Why being online sometimes sucks...

I've rediscovered why I shouldn't read my brother John's blog...
because, invariably, every few months, I stumble onto the goings-on of my ex, S.
S is the one I was dating when I moved here. The one I refer to as either "the alcoholic" or "the drug addict". Because, sadly, he was (is?) both.
S was a friend of my brother's who I really met online. He and I had apparently met in person previously before we met online, but I was too cool to remember him.
Anyway, during my second time in LA, I got into LiveJournal through my brother. I had a journal that I updated pretty regularly (I had a temp job during which I had more time than actual work). I wrote regularly, checked my brother's regularly, and made "friends" with people that way. Plus, some of my social life then was tied in with my brother and his set. We are only 14 months / 2 school years apart in age, and as he had stayed in the city of our youth, was still plugged in socially with a lot of people. Plus, he's always been sort of "cool" and it follows that his social occasions (parties, etc) would also be hip and happening.
S was a drunk, and my brother knew that. But never put up a lot of objections to us dating. S was self-loathing, but he was brilliant. He wrote very funny stuff, was quite witty, was really into music, and quite a storyteller. He also had a self-destructive streak larger than his self-preservation instincts. When we were dating, we watched movies, listened to music, and talked. We wrote each other emails and blog entries and the like. And he fell in love with me quite early on.
I asked him to please not do drugs, and he mostly complied, as least while I was living out there. He still drank, daily, and in ways that make me uncomfortable to think about now. He had stories of debauchery and partying that amused and scared me.
S was what I now refer to as the "drunk poet", a type that worships Hunter S Thompson, Charles Bukowski, and others who glorify living altered and "defiant".
I don't truly know how defiant and rebellious and counter-cultural it really is to spend your rent money on vodka, and your grocery money on stolen prescription pills. It strikes me, a goody-goody "straight" kid from the get-go, as sad and pathetic.
But I loved S, I truly did. The brilliance of his mind really won me over. But I had to work at it, and that was difficult. And then I took my job out here, and we tried to keep it going long-distance (which is, as we all know, ultimately stupid). My mom paid for him to visit me, and then I flew out there to visit him. And when I got there, he was already drunk, and tried to break up with me. I told him I didn't fly 2000 miles to break up, and made him take it back. We spent the weekend together, and I came back here. (it just dawned on me that he visited me Memorial Day weekend 2002, 4 years ago. I went out there on Labor Day weekend.) We broke up over the phone in October, kept talking, and then I finally broke up with him, once and for all, in February. I had moved on.
But, because he was who he was, he would occasionally call and leave me sad messages. Or he would occasionally send me emails. After we first broke up, I'd check his LJ to see how he was doing, and find out things you wouldn't want to know (and be shocked that he had the balls to post those stories on the Internet, things about being high and screwing annoying co-workers and stuff along those lines.) And, because he was still friends with my brother, I would find out that he was still alive, and super-ultra-mega-self-destructive. And, then, last summer, while I was working at B's office while waiting out my non-compete, I found out, through a link on my brother's LJ that S had devolved into a massive coke habit, along with the drinking and smoking. I don't think I could adequately describe the feeling of illness that hit me when I read his stories of coking and whoring and losing his job and losing his apartment. I had another round of nausea-inducing reading in the fall/winter, and actually dropped him a line, anonymously, during which he invited me to get AIDS and screw pigs, until he found out who was posting him anonymously, and then apologized.
When we were together, my brother once said to me that he always thought S was trying to kill himself. I didn't really understand it until later, but it's the truth.
Anyway, what prompted this ex-BF reminisce was being on my brother's LJ today, and finding a post that S and his hetero-life-mate Tony have relocated to Portland, Oregon. The city that I have always said would be the city I would move to if I could. I miss the west coast, and Portland has always struck me as a great city. I have uncles there, and still a few friends (acquaintances, I guess, at this point) who were and are in bands around that city.
But now S is there. And my world has always been a VERY SMALL world. The universe where worlds collide and people from 1000's of miles away and lifetimes ago appear in odd places. Heck, and this is absolutely true, I am only 3 degrees from Kevin Bacon.
I don't know what to do with this information, other than post it and let my subconscious post it.
It has got me thinking of men in my past. Actually, I've flashed back to men in my past, the Oregon edition. Two guys whose names started with K, the two who both broke my heart. Or the guys in the bands I was friends with who I crushed on. The semi-celibacy of my Oregon years, and the growth I experienced living there.
I'm rambling, it's about 85 degrees indoors in the bookstore, and I need to rehydrate and pee.
Happy memorial day weekend. Hope you are cooking out and having a good time!