Saturday night, I read an excellent blog by my friend Shelli about losing friends through the trails of time and death. I commented on that blog stating that I enjoyed her blog but I never had a close friend die on me. Little that I knew was that comment became a premonition. Playing on another stage was looking on the net for an old friend from my undergrad days in SUNY Stony Brook.
I was looking for Mike Plunkett whom most of us called "Plunkett". I was called "Chuckles" by those in the same circle as us (a worldplay on my middle name; Charles). Last time I spoke to Plunkett, was in late October of 2006, when the Mets shit the bed in the NCLS against the Cardinals. I called Plunkett in which he lived in his modified bedroom in Smithtown, Long Island since 1994. He told me that he has been sober for the past three years, he buried the hatchet with a couple of people he had a grudge with for the past 11 years. Things were looking better for him-- he was starting a new job after so many years without one. He told me that he was going to get a computer and look for me on the internet. After a while looking for him, I assumed that he would find me-- but that day never came.
Plunkett was the master jokester, the pride of a group of people we were part of-- "The Irish Mafia". Plunkett and I would do these impromptu skits out of nowhere. His timing and delivery was impeccable-- much better than mine. He had a voice that reminded some of a "bad Bill Cosby" to me it was more like a nasal Gilbert Gottfried with a touch of Lewis Black- almost like a white Chris Rock. He looked a little bit like me, stocky with round head with thinning hair and wearing a goatee. He also had on these wire rimmed glasses, and sometimes wore an olive coloured jacket. He had mild CP, so he had a cane-- actually a sheleileigh he called O'Shaughnessy. Plunkett and I would go into these impromptu skits, sometimes with a third guy Steven West who was the straight man out of the trio. Plunkett and I would say funny shit cracking each other up or cracking up the people around us. If people weren't around, we would see if West can crack up. In the early 90's, the three of us attended SUNY Stony Brook-- 35 miles East of Manhattan.
We were part of a bigger outfit called STAC (Students Towards an Accessible Campus): a student run organization serving disabled students on campus. 80% of STAC were of Irish background and the Italian Coordinator of the Special Needs Program on campus labeled us the "Irish Mafia". We were a service group on campus but by the way we acted sometimes we should have been a fraternity. There was a core group within the Irish Mafia-- me and Plunkett were within this core. Plunkett was like the master improv artist, I was more into the one liners-- a few did hit. I also did these little underground cartoons. Like Terry Gilliam of Monty Python, I was the aminator --Plunkett spun the ideas. There was the classic "White Men Don't Hump", "The Nose Picking Society" and one in which was a parody of a Life cereal commercial in which it ended with the line "Holy shit, he ate the fucking box!". Plunkett also did these one man acts in which he sang his version of "The Candy Man": "Who can take a glass rod? Stick it up his dick? Break it with a hammer and smash it with a brick? The S&M Man! The S&M Man! The S&M Man likes to inflict pain, 'cause it feels so good!"
When I left for Grad School in Buffalo in the Fall of 1994, I left the Mafia behind but the rest remain. Plunkett got settled in his modified room that he rented. There was a darkness about Plunkett that remained hidden behind his jokes and dirty versions of songs. Plunkett liked to drink-- on occasions when we went to bars, we would order a pitcher for the two or three of us. Plunkett would exclude himself from us and order his own pitcher for himself and at times drink straight from the pitcher! Plunkett would also tell me of his family. He had two siblings, both almost twenty years older than him. When Plunkett was in his late 20's, his mother (father had recently died) was in her early 70's. Both his siblings bore this responsibility of being the head of the household even though Plunkett always held the bag.Plunkett also often complained that he was treated like a kid, and felt like he was walked on by everybody else. On top of that were his failed relationships, one girlfriend of his confessed that she wanted a sex change in the middle of the relationship. He stuck his troubles down the bottle like most other alcoholics-- and he had his drunk moments that almost and sometimes led him into trouble. So I was relieved on that night when he told me that he was sober for three years and made ammends with the past. He was going on into his next stage of life-- the jokes were still there in late October of 2006, but something lacked and I didn't know what. We said our goodbyes, made our promises and hung up.
A few years ago, I stumbled onto Facebook by another member of "The Irish Mafia" he's Puerto Rican, but can write these incredible limericks like his name was O'Malley! As I was finding lost members of the Mafia on FB, I noticed Plunkett wasn't around. Two years went by on FB with no sign of Plunkett. Meanwhile it was like I was back in Stony Brook in 1993 again spitting out one liners and writing blogs in place of the cartoons I did. But it just wasn't complete, Plunkett wasn't there! Sunday night, unknowingly reading Shelli's blog the night before, I decided to go on other sites to look for him. I stumbled onto his name on the White Pages site. Everything that I knew about him match, the age he would be, where he lived; but when I clicked his name I had seen the words "Deceased in 2009". Wait? What? Plunkett's DEAD!?! To confirm his death, I went on the Social Security Death Index (SSDI)-- and there it was. His date of birth was there as well as his last known address in which there is a large cemetary. The cemetary was military but Plunkett's father was a WWII veteran and was probably interred next to his father. There was an address that was listed previous to his last-- Smithtown, NY, and I remembered him living there. Plunkett is dead! Holy shit, my friend had died!
I spoke to our mutual friends on FB, even they didn't know about this. I hated to know what happened to Plunkett on January the 23rd of 2009-- according to the SSDI, his death was verified meaning that a family member or someone acting as a family member claimed him--or identified him. He might have been dead for awhile before he was identified. He might have fell of the wagon- drank himself to death, or keeled over in an alley somewhere. Either way, Plunkett died two and a half years with no knowledge to us. We all thought he would just pop up, but it wasn't that way. None of us were there to send him off-- no proper funeral, no proper mourners, he had most likely died alone.
I had wrote about death before and the thing is, no one can really explain it. People see it in many ways. This could have been a wake up call for some of us about how we deal with the past and addiction is not a way to deal. This could be a tale about dealing with anger the wrong way. But Plunkett was not a moral tale, he was a man and a damned funny one at that! I can make promises to pour a pitcherful of beer over his grave, but maybe someone can or had beat me to it. Even though Diet Coke would be more appropos for Plunkett since he fought alcoholism. Either way, Plunkett is meshed into the lives of his friends like a patchwork quilt. In retrospect-- I would wonder at what would Plunkett would say if his spirit was next to me. He would most likely say "I'm dead, get the fuck over it, Chuckles!"
