The big news - if you haven't heard already - is that a friend of mine died. His name was Kevin McCormick, aka Frostbyte, and he went to the same MIT fraternity that my brother did.

I found out about this in a very strange way. I was actually at work on Friday, bored, and surfing the boards at Honeypump. I noticed another friend of mine put up a post called "I'm sad," and so I clicked on it. Turns out it was about Frostbyte. He had died on Sunday.

Nobody had bothered to tell me. To be fair, I wasn't good friends with him anyway - we met a few times, and I went to a couple parties at his loft occasionally a few years ago. I remember it being really neat; Frostbyte was a visual artist specializing in light shows, and he went out to Burning Man on occasional years to set up installations. Also, they had a roomful of pinball machines and old video games when I hung out there, though they belonged to someone who later moved out. But I didn't know him that well at all. I did not, for instance, know that he was gay.

I don't know much through any official channels, but according to friends, this is what happened: he decided to take some ecstasy early in the morning, by himself. A couple of hours later, his boyfriend found him unconscious and not responding, and called 911. He never regained consciousness; his heart had given out and there was nothing they could do.

Naturally, if someone dies from anything drug-related, the cops will be all over their personal business like white on rice. They searched his loft, and (they say) found materials used to make ecstasy and crystal meth.

And of course, the media took the low road. Playing up the scare angle, they portrayed the loft as a den of iniquity. WHDH reported that Kevin was found "bound" in the apartment, and that the police believed "parties were being held at the location involving sex and bondage." The Boston Herald said he died at a "drug-fueled sex party," and that a special unit from New York had to be called in to clean up the "dangerous, potentially explosive South Boston drug meth lab." Other herald stories called it a "wild weekend sex romp gone wrong," claimed that "hamsters had been found in the basement," and quoted officers as saying it was one of the Northeast's largest meth labs containing "hundreds of chemicals for concocting crystal methamphetamines, ecstasy and date-rape drugs".

Every news story let it be known that their loft was near the Children's Museum, usually minimizing the distance by a few hundred yards. (I work closer to the Children's Museum than they lived, and I'm across the channel.)

It's mostly bullshit, of course. Though I have no direct experience, I can certainly see Frostbyte growing pot, conceivably even trying to make ecstasy for himself and his pals. But GHB? Crystal meth? Ketamine? Not a fucking chance. Certainly not to produce on a large scale, and definitely not to sell to kids.

A story in the Boston Globe today, while probably still exaggerated, is a little closer to the truth. The cops now think they were making "designer drugs," not meth or GHB. Of the "7 1/2 gallons" of chemical seized, the only one mentioned was a "powdered bromide," which doesn't tell us anything. Considering that some of the chemicals used in drug manufacturing are things like ammonia, they could just as easily be talking about the cleaners under the sink. Police seized the usual hippie drugs that artists take: pot, mushrooms, LSD, ecstasy. Officials said "it is not clear whether any of the drugs were being cultivated or made at the apartment." They also seized a book by some dude who sold 'shrooms by mail, a gas mask, and about two hundred in cash.

So, yeah: a fan of psychedelia, who decided to do some experiments. Big fucking deal. With the exception of ecstasy, I've done all of these drugs myself, and you probably have too. Frostbyte was about as harmful as a teddy bear. Certainly not the hulking threat that the media previously made him out to be. Yet that Globe article was the only one I could find that followed up on the story.

The press thrives on scare stories, you see. The Herald had already been running articles about the fear of meth labs infiltrating New England, and here was exactly the stereotype they need. The drug-addled sexual deviant, a Pied Piper leading children to degradation and sin. It was proof that they were right, that you - yes, you - should be scared shitless, eager to have the gub'mint step in and save you, as if you were some apple-cheeked maiden tied to the railroad tracks.

And two days after it happened, the Senate passed a law requiring drug stores to lock up Sudafed.

...But I don't want to dwell on the cops and media bullshit. It seems petty, somehow, to sink to their level. I'd rather not turn his death into a political tennis match.

The truth was this: He was a nice guy, he had some artistic talent, and it wasn't his time to go. The truth is that it was a tragedy, and that a good man died for no good reason at all.

I'm not going to dwell on his death. I didn't know him well enough, and I'd just be insulting those friends of mine who knew him better and are truly hurting.

But it did bring back some bad memories.

About ten years ago, I hung out at TEP (my brother's frat) quite a lot. I was sitting in the front room, watching some gay porn that a couple of the brothers rented (making sure I wasn't a third wheel first - and no, I didn't get off on it, it was mostly just funny, as it was obviously straight dudes who needed some quick cash). I heard a commotion out back, and one of the other guys - I think this guy called Hardpack - came in and asked if we had heard what had happened. We hadn't.

