I knew him as Endo and nothing more. He was my bosses' neighbor and thirty five, which I'll be soon, or at least that's statistically likely. One week ago to this day Endo barricaded his apartment closed while his girlfriend was out shopping and than hung himself in their basement. My boss, Mark, heard a strange metallic noise a grunt and then quiet, making nothing of it until the police and ambulance came to make official note several hours later.
Endo was Black with a White girlfriend, younger then him by some years. Mark I'm sorry to say had a problem with this for awhile but came to like them both as a couple and as people in their own right. I met them three or four times and spent maybe a total of one hour living a mutual life with them. Looking back I note that both Endo and the living woman (name..... sorry) had a markedly constrained manner about them, one that reminds me of several peers of mine 'outstate' who have effectively given up on ever having a life that is more materially comfortable, or internally fuller or just in any way "more" in a positive sense. It is to say the no shit a depressive way to live, but tolerable enough for most who have to. Most. I know social statistics and such. I know that suicide is one of the main causes of 'premature' death in Nebraska and other rural states. Still, I wouldn't have guessed about Endo, and if I had then what? Grab him by the arm and say "hey' you shouldn't kill yourself even if you really want to?" We weren't even friends really. I only knew him well enough for him to have existed as a soul to me. I never would have guessed.
I mused before that when people who are still youngish kill themselves it is generally due to love/sex/relationship issues with money as a distant second. Endo had both from what I've heard in days after. Apperently the girlfriend was handling the bulk of mutual support and had come to resent this. Came from a wealthier family or held a steadier job or something. Endo did own a shady garage on N street in the region where downtown gradually peters into neighborhood. I remember it was very dusty and rather cold though when it was still September when I was there. There are 'scrapers' about my hood. Not thieves mind you but just men who will ply their old pickup trucks through the area searching backyards for junked grills, batteries tools etc without inquiring if these things were so junked as they appeared. Then they take their findings to a place like Endo had; collect their cash with no need for ID and address like the corporate recycling joints demand anymore. This thing they do is a major economy in the whole northeast quadrant of Lincoln, which isn't really "that" poor at all so, you could well imagine, anyway.
Anyway Endo lost his garage on account his polidrug habit. His marijuana was always excellent and for extra cash he would sell what he didn't smoke sometimes, an insufficient trickle. He was very casual about driving his girlfriends unplated car around for hours tipsy with no license and whatever contraband in his pocket; which which in hindsight may look the sign of extreme indifference to one's future and I suppose it is. Then again I've done that myself and got away with it; mainly. Here I am. It was undoubtedly the crystal meth that poisoned him the most, nothing that hasn't been said about that shit. He and the woman are both in thrall to it and it may indeed have been the primary thing that bound them together, though I hate to think so. I also hate to think that Endo, who was mild and friendly towards others, even kind in his own way, had killed himself mainly to 'break it off' with his lover in a way so dramatic that she could never outdo him and therefore 'win' their mutual acrimony. The nagging truth of it is that while may not have been The motive for what he did it wasn't not a motive either. Still I remember him well. He was a good man.
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