Our Love for The Ever Living Dead

Never mind what they say, suicide is not so nearly painless.

Erik Martin. A man. Now no longer.

They started dying back in the ‘90s. OXBOW’s first record, Fuckfest, a complicated suicide note if there ever was one, drew the devil on the wall and those with the eyes and ears to see and hear answered the call. Add this to King of the Jews, our second suchlike recording, and the die had somewhat been cast.

“There’s something wrong with Karl.”

The Germans, unfamiliar with his particular apartment building’s buzzer system had run down five flights of stairs to meet us at the security gate. Heading back up to his apartment we saw a bluing Karl on the white tile of his bathroom floor. Burnt spoon and makeshift hypodermic rig on sink edge, rubber tubing around his arm where he had tied off.

The New Yorker in me felt like the best course of action here was to keep on moving it down the road. Not much I could do for the dead but I called a doctor friend of mine.

“Dude’s OD’d. What should I do?”

“Give him mouth to mouth.”

“No.”

“‘No’? Look, this is no time for homophobia…”

“This has got nothing to do with homophobia.”

“OK. If you’re worried about getting vomit in your mouth when he comes to, close his mouth and breathe in through his nose!”

“No.”

“Look if he dies you’re going to feel guilty.”

“No. No I won’t. Listen: he’s the one who wants to die and he’s been screwing and fucking junkies for the last two years. Condomless.”

“OK. Well….slap his face, can you do that?”

“Yes.” So I haul off and slap him.

“Anything?”

“No.”

“Do it again and if he doesn’t come to call 911.”

This was done and within minutes, literally, paramedics were there, hupped up five flights with loads of gear. It was in the Tenderloin so this was maybe all in a day’s work for them.

They shot him up with Narcan. One in each shoulder. His first words when they jogged him awake?

“Chill…chill…”

They took him away. And when he was “in his right mind” they let him go. He tried to kill himself the next night, and the night after that, finally succeeding the fourth night in a row.

“He’d want you to have this…” His girlfriend, who he had handcuffed to the bed the second attempt, because he hadn’t wanted to die alone, well, she had dragged the bed, with him on it, across the room to the door where she screamed for help. She handed me his Walkman so I could see (“enjoy”?) what he was last listening to when he slipped off of this planet.

It was Fuckfest.

“You want some shirts. I think we wear the same size and I’m never going to wear them again.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t imagine my sister will die again.” He had worn them to her funeral…

OXBOW had become the soundtrack for his existence and then finally for his nonexistence. I still didn’t feel guilty but I didn’t feel that great about the connection. While my suicidal ideation had run it’s course by the time we had gotten to our third record, Let Me Be a Woman, our oeuvre, live show and my writings outside of OXBOW were redolent of the unspecified disaster that might have driven one to desire lifelessness.

Which might have explained the lure of shadow selves to our shadows. Nothing as simple as Judas Priest being dragged into court or Ozzy’s “Suicide Solution” but our lyrical preoccupations and dire world viewing had like attracting like. In fact the worst we got, the better the records did, reaching an apotheosis of sorts with 2002’s An Evil Heat. This was when our march forward, away from the land of the dead, was codified.

Balls hanging/Between his between/Like crab apples/Withered and stoned/And Joseph and Jesus and Belial/Can't hold him…

…Is what I sang and the call was answered and drawn by a contrarian nonsurrender, culminating with the publishing of Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass Kicking But Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking, a different kind of cat came a’calling.

Erik Martin was one such.

Ardent music fan but even more so a man unlikely to suffer fools in silence or without slapping them onto the right side of right thinking. He hailed from Idaho and we started off our friendship thusly: “You want some shirts. I think we wear the same size and I’m never going to wear them again.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t imagine my sister will die again.” He had worn them to her funeral, his twin sister. So I took the funeral shirts, and so began our friendship. He’d call, knowing my penchant for not sleeping, whenever the mood struck him and I’d answer whenever the mood struck me.

He’d ask for advice on women, work, or share observations or ask about music, art or literature. And fighting, training, ultimately health, evincing a desire to stay alive despite being a creature of desires, like me, that might kill you. To wit: food, no sleep and a penchant for punching deserving strangers.

Most recently he was telling me he was going to Florida to see a friend. Then, after that, schedule allowing, he’d be stopping by Casa OXBOW in California. For a sit-down, and maybe a drink.

Then this: “Eugene....you don't directly know me other than I'm Erik (Martin's) friend...and I wish this form of contact was different, but I wanted you to know that Erik passed away this morning in my home in Florida while visiting me. I don't have to tell you, but I will, because you were important in his life…He admired you in ways that go beyond words. At least my own words…He had heart problems, drinking problems, life was getting to be harder to deal with Eugene…He gave up on his health. He gave up on himself to heal.”

Goddamn it.

While I am conscious, more than ever, that the Internet, and social media specifically, has become a clearinghouse of horror and I’ve had to endure the seemingly endless suffering of people sort of known to me whose cats, dogs, loved ones have gotten sick or died. I’ve had to have their likes and dislikes wash over me, same with the small irks that have irked them.

[W]hat I’m hoping will stand is that we stood, without guilt, regret or judgment, up against the lives we’ve lived…

I’d like to imagine that this is not like that. Because indeed it’s not. Sorrow is not the destination here nor does it mark the journey. This is an Arthur Miller “attention must be paid” moment and while, over the course of the years, we’ve lost many to what we almost lost ourselves to — life — when the final accounting is done what I’m hoping will stand is that we stood, without guilt, regret or judgment, up against the lives we’ve lived and have carefully been able to measure out the love we’ve made manifest.

I miss Erik, and Karl, and the passing of all of the others who came into our lives via the music we made, or writing we wrote, who felt some kind of kinship for the lonely thanklessness but also the wonderful specialness of knowing that these are moments that have never happened before and will never happen again.

That now being said, please let us all try to live life as long as we want and want to as long as we live. Which is what I’m meaning when I sign autographs as I so often do: “Don’t Die.”

That’s what I’m hoping our next and newest record, “Love’s Holiday” will say and do: send this message out to the universe. Where, indubitably, the hope is that Erik will embrace it like he embraced the fullness of the rest of his life. Without brakes.

Because this is who we are, and this is what we do.

Godspeed good man.