What had happened was that my friend Swifty had jumped off the roof to kill himself. He had landed on a wooden fence bordering the parking lot. He wasn't dead. The ambulance was already out back, and occasionally I could hear Swifty screaming in pain.

I kind of freaked out. We were friends, but not exactly best friends - he was much closer to my brother. But I just couldn't handle it.

The thing that amazed me, and made me ashamed of myself, was that I was actually jealous of him. I was the one that was constantly thinking about suicide. I was the one that ran out onto the roof when drunk, and had to drag myself back from the edge. I had always thought that I was going to kill myself one day. And now Swify had gone and done it, while I was in the front room watching gay porn for a laugh.

After a few shaky minutes, after others made sure he was with the paramedics, I went to the foyer, in a little area between the front door and the door to the common room. And I just lost it. I was surprised, in fact, at just how long and how hard I cried.

I couldn't be around the frat house for a week or so after that. Just couldn't handle all the grief. I didn't have very many non-MIT friends at the time, but I tried hanging out with them, and this turned out spectacularly badly - I really just couldn't talk much at all.

Swifty did end up living, but they had to amputate two of his limbs. I later learned that he was on acid at the time, and strung out and stressed from final exams and family matters. After a few days I learned to cope.

Then about a week later, I was at work, being a woefully underpaid assistant manager at a shitty Italian bodega. It was getting close to closing time, and a couple of TEP folks were walking by as I was taking in the produce. I talked to them about Swifty, and one of them - Hardpack again, I think - said that one of the other TEPs had just died.

I looked at him like he was making a sick joke. "You're kidding, right?"

He shook his head no. Two other people I knew had died in a plane crash.

I don't remember what I said next. Something with "Jesus fucking Christ" and "fuck" in it, I'm sure. I cut the conversation short and went back inside.

I remember thinking: No. No fucking way. I fucking refuse. There is no fucking way I'm going through this again.

Then I went into the basement, into the store's wine cellar, and I picked up some bottles and threw them against the wall.

What had happened was that two people I knew, Christine and Jonas, were flying back from New York in a small airplane, with one of their parents piloting. They had flown low through airspace that had been zoned for sky-diving. Someone had parachuted out of a plane above them, and hit the wing of their plane on the way down. Their airplane crashed, and everyone aboard was killed. The sky-diver survived.

I felt very sorry for the sky-diver. There's no way it was his fault, but I'm sure he still felt pretty damn bad about it.

I didn't know Jonas at all, really, but I knew Christine. She was a small, pretty Asian girl with a barbell through her nose. I used to tease her and say it looked like "silver snot." Despite this, and for no reason that I could fathom, she liked me. And for an equally unfathomable reason, I didn't like her, at least not in that particular way. A couple of months earlier, we had walked alone together on the MIT campus, and we ended up sitting in one of the courtyards alone and had The Talk. I was nervous as hell, and a bit confused as to why I was turning her down, and feeling bad about being on the other end of The Talk for a change. When I broke the news to her, she just shrugged. "Okay," she said cheerfully, as if nothing had happened. Since nothing really had, I think this was a pretty reasonable reaction on her part. Fairly soon afterwards, she started going out with another friend of mine, who was much more receptive to her charms.

I went to the memorial service, more out of obligation than real desire; not that I wasn't incredibly sad, but I just hate things like that - everyone wearing their grief on their sleeves, turning the dead person into a Cute Little Angel, into nothing more than a cipher. But one of her dorm-mates gave a speech about her which I liked. They were moving out at the same time, and packing things up, and nobody knew where Christine was. Suddenly, they heard "I'm in here!" and saw a tiny little arm sticking out of a suitcase. Christine had fit her entire body into the suitcase, leaving just her arm out to wave at them, like she was playing hide-and-seek.

Oddly enough, I think their deaths helped me cope. I couldn't bring myself to fall apart again, and so I didn't. I still grieved, and I still felt sad, and I still do today. But a person just can't live their lives in those dark shadows all the time.

I've known other people who died. Curtis, a friend of mine from Indiana who was really funny despite being wheelchair-bound. Both grandparents on my dad's side, and my grandpa on my mom's side. Kirsten Malone.

I'm probably even forgetting a few. And I know that there will be many more in my lifetime.

I, too, will die. If my death is like most peoples', it will be painful and terrifying. I no longer have the desire to hurry the process along, but I'm older than most of my friends and not as healthy, so chances are that most will still be around when I kick the bucket... Including you, dear reader. Some people will mourn, and a few will be glad, but most won't know or care. Eventually they too will die, and I will be forgotten.

There's no use in mourning. I wrote these memories down because I never did before, and now they are fixed and real. But when I finish writing this, I will get up from the computer and go on with my life. These events will be laid to rest, and grief will become the memory of grief.

And life will go on. Sometimes it will be wondrous, and sometimes terrible, but most of the time it will just be life.

As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "so it goes."