come over to my house
And we'd crash in my room
And then I'd wake up
And hear Charlie crying

He was the only person I ever met in my life
Who cried in their sleep

And even though it made me nervous to do it
I'd go down on the floor
Where Charlie was sleeping in his sleeping bag
And I'd crawl in with him
And hold him
Until he stopped crying

I'd say stuff to him like--

'One day we're going to get out of here, Charlie.'

Stupid shit, you know
But I believed it

I thought one day
We'd just escape

And I could get him away
From all that fucked up stuff

Then you get older
And you understand some things

You understand
That Charlie was crying because his family didn't love him
And he couldn't love me
And I married a woman I couldn't love
And so did Charlie
And so we couldn't love our families
And so the whole damn world is fucked up

And once you understand that
It's really easy to find yourself
Up on a bridge
Looking down
Thinking--

My oh my, the water looks fine.

When the ambulance showed up to get me
Charlie had stopped CPR
And he was just laying there
Holding me, saying--

Don't go, don't go, don't go

And from somewhere up above my body and him
I was thinking of us two as teenagers
In that sleeping bag
Thinking I could save Charlie
From the whole wide world

And now here was Charlie
Thinking he could save me
From what the world already did

I know you people want to ask me
If I could go back again and do it over
Would I still jump?

What you don't understand
When you're still alive
Is that everything that's going to be done
Is already done

Everything that's going to happen
Has happened

Charlie just died
And he's been dead forever

And somewhere
In a really nice place
On a warm August night
In a bedroom with the window open
And rock band posters on the wall

There's me and Charlie in that sleeping bag
Wondering when the world's
Going to come and get us

And thinking we're ready for it

Thinking we know
What to expect