How I lost my best friend, a Steve Rydell story

(Editors note: hi, Jazz here. To assure the fidelity of this story I have made a commitment to steve — who can verify the truth on his own — that I will NOT be touching any of his own written words. the Fallowing article is Steves attire manuscript published without any edits. I will,, occasionally, chime in with an aside, a footnote if you will, as Was permitted in our agreement,, but my words will all ways be clearly demarcted from his. thank you and enjoy Steve’s words if possible)

Good morning Steve Nation. Over the years I have made many friends and many foes. But none have walked so long on both sides of the fence as Orson Shoo C.C. Jr. I met Orson almost 20 years ago now and while our relationship has had some ups and downs, nothing compares to the rollercoaster of emotion the last year (and change) has been. Below is a chronicle of that year and the slow death of my friendship with Jazz.

Easter 2025- I get a call from my sister with the fucked up teeth. She invites me and my lady friend to Easter. To be entirely honest I’d not been expecting an invitation this year. I’d made a bit of a fool of myself at the last thanksgiving but I guess no one remembered. I just call her my sister with the fucked up teeth because I once tweeted (it was still Twitter at the time) about how in her honeymoon she was in the Caribbean or somewhere and Hurricane Bertha hit and twelve people died and my sister fell or something and fucked up her teeth. My dad didn’t fix them for some ideological reason I understand there’s been some confusion about that but my father was a man of conviction. I think he might have been in the dominican with her too. Note- call to confirm. I don’t call my sisters enough. Hot sister and I barely talk am I allowed to be upset that my supposed best friend banged my sister. That seems like something I’m allowed to be upset about. So my sisters teeth are a little fucked up and I can’t really call her my older sister even if she is the oldest of the three of us because i have two older sisters (FUTS and hot) so she became the sister with the fucked up teeth (or FUTS). Which i suppose is my fault at the end of the day but i want it to be clear who I’m talking about when ai say “my sister” Jazz would always get so mad at me back in the phone booth days because I’d say to him “my sister said this” “my sister said that” this was back when Sobazynski was barely a sperm in his daddy’s ball sack (sorry for being graphic lol) and he would say “which one, the hot one?”. So i think he always had guns for her. Maybe I don’t need to protect my sisters if they’re older than me. Maybe that Contract only applies if you’re a brother with younger sisters. I’ll ask. They didn’t protect me growing up. They let Dad have his way with me. But it was never the hot one who was saying this or that because again we don’t talk so much. It’s usually just FUTS calling me inviting me to things. I’m not sure if she invites me in earnest or just does it because she knows she’s supposed to and it’s the nice thing to do even if she hopes i have other plans (I NEVER DO). 

So I say I’ll go and I invite my buddy Jazz. He’d been AWOL of late and I miss him. At the time I’d been seeing a woman for a month or few. There was something happening in Hong Kong and I wasn’t invited  burt Jaxx indeed up getting lost at Sea for WEEKs worried me sick. I was worried about Howie too for the record (he was also involved somehow). I think If I had been invited on the trip with them things wouldn’t have gone so poorly. She was a cosmologist (space and that sort of thing) and I was happy with her going steady. I wouldn’t say she was The One she made me feel stupid a lot of the time but it’s been over a year now since i’ve been in any relationship like that with a woman. There was a Bostonian I was hooking up with for a bit maybe I should call her. Anyway I invite Jazz and Cosmologist. 

