We were best friends when we were little growing up in Mexico City. I was Johnny, he was Juanito, or Johnny A. to my Johnny C.
His parents and mine were friends and visited back and forth. Juanito and I often spent the night at each other's house and played with the chemistry sets we both had, made magic tricks out of matchboxes decorated with tissue paper, or rummaged in his father's “cobacha”, the cupboard underneath a staircase where his father kept his climbing gear. We dreamed and fantasized about climbing together. Perhaps even Everest one day. It was the fifties and Edmund Hillary and Tenzin Norgay had just succeeded in climbing the worlds highest mountain for the first time ever.

Later on we shared an interest in drumming, and, of course, dating, comparing notes on our exciting first encounters with girls. About that time I went away to the U.S. for highschool and for years we hardly ever saw each other. But eventually, we did look each other up and though we lived quite far from each other we began to plan to visit and do activities which, curiously, we had both gotten into over the years, including scuba diving, rock climbing and mountaineering. That's when it got interesting.

I first noticed a certain behavior and attitude on a diving trip to Cozumel. The trip was his idea and mostly his plan. But as I gradually figured out, he didn't really have enough money to pay his own way through this adventure. We would go out for dinner and a beer but when it came time to pay the bill he would excuse himself and go to the bathroom. A few months later, I went to visit him in Seattle to go climbing. He had an attractive girlfriend, rather younger than he, at the time. Going to lunch one day at a fast food restaurant the three of us stood in line to order. Juan timed his move perfectly, and when there were just two or three people left ahead of us, he told his girlfriend and me what he wanted us to order for him, then excused himself and went to the bathroom. His girlfriend turned to me with a quizzical look and asked what I though about it. He was my lifelong friend and she nearly a stranger, but I have never been able to tolerate what I perceive as injustice. I responded by telling her about my experience when Juan and I had been on our diving trip to Cozumel. Needless to say, she didn't remain his girlfriend much longer. But he was my lifelong friend and I really did want to share diving and climbing adventures with him, so I decided that it was a price (literally) that I was willing to pay. Anyway, during that same trip he proposed a plan to climb a particular mountain. He offered to put me up in his own bed/room, he would find somewhere else to sleep. I took him up on it and a few weeks later, I was there, eager to do the climb. But no, there was some complication/reason that he couldn't give me his bedroom to sleep in and he announced that, by the way, he would be charging me a guiding fee to do the climb. I was indignant. I said “you 'invite' me to go climbing, I make the trip, then you tell me you're charging me a guiding fee? No way!” We got past that little incident and did the climb. I did not pay. Then as I was packing to leave, he said he was short of money and offered to sell me a framed photo he had taken. I liked the photo and agreed to buy it, even gave him the money, but it didn't fit in my luggage so I asked him to keep it for me until the next time. Then, after still another climbing trip, I said “OK, I'll take my photo now.” “Sorry” he replied, “that picture is gone... I sold it.” “What about my money?” I asked. “It's gone too.” was his reply. I never saw that money again.

And there are other stories, like the time he 'borrowed” money for a business, printing t-shirts with his photos and selling them. We wrote up an informal one-page contract. The due date for the loan came and went but I never saw that money again either. Another time he, urgently, had to go to his Landmark Forum session, parked his car in a tow zone and left it there all day. It was towed. But lucky for him I was in town. After he repeatedly promised “this time I'm really going to pay you back... right away.” I got him his car out of hawk. But did I ever get that money back? I'll let you guess.

In the end the result was predictable and inevitable. We no longer see each other or even speak. It's a sad story no matter how you look at it, we were best friends! We really cared about each other. And I miss him.

Now, I hear, he has cancer and is going to die.

(Editing entry Tuesday, December 3, 2019) It's been over a week now, maybe two weeks, that I heard that Juan has passed away. It's hard to believe, and it's hard to take. It was a shock to me when my mother died. My father had gone a few years before and I realized I was now the 'older' generation. There was no longer one ahead of me. Now my friends and other people near me, of my generation, are starting to go. It's an odd feeling, a mixed feeling, that I'm one of the healthy ones surviving while others, less lucky, and some younger than myself, move on. And it's clear it will be more and more the case. I pray now that this may be a motivation. My mind says "I must live now! I must love now!". Will I? Only time will tell.