Little Miss Social Skills Meets Josh

I've been thinking about a story from around late 2002, early 2003, and the main character is a friend of mine named Josh.

One night a few of us went to this diner in town that had a bar in the back. The place did karaoke all evening about five nights a week. Some of the people we always met up with were really into performing. Josh would go up and do a song here and there. I never could work up the nerve, but I would sing along with any song I knew at my seat between sips of a drink.

It generally was a good vibe every time, back when we didn't use that word much.

We'd always run into quite a few people we knew. In this place, you went and got your own drinks at the bar. No one cared when people shuffled between tables, so there was a constant flow of people from one to another, and no table was ever all one party.

About an hour in, this girl came to the table we chose. She went straight for Josh.

"I know you!"

He was pretty unique and memorable, so she may have met him somewhere at some point. But she was not really a person you'd remember if you met her randomly.

She kept trying to get a conversation started, but it always started, "I know you!" and never got much past that.

Josh had bipolar disorder, and he had a bit of Jekyll-and-Hyde in him. With proper stimulus, he could go from sweet and funny, where he idled, to fully revved rage in what seemed like an instant.

Proper stimulus like repetitive annoyance.

No one was really paying attention, all doing their own thing. I tended to plant myself in one spot for long stretches, and I was sitting across from Josh for a while, sipping drinks and taking in the spectacle of lots of ironic music choices from the stage and things like that. Metalheads and hippies shouted the lyrics to Prince's "Kiss," or belted out a Britney Spears track sounding like Mike Patton. So I was an up-close witness, but I'm largely an observer, and I never thought even this girl would just keep on and keep on.

As he kept trying to tell her, Josh had no clue who this girl was. She wasn't memorable in the least, being about as generic as a white-label bag of rice. I'm sitting there, and you can see his blood starting to come to a boil in his facial expressions. He'd been trying to be nice and tell her gently he had no idea who she was.

If she'd had any social skills, she probably would have sat down, and we would have been polite, got a conversation going, maybe even seen if we really could suss out a connection. But this girl was clueless, and by this time, Josh hated her.

I'd seen Josh in bipolar episodes before, and when it happened, it was like his rage was totally uncontrolled. But in recent years, he didn't have many, so I didn't expect him to go as far as he did.

Finally he couldn't take it anymore. She was at the end of the table. To her, I may as well not exist. She'd said maybe two words to me by then, but she was right in Josh's face. It's apparent she at least doesn't know him well enough to have witnessed Josh over the edge. And still the refrain.

"I KNOW YOU!"

The whole thing unfolded like a story in real time. Perfect rising action, increasingly surreal as time went on. I had started to throw a sentence in here and there, but Josh was livid and I was invisible. She knew she did not know ME.

Josh finally boiled over after about 15 minutes.

I thought, "Oh shit..." staying planted in my chair.

He stood up slowly but very deliberately. Ms. Social Skills froze like a rabbit in the gaze of a coyote or a dog.

Josh's voice was steady and the volume was low, at least at the start of the statement, but it was very firm and adamant. It was terrifying.

"IF YOU DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE..." His voice got more forceful, more adamant, gaining volume and speed as the sentence went on. "I AM GOING TO RIP YOUR HEART OUT OF YOUR CHEST!"

The girl's face went white. I knew if she dropped it, walked away now, she'd be fine. She wouldn't even have to leave the bar.

Just. Leave. Him. Alone, for fuck's sake.

I thought she might have somehow heard my silent plea. The girl disappeared so fast, you could almost see the little cartoon cloud she left.

After the incident with Ms. Social Skills, Josh had to change scenery for a bit. I think he went to find a restroom, and I couldn't blame him in the least. Almost as soon as Josh got up, the head bartender walked over and asked to talk to me. Apparently I was visible now that I was sitting alone at my end of the table. The bartender was serious, but I wasn't the one he was after. He just wanted to know what was up during his management shift.

"Is your friend okay? This girl over at the bar says he threatened to kill her."

Now I am annoyed with the girl. But I'm mellow, and I especially was back then. I'm the observer, the people watcher. I'm the one that fits that joke, "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me." This girl came and stirred up shit, got herself told off, and immediately went to tattle to the head bartender, leaving her role completely out of her version of the story.

Maybe not as unaware as she appeared.

I looked up at the bartender from my chair. Calmly, rationally, but audibly annoyed...

"She will be totally fine if she just leaves him alone like he asked several times."

The rather tall and handsome bartender continued to look down at me and replied, "Okay then," and turned and walked back to the bar.

Josh returned from the restroom and a few stops at neighboring tables a little while later, oblivious to my discussion with the bartender.

If you didn't know him, you might be reading this and wondering why. Why spend time with this guy if all that was a possibility?

Josh was a very complicated person, a walking set of extremes. He could be terrifying in a state of rage, but the opposite was equally arresting. He had strokes of genius that were incredible to witness. He could give you total attention and be so thoughtful he could make you feel like the only person in the world other than him. In groups, he contributed a humor that was just wild, fun, and captivating. Everyone in the room wanted to keep up and participate.

So as I said before, it is entirely possible that Ms. Social Skills had met Josh somewhere. Maybe at a party, he's having a laugh with some people in the center of the room. She's off to the side, invisible, sitting there highly amused because there is no one in her life like this. He makes as big an impression on her as he did on anyone. Then, a long while later, she finally sees him at the bar, remembers how funny and charming he was from a distance, and then the story is off and rolling.

Josh left us around a year after that incident. He'd gotten rid of most of his possessions and moved suddenly to Colorado. I drove him to the airport when he left, and I was the last of all of us to see him. He committed suicide about six months later, in early 2004.

I knew him for a little less than ten years. He's been gone for about 22 and a half.

I can still hear his voice and that wild laugh of his.

I think of him every single day.