Easter 2025 morning- It’s the morning and the Rydell clan pile into FUTS’s minivans to go see Dad. We had a bit of a Rydell tradition of visiting Dad at the Home on the morning of major holidays. Dad’s mind had been going for a bit now. He was a genius when he was a young man. In politics and Dentistry. The last time we visited him was Thanksgiving 2024. He got a little confused and when he gets confused he gets aggressive and angry. And the home said that we shouldn’t do big groups for a while. This time he was much more docile but also seemed frail. All my memories of dad growing up- he was strong and hard. It hurtt me to see him like this. Everyone is reverent except Jazz and the nephews. I generally like my nephews and they think I’m the cool uncle. FUTS doesn’t like keeping alcohol in the house but I know Jimmy stashes it someplace and if you slide the kids a 20 they’ll tell you. I have my own little stash in the attic (shhhhhh). In the car ride home my date asks me if he has any money. Jazz interprets this as some big affront but I tell her he’s flat broke (he lost most of his money when they shut down his practice) and that even if he had money I’d renounce it. She asks a few more times just to confirm. The rest of the day Jazz is antagonizing her. Just being rude and disrespectful. 

Easter dinner. Jazz takes ownership of the lamb. No one thinks he’s gonna burn it. He does. Morally I wonder if i should sabotage the lamb. The eating of the lamb is morally wrong but not as wrong as killing the lamb. Is it wrong to make inedible meat that was about to be consumed. I suppose it induces demand for meat. So bad. I think there’s a major gap in Kant’s work when it comes to animals. Part of that might just be the science of how animals experience pain and how it wasn’t understood back then. But I think if Kant was alive today and saw the science on it he would say that meat eating was wrong. I will write a blog post on this. This is fun. We’re eating dinner and I notice Jazz and my hot sister getting a little too chummy. Jazz is telling all these stories about his travels in the far east and I know for a fact half of its fake. But she’s laughing a lot and seems enraptured and I catch him WINKING at her. Dinner is coming to a close and some of us get up to start cleaning and my sister comes to me and tells me that JAzz grabbed her thigh under the table (this was not true, as I’d later learn. Apparently SHE had grabbed his thigh). I lose my shit. Screaming at Jazz, throwing plates. He’s screaming too. My date starts crying. He rears on her, calls her a gold digger. I tell Orson to scram and he does. We spent a few weeks not speaking  to eachother but eventually thanks to some mediators we became friends again and I learned that my sister lied to me and everything was well.

September 2025- In the fall Jazz and I both got really creatively inspired about the screenplay. Wed been working on the thing on and off for YEARS but this goaround it finally felt like we might finish it. There were MAJOR rewrites. We’d never been able to figure out what was going to happen after act 3 and we both had different visions for where the movie was going. Jazz wanted to go back to the sort of Spy Detective action adventure sex thing but I wanted to do something more subversive. We also wanted to add LOTS more characters to give our friends more roles when we finally get it made So Jazz persuaded me to take a month of PTO to really buckle down and Get It Done. He lived with me for a few weeks and WEEK ONE i got fired. I’m not sure if I got fired because I took so much PTO or if it was because of the Q2 financials or if it was an HR thing. I had an HR thing one time Not Fun. So I get fired from my job over the screenplay and now me and Jazz Really hunkers down. He tells me that if the screenplay is successful I won’t need to work ever again. Fine. We get to writing. We hit 500 pages. Jazz gets sick with Covid and then he gives me Covid and then I give my sister and Jimmy and their kids Covid and then without knowing my sister visits my dad in the Home and she gives him Covid and two months later his heart gives out halfway around the world. 

October 2025- There’s no such Thing as the island of Rydellos. It exists only in my head. In my head it’s where my dad hails from and his dad and on and on back to a time when the Rydells were kings of the island. And the wealthy were progressively taxes and inheritance was taxed close to 100% past a certain point (maybe $1 million adjusted for inflation) and the coffers were full and everyone was happy. But then we went to Greece and there was none of that and my dad died. The day before he died there was a lake that he really wanted to see. But Jazz was tired and didn’t want to walk down to the lake and so he convinced my sisters who convinced their husbands that we should just do it tomorrow. His health took a turn for the worse over night and in the morning we hailed a local doctor but there wasn’t much he could do and nature took its course and my dad died. All he talked about while we were there was this lake. This lake from his childhood. But Jazz was tired. All Jazz wanted while we were there was to go to see Mike Onos. No respect for my father or me or my sisters in our grief. Just a little weasel who weaseled his way onto our trip and weaseled his way into Easter dinner. 

