Fatale Abstraction

A close friend has gone over the edge, apparently. Sadly. Being home in the daytime I see a lot of the comings and goings in the building. Don't start thinking I'm like Mrs. Kravitz on Bewitched - meddlesome neighbor. It's just that my huge window is right by the stair, and a crackhead neighbor who used to live above me would come home on his lunch break for about five minutes every day, and I began to realize he wasn't coming home to whip up a tunafish sandwich. In fact, he lost a lot of weight and began acting a bit jumpy and less personable - much out of character. Finally, he moved to another loft in the area, and when he did, a much more beloved neighbor began hanging out at the guy's new pad. I can be a bit blunt, on occasion, and today I was bringing up the subject of gossip with another brutally frank neighbor, and she said "oh, were you going to tell me that jameson is on crack?" Having no intention of the kind, I was floored by this statement. Jameson is a lovely person who grapples with demons, but I've always held out hope he would get a grip and just be himself and learn how to be happy. I think he wants to have a different life, but is pinioned by the fear of wounding his backwoods Baptist minister father with his lifestyle choices. I asked her what she meant - if she was serious, and she said that she smelled some burning chemical wafting from his open window a few days ago, and that besides he has a smell like crackheads get - she knew this because a friend's mother and another friend had been addicted and she recognized the odor, which seems to ooze from his pores 24/7 lately. (and here I thought it was just the beer and chain-smoking that made him reek) I wish Jameson would just embrace his gayness and pinch off the downward spiral. I'm the last person to judge someone for choosing their own poisons, but dammit-- he's not even having a good time! He drinks the shittiest beer imaginable to a state of stupefaction nightly. He obviously is self-medicating and needs to deal with the real problems in his life and get on with it before he pisses it all away. I realized in December he had gone to the dark side of stupid when he made a crap comment to me, and I honestly believe he intended the comment to be helpful. I must have had a look on my face like I was about to give birth to a litter of yaks, because after flattening me with his unwanted advice, he began to cry and beg me to please not be mad at him because he just wanted to be helpful. Jameson has been a dear friend for five years and I found myself looking into his eyes and thinking "who is this motherfucker?" Anyway, I was too flummoxed at the time of the revelation today to remember that I had predicted Jameson would also become a crackhead when he began spending a lot of time at the crackhead's loft. Husband reminded me of my prediction later. I wonder what the future holds, but it's hard to imagine anything good coming of this. I wish I were wrong, because this feels like watching a fatal car crash in slow motion.