My friend Joey died yesterday in Afghanistan.  He was 21 years old.  His name hasn't even been released to the press yet; I learned from someone's post on facebook when I logged in this morning.

 I stared at that facebook post and I cried. It was a picture of Joey, in civilian clothes, a t-shirt and hoodie and jeans, standing on someone's deck back in Illinois, his home state and mine.  I don't know the girl who posted it. She was one of his friends from high school, I gather. His facebook page is now jammed with horrifyingly young people saying goodbye.

 I met Joey a couple months ago in Savannah, Georgia.  I was at a downtown bar, singing to "Bohemian Rhapsody" with some girl friends, trying to have some fun while my boyfriend was trapped on the base in Iraq, when this young guy came up next to me and started singing along with us.

 "Where are you from?" he asked when Freddie Mercury was done.

"Illinois, " I said, raising my eyebrow at his accent.

"Awesome, me too." 

"Really." Despite his familiar accent, I didn't buy it; guys always say that they are from the same place as the girl. 

"Really."  He looked me in the eye.  I looked around the bar.  If he was looking to pick someone up, there were easier targets--women alone or with just one friend, not a group of hovering busybody chaperones, including one huge male Staff Sergeant, like I had.   Furthermore, I look young for my age, but not that young.  "So, you like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' too, huh?"

"Yeah, ever since Wayne's World," I said in a challenging voice, as  I didn't expect him to know the movie since he was probably a toddler when it came out.

Turns out he loved Wayne's World, which is set in Aurora, Illinois, and, along with John Waters' movies (The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink), is a shibboleth for we northern Illinoisians.  We had ten years between us, but we understood the same cultural symbols: we had the same love of bratwurst, cheap beer brewed in Milwaukee, and the Chicago Cubs.  If you don't get it, I can't explain it to you; but meeting Joey was like finding an old friend.

So Joey and I became friends, the kind who hang out occasionally but not all the time.  I had my friends, fellow teachers and Army wives, and he had his, fellow single soldiers "trolling for trim" as my boyfriend calls it.  We hung out a couple times, just the two of us drinking pints in bars, and we had some serious conversations.  I had some vague idea that we all would go out drinking when both he and my boyfriend got back home.  I thought they would like each other, as they had a similar disregard for the "toe the line," shut up and don't disagree, attitude prevalent in the Army.  They both do what they, personally, think is right and best and safest for everyone.

Then I left for Europe to see Odysseus (my boyfriend) on his leave and Joey went back home to Illinois to visit before he got deployed again.  He was supposed to be deployed to Afghanistan from about early July to October something (the type of unit he was in only deploys for a short time).  After his commitment to the Army was up, which would be soon after his redeployment, he was going to get out of the Army and go to college.

Joey was an Army Ranger, which even in the Army means you are notably tough, a hard-ass, not to be messed with.   I could see that he could be like that if necessary, but he was never like that in my presence.  He had the hardcovers of the Twilight series; my cats cozied up to him the way they don't normally to men.  Despite his job as an ammunitions expert, or maybe because of his job, Joey was one of the most "stop and smell the roses" people I've ever met. 

Once we were in his car (some sort of bright yellow sports car with a stick shift), and he was taking Abercorn Extension, Georgia Highway 204, instead of the bypass. 

"You could take the bypass," I mentioned casually, not really caring.  A girl waiting for her man has lots of freetime.  Joey was keeping me from nothing but grading some badly written essays.

"I could, but I like this road.  Lots of stops and starts.  Sometimes I race people from the light."  And that was Joey: take the scenic route and make the best of it.  It's more adventurous, after all.

 One night Joey and I met up for some beers at his favorite watering hole, a bar with an Irish name in downtown Savannah.  There we met up with a friend of his who was a professor at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design).  The professor was well into his cups and asked me: "Did Joey tell you how we met?"

"No, he didn't," I said, rather impressed that Joey was such good friends with this forty-something SCAD professor.  Here is the professor's story:

The professor was sitting at the bar at Joey's favorite Savannah watering hole, minding his own business. Now this professor is a fairly flamboyant gay guy. I guess some bully at the bar took issue with this, and approached the professor:

"Hey, faggot," said the bully, and started pushing the professor."What you gonna do, faggot?"

Joey and one of the other Rangers got between the professor and the bully.

"You got a problem with my friend, man?" Joey said to the bully. "You got a problem with my friend, you're gonna have a problem with me."

Now, Joey insisted it didn't quite happen like that, but he became friends with the professor.  The thing that struck me most about Joey was that he was barely old enough to fight these silly wars but that he seemed to gravitate toward people who were much older and world-weary.   Sure, he had his Ranger friends who were mostly his age, and if you look at his facebook page, it's clear that he had left a lot of friends back home who remember him from childhood. At the end, he's also gotten a girlfriend, which makes me both happier and sadder than I can articulate.

 Then he was also friends with this middle-aged art professor and this thirty-something teacher who'd traveled so much, and I'm sure others.  His war experience (he had been deployed a couple of other times) had made him older in some way, to me, some regrettable way.  

 He should have just been some stupid, ignorant 21-year-old kid in a suburban bar in Illinois.  He should have been in college.

 He should not have been on a mountain in a horrible land, taking apart a bomb.   

When I found out that Joey had been killed, I send Odysseus a message, and then talked to him on skype.  Despite the fact that I've lived near military installations since 2007, Joey is, thankfully, is my first friend who's been killed.  

Odysseus summed it up better than I can right now: "So you are sad for three reasons: you think what we are doing is hopeless, you are worried about me, and you are sad about your friend."

 Yes, all of that.  I wish I had some good answers for why Joey died.  I wish I could say he died for a good reason, for a good cause.

Tomorrow I will go back to do some summer school work at my school, and I will notice the roads falling apart and the school that could use some more funding and the students whose parents are unemployed, and I will know, know, know, that Joey died, but I sincerely in my heart don't know if it mattered one fucking bit.  Did it make anything better?

 My friend Joey, I can't lie to you: I don't know that your death changed anything.  I wish I could tell you that it did.