The way it happened is rather bizarre. Steve got picked up for driving under the influence, and while being processed, the cops found some pot and a pipe. By all accounts, he was cooperative and polite, but less than two hours later they found him dangling from the holding cell door, hanged by a shirt twisted into a rope.

Did he kill himself due to the accumulation of bad luck and wasted opportunities in his life? Was it simply because, in a drunken, drugged moment of weakness, his desperate plea for attention went unanswered? Or was it because of assholes like me who, when things started to go well in our lives, never bothered to keep in touch with him?

I'm saddened by the whole turn of events, but am I devastated? No, not really. I hadn't talked to Steve in more than ten years, not since he blew me off for my wedding. Seriously, how would it would go over with your wife if your best pal never got on a plane and then didn't bother to let you know he wouldn't be there? Not to mention the fact he stiffed us for the cost of his tux.

We had been drifting apart long before that day, though. I had ambitions. I wanted to graduate from college. I wanted to have a stable, loving marriage. I wanted to get a job, work hard, and make my life better in an honest, straightforward way.

On the other hand, while bad things always seemed to happen to Steve -- the two broken legs in the car accident in junior high, his anesthesiologist father's addiction to operating room sedatives -- he made his own trouble too. He strung a girlfriend along in Florida while he slept with her sister and my ex-girlfriend, and if that didn't pose a big enough challenge, then he impregnated his boss' daughter. The baby died before his first birthday.

How did we ever end up as best friends anyway? I guess you could call Steve my best friend by proximity. You tend to have those when you grow up in a small town and only a handful of people have the foggiest notion who Monty Python are, let alone why they're so funny. His father worked with my mother at the hospital. I was one of the few people from class who visited Steve in the hospital when he had two broken legs, and we immediately found that we shared the same irreverent sense of humor. And that was enough for us to be friends.

Steve was the person with whom I had the most in common, and while our ambitions or principles didn't mesh as young adults, he was the best I could do until something better came along, until I learned what a real friend was.

Damn, that sounds harsh, doesn't it?

I did try to find out what happened to him once. I tried to call him a few weeks after the whole wedding incident, but he was impossible to track down. His roommate on Long Island told me they'd kicked Steve out of the house because he hadn't chipped in for the rent, and apparently he was living out of his car in their driveway for some time after that.

At some point Steve traveled the 400 miles back to my hometown, and every now and again I would catch a glimpse of him when I went home to visit. I would see him walking down the street, scruffy, wrinkled and dirty, but I never stopped him. What would I say? My life was going pretty well, and from all appearances I was pretty sure I didn't want to ask him how his life had been going. My wife always wanted me to hit him up for the $100 he owed us for the tux, but it was always apparent he didn't have it.

Of course, that doesn't say much about me as a friend, now does it? When I heard Steve was living out of his car, why didn't I fly down to Long Island to find out what was going on and what I could do to help? When I saw him walking down the street, why didn't I swallow my pride, my better-than-thou attitude, or whatever it was and just say, "Dude, you remember me? C'mon, let's go have a beer and talk about old times."

Seriously, what kind of a so-called friend am I?

Even though we hadn't spoken in more than ten years, and even though it's been a week since he died, it's still hard to get over the fact that Steve is gone. I've thought of him every day, and it hasn't ceased to make me sad, thinking of him dangling from that jail cell alone. When we were in junior high school, we were going to become orthopedic surgeons together. Steve set me up with my girlfriend in my freshman year of college. And the last time I saw him, I introduced him to the woman who would become my wife. After chatting with us for an hour, he pulled me aside, grinned, and said, "She's a good one. I like her. I approve."

That meant something to me then. It still does, because he was right.

I guess I'm upset for selfish reasons. For one thing, you wonder why, between two friends, Steve's life ended as it did while you're lucky enough to have a good job, a house in a safe neighborhood, a loving wife and two healthy kids.

It's more than that, though. As you get older, as life slaps you around a little bit, you want to have an opportunity to go back and mend fences with the people you slapped around. You want to apologize to one guy for calling his cousin a slut. You want to buy a beer for another guy you jumped in the schoolyard. And no matter what's happened and how many years have gone by, you want to say "Hey, let's keep in touch. Here are some pictures of my kids" to Steve, the guy who was your best friend in high school.

That ain't gonna happen now, though. Some doors swing shut forever.

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