As I listened to Harris tell his story, I had the bizarre experience of hearing things that I’d never heard before. Each new piece of information he revealed was like a tiny little stab to the heart with a scalpel. I knew he’d been keeping things from me since he started using, but it really blew my mind that I was hearing all of this for the first time alongside millions of strangers.
Harris wasn’t the first addict I’d known and loved, so I was aware that deceit was part of the disease. One of my best friends from childhood died of a drug overdose ten years earlier—a mix of cocaine and heroin. He was only twenty-five at the time. His girlfriend, another good friend from high school, was also an addict. I distinctly remember her nodding off in the middle of conversations and being hesitant to let her stay over out of fear that she would steal something. Addicts lie. I guess I just hadn’t put my brother in that box.
On the podcast, I learned a litany of new things about my brother.
1. He’d been going to dangerous parks in the middle of the night to score heroin.
2. He did this often.
3. He was robbed one night at one of these parks.
4. He called in sick from Parks for four days and sat at home alone, shooting heroin.
5. During this staycation, he had a “mini overdose.”
He told Pete Holmes that Robin Williams had gone to the same Malibu rehab as him. He said it’s sad when anyone dies, even though every single human dies, but that it’s extra sad that the world doesn’t have Robin Williams’s comedy anymore.
“And it’s sad for his family,” he said.
Then he paused. And I could hear in that small silence that he thought about his family. He thought about Mom and Dad. He thought about how destroyed they’d be if they lost him.
“If I go out again now that it’s shooting heroin, I could die. That’s it. It’s not fun anymore. It’s life or death now. I don’t want to do that to my parents. I don’t want to do that to myself. Um. So I’m taking it more seriously now. And I’m in a good place.”
21 Eulogy
No one ever gets to hear his own eulogy. It’s likely the most adoring thing anyone will ever say about us, and we never get to hear it.
Remember when we threw a funeral party for Dad’s seventieth birthday, and everyone brought a eulogy to read aloud. It was dark, sure, but delightful. Much like Dad. You and I got on the mic and told our favorite “Dadisms:”
“Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.”
“The cemetery is full of indispensable people.”
“Wake up and pee! The world is on fire!”
“Pussy pulls the freight train.”
That night, he got to hear how much everyone loved him. He’s frugal with smiles but was beaming that night.
I keep thinking, maybe if you’d been able to hear the eulogy I delivered at your real funeral, you would’ve realized how much I loved you, and you wouldn’t have done the thing you did. Maybe I could have saved you.
I said lots of things I’m sure I never said to you in any sort of earnest way.
Like:
“He made the rest of us look bad. He was the funniest. He was the coolest. He had the most creative, inventive, limitless mind that was perpetually working. He was never fully present in any single moment but always functioning on multiple levels—always thinking and revising, always surveying the room for new material, always typing a new joke on his iPhone or finger pecking furiously away on his laptop. He was a true and tremendous talent who accomplished more in thirty years than most people accomplish in a lifetime.”
“He was loved for his comedic genius, yes, but people also admired who he was as a person. He was as raw, honest, and genuine as they come. And even though he could be exasperatingly stubborn, he didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. He possessed an innate charm that drew people in. He was able to make everyone in the room feel like they were his best friend. He was kind and forgiving, generous and compassionate. He really seemed to give people the benefit of the doubt. He understood that on a basic level, we’re all the same. We’re all human, and we’re all just doing the best we can. In his words: ‘Let’s stop finding a new witch of the week and burning them at the stake. We are all horrible and wonderful and figuring it out.’”
That was my favorite thing you ever said.
That is my favorite thing anyone has ever said.
And it was exactly you—horrible and wonderful and everything in between.
• • •
You used to love to come up to school and talk to my students when you were in town. They idolized you because you got paid to do comedy and said the word fuck a lot. And because you were so real and human and devoid of pretense, you made them think, “If he can do it, I can, too.” You worked so hard but made it sound so effortless. I asked you once how kids who are interested in stand-up learn stand-up because I was teaching a comedy elective, despite the fact that I was not a comedian and had no prior experience. You said, “You watch stand-up and you write jokes and you get onstage a billion times and do it and learn what sucks and at first you imitate your idols and then find your own voice. The end.”
The night