Shortly after my father’s passing, Jazz, ever the opprotunist and filanderer, takes advantage of my sisters grief and has sex with her in Greece. I should of ended our friendship then and there. Maybe i would have if i had known. I find out on twitter. I want to be angry but I am frozen in grief and I can’t afford to lose Jazz as a friend now. I lean on him. Hard. during this time. He is my best friend after all. But would your best friend sodomize your sister? He claims taht she came on to him. I ask the reader, does that sound right? Do you believe Orson given everything you know about him. You know his ways. He hails from a macho guido toxically masculine culture. This is the sort of thing he says he does all the time. I say we believe him. Thanksgiving rolls around. I don’t remember much of this to be honest. I spent a week or so with FUTS since I had nothing better to do. Was Howie there? Was Toni Soprana? I can’t remember. I remember Jazz getting into a fight with Sobazynski but it all feels like a blur. He claims he slept with my sister a second time. I don’t remember that.

(Editors Note: Yes, I slept with her both times. You make it out to make me sound like a bad person but she had already expressed an interest in me months prior and came on to ME!! confirmed! All so what kind of magical rasputin level charm do you imagine I posess that you think I could seduce a woman who was going through horribel grief. I appreciate it I sapose. But no. She was sad, yes, but hardly devastated. The old man had been sick and dying for a long time and she didn’t very much like the guy. She had been in to me for a while and she and I were just talking and it just kinda happened. It was nice. Second time was awesome. I wont get graphic hear but she told me my penis was bigger then yours steve and bigger then jerkoffs. May be she just says that. And I didn’t sodomize her Unless licking her clam is sodomoy buI think sodomy is just anal sex and gobjobs. Thats true. You all so insiniate that i lie a lot. Well thats very very rude. Sometimes I hyperbolise or exagriate, for affect. But I rarely if ever fabracate . any way I digest, continue.)

I  made some bad investments during the trump tarriff fiasco in March and doubled down and lost a lot of money in the short term but some of my investments actually rebounded so in the end i broke even. Most of my money right now is in my retirement i have some 401ks floating around out there and in my Roth and some in silver. Which paid off BIG in 2025. I also qualified for unemployment but Jazz told me it was unethical to claim it so I used up my savings pretty quick and i did the math and it made more sense to pull from my IRA and tank the early withdrawal penalty instead of selling my silver assuming my projections for the value of silver hold. This is a lesson to always check the math on these things and weigh all your options, the “sensible” thing is not always actually the best course of action. And: ALWAYS BE HEDGING.

(Editors note: true.)

So Jazz is riding my ass hard about the screenplay all the while I have these financial worries and he just doesnt care. He has money he has properties in LA and DC and he’s talked about buying property in HBurg so kind of as a clubhouse for me and Howie and Jazz and maybe Maury. While I’m talking about the Guys, what ever happened to Fish? Have I even met that guy? Jazz reply at the bottom.

(Editors note: fish was one of the guys from the city he was a few years younger than us but mature in spirit and mined. You might not have ever met him be cause you never leave harrisburg but he may have been on the guys fishing trip In 2011/2012. I have pictures a round hear somewhere.$)

So I have these worries and he never offers to help, when he dtays with me for weeks on end he doesnt clean, or pay rent. When he uses my microwave he doesnt use a plate or anything and it gets all messy and i tell him not to do that but he doesnt listen. And he doesnt do anything to help me get a job. Maury let me interview to do some temp work for him (didnt get it but if there was a more qualified candidate for that roll I’m not gonna be upset or if the funding wasn’t there or whatever) so much loveto Maury hes a good guy he can live in the clubhouse too. 

