That's So Metal

An ode to Ty Lawson.

Everyone had shuffled into the kitchen and I could barely push passed guests to understand what all the commotion was about. My hair was dyed black and long back then, and I thought it was cool to make my mane look unkempt and ratty.  I left for a few minutes to tease the roots and split ends of my unwashed hair, only to come back to the party to realize that no one noticed I had left. Certainly no one noticed my rock n’ roll sex hair either, but to this day, I believe for good reason… 

We had ridden our bikes out to five points, when warehouses were still inhabited by punks, to a Beltane party that a good friend threw every year. We had raced each block and howled our battle cries at the moon. If there was a higher force above, laying in a hammock made of constellations, there was no way it could have ignored us that night. I remember feeling infinite. 

One very short and one very tall, we wallflowers tip-toed around the party in search of snacks until we eventually landed in the kitchen. Where there was food, there was no way in hell that we were moving. The two of us had made an unspoken pact that we misfits in this game of life were in it for the long haul. Ty was the only person who truly knew who I was inside and out, the one person who could understand the internal battles that controlled my life. I had dated his best friend briefly in high school, but later we concluded destiny meant us. For most of high school he rocked a foot tall red Mohawk and for many, this is what they would remember - the popular outcast too-cool-for-school who rode a mini bike to and from the forsaken building. For others, they would remember his perseverance, his gentle heart that fought with the world every damned day, and the tortured soul that could pick up anyone off the ground but not himself. I watched him on a daily basis save classmates from drowning in a pool of their own sorrows.  Everyone, however thanks to the early 2000’s, would remember his prize winning bullet belt and his tight fitting orange t-shirt. 

I remember leaving to tussle my hair, coming out of the bathroom to hear nothing. No cracker was crunching, no gossip was being dispelled from coral colored lips; in fact no one was even in the living room anymore. Lucky for me, I’ve always had razor sharp elbows and in instances like these, they allowed me to flail and bone my way up to the front. Punks and the like, stood in awe staring at the handsome man I knew as my best friend, poised in front of his audience. Ty had a raw egg from the fridge in his left hand and with a nod to his admirers, plunged the whole egg into his mouth, shell and all. A moment passed, one that felt so significant but I cannot remember it. Suddenly, my ears picked up on a faint sound. It was the egg. Ty’s teeth were destroying an unborn chicks safety net into a million pieces. Minutes passed and nobody blinked. Nobody dared to say a word until we watched Ty swallow. I cringed; it was something I could and would never do myself. 

We all just, stood there. 

I couldn’t feel my toes anymore we stood so long. My eyes hurt from staring at Ty exclusively.

Finally, a brave tongue cut the stillness.  

“That is so metal.”  

Everybody looked at the boy who had uttered these words, held their breath for a minute and then cheered. People gave each other hi-five’s and swooned over my party plus one. 

I snapped a picture of him on the stairs and we left. Our purpose felt fulfilled. 

For a brief time Ty moved to Boulder where many knew him as the alternative bus driver that would so kindly drive them to Denver and back or to their comfortable homes in the hills. Many times during his years working for RTD, girls and women alike would ride the bus back and forth simply to chat with Ty. He was personable, he took risks, he understood the complexities of life, and was there for people unconditionally. He left a green colored army sleeping bag at my house for the nights Denver called to him. We stayed up late, our brains dissecting the people we knew and pondering the personalities of atoms – we were the nuclei, but were our protons and electrons balanced?

Ty knew all along who I really was deep down inside and was one of the few people in my life who never questioned my coming out. In fact, he congratulated it. We were never meant to be lovers, rather soul mates, but our relationship would never be mistaken for anything less than an epic love. Ty and I were supposed to go back to school together. Rebuild our lives. We had been so sick and tired of feeling inadequate and undermined by our own spirits. In the end, I went back to school without him. I was there alone to carry on our fight. 

I had to re-write my definitions of what love meant. I learned that love was finding my partners in crime. It was therapy. It was work. Love was standing tall at his funeral - his very unexpected funeral. It was the defiance of my tear ducts, as they were now on strike. It was ordering a strong, black americano for the first time in years as Ty and I had always agreed that coffee made us feel less depressed. Love was rolling out and sleeping tightly bundled in his abandoned sleeping bag the night I got the call. It was ordering everything on the menu, because after all these years I didn’t know his favorite food (in the grand scheme of things, it was a detail too minute in our grand fury). I have to admit that I’ve been lucky enough to not have attended many funerals before Ty’s and because of this, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. How would he be honored in just a few hours?

It took place at a church that he and his brother had gone to as kids, back in the suburbs where we grew up. People came together in ways I had never witnessed before. Those who wanted to take a microphone that was being passed around were given space to share their stories of the irreplaceable man we all knew and loved. I hugged peers I hadn’t seen since high school and felt comforted in seeing familiar faces. Even through his extensive battle with addiction, not one soul had a single grim thing to say about Ty and I don’t believe that was solely because of where we were. We were all growing up. We most certainly weren’t in high school anymore. The only criticism that I had to discuss personally was the residual guilt I had for not being around as much during the past few years of his life-long struggle. For the last time I would see him, we had met up in my newest apartment at the time for a catch up date with plenty of coffee and snacks. I felt lucky that we had apologized for our absences and he left me feeling like we were back to normal. He had always helped me move out of and into new apartments, as he was surely the strongest person I knew physically, mentally, and emotionally. I remember once he carried me sitting in a chair up two flights of stairs. I tried to call him for help when I moved out of that apartment, forgetting that he was gone, forgetting for a split moment that he had left this plane to a new one and I wasn’t allowed to tag along.  

I never told anyone, but I knew in my heart that his death was okay and almost, pure. Everything within the cosmos, the universe, and the ruler swaying in a hammock above, was as it was. Not that I felt it was fair, or that I didn’t wish with all my might for it not to be true, I just knew deep down within my heart that he was truly all right now. He had left an extraordinary legacy, shaping so many lives that even if he didn’t want to live on forever, he would. He would fill the pages of stories, take over conversations, touch the hearts of those who did not know him, and fuel the fight in many. He would remain my best friend and the only person who was my brother, my lifeline, my protector. His memory would show up in my life in the most unexpected and touching ways. He would communicate through others to give me messages when I felt in doubt. His passion and purpose, as well as his angelic strength, would continually get me and many others out of bed, especially when we found it the hardest to keep on going. I’ve heard he shows up in my high school classmates’ dreams, and his infatuation with ink shows up on the skin of loved ones in his memory. He was like an old Greek god that people wanted to chisel into stone, sacrificing their time and hearts for. If one looks closely, you can see trails of his homage all around like secret love notes yearning to be read. 

And that, is so metal. 

༓

This Substack is a continued love letter to Sacred Death about the complexities of life, death, and the in-between from the viewpoint of a specific Persian Death Witch. Thank you for taking the time to read this love letter with me. ~ Hannah Haddadi {she/they}

Next essay: Death of Binary Perceptions Pt. I. Coming Saturday, May 13th @ 10:00am Mountain time.

Website / Holy Coven Patreon / Discord Community