I went looking through Aaron’s wall yesterday to find the last status post he made. Took me a long time, there were lots of pages of goodbyes… it made me laugh, to find that his last word to us was sex.
One word, sex.
I found out about his death at the “everything to do with sex show”. Can’t say it didn’t put a damper on it, but I don’t mind. I was going to get myself hypnotized, but I’m already afraid to let someone have full reign on this brain, let alone when it’s been shot like a slingshot between the deep desire to dissolve into a puddle of tears, and remain in convivial conduct for the crowd. I had deep trouble containing myself, maintaining “normal” conduct.
Then I got to go to the Atria and watch the boys play for him, and I got to play, I got to run around, and bang things, thrash about and yell, let out a couple tears, hand out a bunch of hugs, and knock a few back… I’m sorry bro, I didn’t pour one out, but I sure as fuck poured as many in as I could. I remember thinking how lucky I was to be a girl, and when it got too intense mid set, I got to go take a smoke break… and cut it short to run back in and get some more.
I remember thinking how lucky I was to be me all night, I found two drink tickets on the floor, I caught a stick, and on my way out for my mid set smoke, found an entire reem of drink tickets on the floor (what a guy, he buys rounds at his own wake).
I wanted to write my heart out as soon as I got home, but I was too busy crying. I wanted to write my heart out as soon as I got up after 4 hours of a drunken coma, but got lost in tears, and trying to hear him, and see him, and touch h im, and if I could just figure out how, if I was smart enough, make that one tiny second, the kind he was so good at making, stop, and not happen at all. My heart just wasn’t in it… It’s broken.
The image I remember of Aaron most is the MSN emoticon he displayed for the whole time I used that service, an x-ray of a chest, with a broken heart behind the cage.
Aaron never missed a beat, never missed an opportunity to shine. He’s going to make many of us shine in his passing. To watch how many people he touched pour out their grief makes mine real. I’m not making a big deal out of it, I’m not being dramatic, I’m not being maudlin… he really was that fuckin cool, and he did manage to leave behind more than he left with. A little piece of our hearts.
Sex.
I looked it up this morning and came up with the wikipedia page first, which wasn’t really what I was looking for. So I googled “meaning of sex”.
I got a doctoral thesis.
” Sex only has meaning insofar as we experience it. Its meaning is emergent, not objective. We discover the meaning of sex each time we are sexual, meaning that only resides in our experience. The meaning of sex changes–is reinvented–each time we are sexual.”
http://www.ejhs.org/volume1/mklein.htm
Thank you Marty Klein, Phd.
And Thank you, Aaron Arsenic, for giving me a deeper understanding of sex than I ever could have dreamed of.
Rest in peace Aaron Beamish, we have, and always will, love you.
T.