All this is happening and then Jazz meets some guys in QBC (that’s Quebec City) and they’re talking about treasure or something and look honestly I don’t want to go over this saga again but suffice it to say I saved Jazz’s life. I made med Bleed for him, I flew to the egg of the world, spent days on the ice, almost died myself. And He Never Even Said Thank You.

(Editors note: I think I thanked him quite possibly one thousand times before we even reached the hospital . I all so publicly apologized on my Twitter multiple times.

)

I hauled his corpse from timbuktoo to Kotsebue, I brethed life back into his body. And when he came to in the hospital the first thing he said to me was “Where’s my phone?”. It ws christmas. Would he have done the same for me? Could I have relied on him the same way he relied on me? We come back to the states, settle back into our lives. Months go by. I don’t see him. He’s back to making his usual trouble. I’m still unemployed. I ask him to come see me again and again but he’s busy with Maurry or in LA or with the nun or whatever. It’s march. My sister calls me. I pick up. It’s the one with the fucked up teeth. “Do you know if Orson has Easter plans?”

Easter Saturday - Jazz arrives at my house in the evening and we go to my sisters to settle in for the night. I’m ready to go to bed about to put my PJs on and everything when Jazz tells me we’re going to a bar. McGraths in HBurg. I know it well. Not my favorite. I say fine. I don’t want to be left alone. We’re at the bar and Jazz and I are talking and laughing and telling stories just like the good ole days. It’s times like these I remember why I loved the guy so much. When he talks to you it’s like youre the only person in the world that matters. I see something orange in the reflection in his eyes. And I hear that queer Allegheny accent behind me. Jazz activates. He’s like a shark. He doesn’t care about me anymore. Suddenly the three of us are in a booth. The drinks are flowing but I’m feeling a little dejected I fall asleep for a bit. 

(Editors note: Steve struggles to identify the difference, multiple times in fact in this essay alone, between predatory behavior (like that of a shark), and normal sexual-romantic social interaction between two consenting adults . i Schmoozed the Yinzer. She was hot. I was at the bar with my buddy and I had had a few drinks. She found me attractive (for some reason lol), and that was that. I wander if steve‘s own romantic views are so bizarre and misshapen be cause of his truly truly strange parentage and upbringing. Who knows.)

Jazz wakes me up and asks me if it was ok if he left with the Yinzer and I said ok, but i put little bit of a pout and looked really sad and he SHOULD OF KNOWN I didn’t mean it and I just didn’t want to be a sourpuss like any true friend would but he didn’t care and took his leave with the Yinzer and left me all alone there. He knows I don’t like sleeping alone and I especially don’t like when someone says they’re going to do one thing and the do another and he said we were going to share the bed that night even though there was a spare bed and a couch and I was looking forward too it. Jazz runs hot he’s actually very pleasant to sleep next to. He snores a little bit he never kicks or anything.. I walked all the way back to FUTS’s it was actually a nice night and a pleasant walk and I was a little drunk so it went by fast. Harrisburg is such a beautiful city day or night. My sister lives in the suburbs though it’s awful. Usually I take a bus when I want to get there but it only comes in the morning and in the evening. I will never own a car again. I believe in voting with your dollars. People say these fat cats say “no body uses the bike lanes, there fore we don’t have to build bike infrastructure.” I use the bike lanes in spite of how bad they are because I dream of a better tomorrow. I was drunk and sad walking g home by myself. But i got back to FUTS’s after maybe an hour. Now that I’m thinking about it I think my apartment was pretty close to the bar I live in Allison Hill. But I walk back to my sisters. And I go to sleep alone. I was a little cold and missed Jazz.

