Eulogy Of A Nothing

Yesterday, Cody Weber finally came to get the shit that he left here. Or maybe it was the day before yesterday. Who remembers little details like that?

At any rate, he got his stuff in about the biggest hurry you could imagine. He came and loaded his stuff into the back of a truck that looked like it would fall apart if you farted on it. The four of us (me, my brother Scotty, our friend Matt and Galen) all wondered amongst one another whether or not their truck would even take them back to Keokuk in one piece. The consensus we reached was, “Who gives a fuck?”

Weber’s return was rather anticlimactic, since my friends Galen and Matt were both assuring me that Cody was definitely going to try something. There were a lot of conversations about how violence would be handled if it came to that. I think maybe I just have paranoid friends. And I largely laughed at their warnings until Cody told me via text that he was bringing four other guys. Five people to get a few items? It seemed fishy. When I heard that, my own paranoia kicked in. I wonder if Cody would have entered my house at all if he knew how violent a resolution we had resigned ourselves to if need be. Probably not.

Thankfully, Cody didn’t say a cross word. Nor did his four friends. He did however have the body language of a man who just got raped in the ass and his eyes were contemptuous, feigning dismissiveness. It made me smile to see him feeling so affected, but trying and failing to hide it from me and mine.

It’s amazing how loyal I can be to a person, even when everyone around me turns on them. I defended Cody to the bitter end. I defended his drug use, his chain-smoking, his disgusting bedroom, his increasingly shitty attitude, his ineptitude as a father and his declining work ethic. I say again, It’s amazing (and pathetic) how loyal I can be to a shitty person.

But it’s also amazing how severely I can turn on that person when I finally do change my mind about them. As I stared at Cody Weber in his blue hoodie and hipster glasses (which he doesn’t need, by the way, his vision is fine) it struck me that as little as 6 months ago, I would have jumped in front of a bullet to protect his life. I considered him a close friend. Now, I doubt I’d even care if he was shot. I wouldn’t be happy, but nor would I be sad. I emotionally divorced myself from him.

Well, maybe that’s not fully true. If I had truly severed him from my feelings, why would I need to write this? Perhaps just as a eulogy. While his stuff was here, I couldn’t let him go completely. Now I can. Finally, the nightmare is over. He’s no longer a terrible friend, nor an annoying adversary, nor a wearying burden. Now, he’s nothing to me. And that is worth noting.

RIP Cody Weber’s relevance, which I created and which I now officially revoke forever.