Inner Tube Youth (My friend Pat )

pjc 4/15/85- 4/3/05 

When I was 19 I lost a dear friend to a drunk driving accident. Since today is his birthday I'd like to write about one of the most idyllic tines in my life. 

I want to write about the summer before his passing, the summer after I had squeaked out of high school, the summer when I had a new best friend.

Pat j. Corbett and I bonded at Bonnaroo 2004 at The Dead show that was postponed until about 3 am  due to tornado warning. The show was properly psychedelic and pat and I were quite psychedelically inclined. We navigated the scary spacey stuff of the 2nd set  as a duo  until it landed into the joyous roll of "Franklin's Tower." We survived the improvisational psychedelic set 2 skull fuck together and became inseparable.

"If you get confused listen to the music play"- "Franklin's Tower", The Grateful fucking Dead

When the 8-10 friends that I went to the festival with got home we were electrified  by the shared experience, and felt like the coolest kids in the town. I was 18, freshly graduated from high school, with absolutely zero responsibilities. All I did was party and get laid, to paraphrase Kevin spacey in the film "American beauty"

I made my party money as a busboy at a popular tex mex joint in the center of my hometown (Plymouth, Ma). It was fun, and every night ended with the attractive young waitresses handing me wads  of cash for my tip out. I would go out after work with my friends until sunrise and come back to work at night and do it again.

Pat was my road dog that sumner, and I slept

On his leather couch every night. I don't think I ever went home. He lived way out in the woods next to a pond in a land beyond the construct of linear time.

This is what I set out to write about,though: pat and I spent our summer days floating around the pond  on inner tunes. We wrapped a cooler full of beer in life jackets so it would float along with us. Just floating and drinking, talking and laughing.

Not a care in the world... it never even mattered what time It was.

I felt like huckleberry finm floating down the Mississippi River. The memories are this happy place in my consciousness. I miss Pat and I feel fortunate that I shared those times with him.

He was the first friend I ever lost, and at age 19 you are simply not mentally equipped to understand your own mortality until you're face to face with it.

"There are things you can't avoid, you have to face them when you aren't prepared to face them"

- "Fight Test", Flaming Lips

The show In question :

https://archive.org/details/thedead2004-06-12