The list of dead friends gets longer.

You make another person's death about you. You're not supposed to do that, but you do it anyway because you're a person.

You can set about tending to the needs of the deceased's most bereaved friends or family members, and that's another thing you do, obviously, but you're also going to be thinking about your own sadness. If you don't do this internal stuff, you'll find yourself stuck.

That's what the few-weeks-long SLUGGISH break was. Deaths. And in the interest of making my opening sentence true, I will say that the Sandra Bernhard joke about Naomi Campbell's reaction to the death of Gianni Versace – "It's been a terrible thing... for me." – feels much more relatable than it did thirty years ago.

My good friend J had cancer. I knew about it from the beginning, but at some point in 2025 he said, "It's spreading all over, and I'm going to die."

So I knew it was coming. He would text me from chemo appointments. Send pics of being very skinny in increasingly goofy outfits, checkerboard rocker trousers, shit I'd never imagine him wearing. For context, pre-cancer-J was a large man who used to tackle people while playing high school football. Illness erases your body and makes you lose your inhibitions regarding flamboyant attire.

Not long ago, he said, "A few months. Something like that. Maybe a year if I'm lucky." Then it happens before anyone is ready. I woke up one day and heard from his wife, "J died in his sleep." The news came on the same day as the news of another friend's death. Also cancer. And this came two weeks after the news of a family member's sudden death. The other two were shocks. With J, I thought there'd be a slower roll out. There was not.

When J told me, "I'm going to die, and that's that," his next words were "Do not be inspirational or comforting about this."

I said, "Then I will make amusing comments about death. And some dick jokes. But just about your dick. I will make jokes about your stupid dick."

J was from West Texas, and he had the hick accent to prove it. He sounded like he was always about to do a little gospel preaching. An atheist from the time I met him in our shared punk-rock 1980s, this never transpired, but he would have made an imposing Southern Baptist.

We went to college together, but I never knew if he attended classes. We worked at the same indie record store until he just stopped showing up because he didn't feel like it anymore. Or maybe he got fired? Hard to remember. Anyway, he'd still come in just to hang out, which was the bulk of that job in the first place. More than anything, we saw a lot of shows together: Husker Du, Pavement, Unsane, Billy Bragg, Bikini Kill, Yo La Tengo. Other bands. He had a Cathy Dennis cassette that was always going in his car.

I went fishing with him once, and it was extremely boring, but I did catch a fish. He liked baseball, too, which is also boring and I was subjected to much more of that when we became roommates in the 90s. The only time a baseball game wasn't happening on his big TV was when we sat down to watch the OJ Simpson freeway chase.

He did not clean up after himself. After about 18 months of being roommates, I said, "I want to keep on being your friend, so I'm moving out. You should hire a cleaning person." I was a groomsman at his first wedding. Later he got divorced, and said, "Well, I fucked that up." And that was all the conversation I remember having about it.

As the cancer spread everywhere in his body, we texted a lot. There were phone calls, too, because we're old, and old people like a phone call. He was annoyed that he would die before Donald Trump.

He said, "I want you to send me the most fucked-up metal and noise you have. The chemo is so painful I need to hear painful music." I sent him this. Also this. And this. I don't know if any of it is the most fucked-up, but it was enough to make him happy.

And in spite of telling me not to be unusually nice to him, on our last phone conversation, he uncharacteristically asked me if he had been a good friend. I said, "Oh, you're going to go soft on me now."

"I don't know."

"OK then, yes, you were a good and fairly slovenly friend. And then for a while there in the mid-2000s there was that strange phase where you were shitty and an asshole, but then you got over that and went back to being a good friend, so it all worked out and I love you and let's not worry about anything."

I'm in my 60s and I think it's going to start happening a lot more frequently. I asked an older friend about it. Their response to "How do you manage it?" was, "You just do. You don't have a choice. You just keep going."

First you're shocked, and then you're numb, and then there's a moment when you shift gears and you realize you can't stay there, and it all settles into a little spot in your brain. You'll return to it when something outside reminds you. For J, when something triggers a return to that little spot – Slanted and Enchanted or another of many cultural cues – I'll stop for a second and think about how his car always smelled like cigarettes.