don and garn...a brief history...
i didn't like don bull when i first met him. the year was 1979 and we were both attending shawnigan lake school and lovin' it. as it turned out we were both from tsawwassen and by virtue of this fact, became friends almost by default as i didn't really know anyone else there, as i had just moved there, and don needed friends...that's not really true but sounds good.
over the years we became like a crappy glue you can't get off your fingers. if you saw one of us somewhere, the other couldn't be far behind. whether it was driving around in my father's 1969 chevy biscayne or the 1962 (63?) ford falcon he inherited from his grandmother, we were together. we had little run-ins with the police, parents, girlfriends and ultimately each other but it always seemed to come back to the two of us and our friendship.
as we grew older and got away from school and tsawwassen things changed, at first, very little but some. he went off to art school, first in vancouver at cap. college and then emily carr on granville island. all the while i worked in restaurants and bars, printing houses and at certain lucrative illegal activities. don graduated with honors from the art college in pasadena and i graduated to hard drugs and trouble with the folks-which was maybe the best thing that ever happened and got me back on the straight and narrow.
don and i actually lived together on fourth ave. for a short while as well....but that's another story...for another time.
don came back from LA and we again were thick as theives and resummed our lives as misfits but this time a little older. not wiser but indeed older. don bounced around a few agencies, i continued to print away at benwell-atkins hating it most days but able to not have the grind of a real nine to five life. i lived on my bike then spending most offtime in the woods of the north shore or UBC or whistler, as did he. we didn't ride with the same people but both had a passion for riding and getting dirty and cutting our legs wide open...repeatedly.
our lives started to change around 1992 or '93. don had ventured out on his own and was starting to do some design work for the rich and fancy with these people/clients ultimately becoming his pals as well. i felt slightly abandoned at first as it was around now that we started hanging out less and less. then he bought a bmw sedan of some sort and i learned to make fun of it and what i felt it represented, to me anyways. i wasn't the nicest guy in making these jokes and i think i should, maybe, apologize for some of those jokes now and for some of the things i said about the car and his fancy, linen pants pals at the time. maybe i was jealous, maybe i just felt that i could fit in to that crowd as well as anyone, maybe whatever. it was a wierd time to be sure. then don got married to kim-she's awesome. they're not married anymore. no one's fault i don't think. they're just not.
we don't really hang out at all anymore. meetings are aften awkward but still, somehow, enjoyable. i love him. i really do. i've often said that i love him like a brother - one i want to take outside sometimes and beat the crap outta. i do love him. now it's mainly e.mails and the occassional phone call, the odd dinner once or twice a year and the mention of his name on the blog.
i guess sometimes i'm just not willing to accept that people move along, that friends come and go and that life is very liquid and never sits still for long. don and i are like that i suppose.
happy birthday don.
g. xo
1 comment:
cool story, tops photo
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