Page 139 of Filthy Beautiful
Other than when Gabe died… I’d never really felt that kind of pain. That kind of loss.
Every time I saw Cary and he shut me out, it was kinda like losing him to the darkness all over again.
It reminded me of how bad it had gotten for him that first year after Gabe died. It made me worry that he could end up there again.
Really, what was there to stop him from falling apart again?
What was holding him together now, except his work, his love of music, and maybe knowing that his sister cared? That I cared?
I worried about him, and it put me in a really fucking bad place.
I couldn’t sleep, so I lay in bed and scrolled around on my phone. Checking messages. Scanning social media feeds.
Nothing held my interest.
Until I opened the email Courteney had sent me. I knew she’d sent me her book, like a week ago. While I was in Lisbon. But I hadn’t opened the email yet, much less the book.
Now, I opened the pdf attachment on my phone.
ALIVE: The Life and Death of Gabe Romanko
I stared at the title. The plain black type on the white page. So matter-of-fact.
How was it that one of my best friends, one of the best guys I’d ever known, had died when I was twenty-six? He was only twenty-eight.
It didn’t seem right.
The title of the book was kinda dark, but once I got reading it, I could understand why Courteney chose it.
When Gabe died, the media had jumped all over the tragic irony of our band name. Every headline said some gross, tacky version of “ALIVE” BAND MEMBER DEAD. Fucking brilliant journalism there.
But this wasn’t that. Courteney wasn’t trying to be clever. She was telling you what you’d find in her book. Which was Gabe’s life story, only a small portion of which amounted to the circumstances surrounding his death.
Courteney had written a lot more about his life than his death. His death, and the trial that followed, had one chapter dedicated to it.
The rest was about him.
About his life.
Growing up alongside his best friend, becoming musicians together, running his crazy podcast about music,Alive at Five, and finally forming the band, Alive, with Cary, which took its name from the podcast.
It told the story of a total music-geek-turned-rock-star who was a genuinely good person, a guy who loved his family, would’ve given up a lung to save a friend, and who was the kind of guy, once you’d met him, you’d never dream of not inviting to your party.
The book was incredible.
Like Courteney said, it was a rough draft. It was still rife with typos and some awkward sentences, a few redundancies, but I was sure she could work that all out in revisions.
There were chunks missing, where she’d left a rough outline of what she intended to fill in later.
But she had a beautiful writing style. Descriptive; very visual. There were several times I forgot I was reading, and I could see Gabe’s life playing out in front of me, like I was watching it in a movie. Or better yet, like I was there living it with him.
Which I was, for the last few years of it.
When I met Gabe and Cary, seven years ago, I already knew about Gabe’s podcast. I’d been listening to it for a while. The dude geeked out about music and bands and music-related tech, and often interviewed local musicians. Then one day, he did a shout out to local musicians to come audition for his band—the new band he was putting together with his best friend, Cary Clarke.
The two of them had just broken up with the rest of their band, and I couldn’t even believe I could get in the door to audition for these guys. They were both local legends by then. They’d already had a major label debut and a real world tour. They were miles ahead of me.
They were looking for a drummer and a lead singer, and they hired me and Dean from the auditions.