In the morning Jazz is god knows where. FUTS makes me breakfast and tells me that other sister is coming and bringing Mister Sobazynski. I thought they were on the rocks after the events of thanksgiving but she tells me that they’re working on things and that Sobazynski is going to finally get his PHD in May. I’m proud of him. I call him MISTER sobazynski as a meanness since he’s been in graduate school for so long. He goes to Dickinson. Good school. I call Jazz to relay the news and to tell him that Jimmy is going to pick him up from wherever he is. When Jimmy finally found him and got him back to the house he REEKED.. Iam notsure what he’d been getting up to that morning (may be rooting around in a dumpster somewhere because that’s what he smelled like). I saw Jimmy had rolled all the windows down in his car. No one wanted to say anything to him but FUTS asked if he wanted to take a shower but he said he was “already cleaned”. Seriously. he smelled rancid. At the time I was hon estly worried may be his nose is hes losing his sence of smell because there is no way he didnt know how bad it was and I did care about him then and was worried since he left me so quick and he was very drunk and the girl he left with didn’t seem trustworthy.. People from Allegheny County have The queerest accents i’ve ever heard. Little known fact I was engaged briefly in 2003. Didn’t work out I was young and fresh out of university. BUT my “rebound” was a woman from Allegheny, she talked REAL funny and was always a little dirty but the reason we split was because she was a Kerry supporter and I liked bush at the time ( I was stupid). I have the humility now to say She Was Right. BIG MISTAKE voting for him in 04 and not voting Gore in 00 but I duress. Anyway I also told jazz to take a shower to wash the sex off of him (he didnt even smell like he had “done it” just like he had slept in a dumpster which is why I began to doubt thaat he even “closed”) thought hed like a little cheeky comment like that and maybe he’d listen but he said I was being gross so I droped it.

 By that time FUTS had already started cooking. She was about to put the lamb on (I objected to even buying lamb but as always my protests fall on death ears), but Jazz said he wanted to do it. NO ONE thought that was a good idea after last year. Jimmy even offered to cook the lamb (maybe he thought it would assuage Jazz if a man was handling the meat) but Jazz assisted he be the one to do it and that was that. The WHOLE TIME he was cooking the lamb he was on twitter. He had the burner turned WAY TOO HIGH and i kept saying “Jazz mo you gotta turn it down it’s way too high” but he wouldn’t listen. I was pretty upset at this point about him leaving me last night and caring more about Jimmys dad dying than my dad (especially considering the circumstances of my fathers passing) so When no body was looking i turned it up higher. Just a little bit. But that was wrong of me and I take responsibility for my actions. (Also I forgot to mention since Jimmy and Jazz had got back Jazz had been calling aJimmy “Wonka” non stop, I saw it get a chuckle and a smile the first or two times but but it was obvious Jimmy HATED it.(editors note: not true). By the time started eating dinner Jimmy was wincing every time Jazz called him Wonka. Lame name, everyone thought so.) so anyway Jazz ended up burning the lamb.. The smoke alarm went off and FUTS thundered into the kitchen in such a rage I thought SHE was gonna hit Jazz but the old fart skulked off somewhere and hid until dinner. Jimmy did all he could to save it.

Hot Sister and Mr. Sobazynski show up. Now Sobazynski is no friend of mine. He’s gotta be 28 or 29. Wayyy younger than my sister who’s 45 but looks 10 years younger than that AT LEAST. I tell you she’s a spitting image of my mother whereas FUTS and I favor my father more. I really miss my mom. My sisters would bully me and pick on me and tease me growing up first because i was too small and then because i was too fat, and my Dad well let’s not open that can of words. He was always so busy with his research anyways Besides the man is dead however i felt of him while he was alive it’s improvident to speak ill of the dead. But my mom was the only one who was nice to me. SHE was the one who razed me not my dad or my sisters. But she carried a sadness with her always, and i saw it even when she tried to hide it. Sometimes i wonder what her life would have been like if she had been born 30 years later or if she had never met my father. I think if i could go back in time and prevent them from meeting i would do it even if it meant I was never born. After she died my dad’s health started declining too and we all decided to put him in a home. When his mind started going he started confusing hot sister with my mother. And started calling her the “Hot One” so that’s what she is now. Dad died last year too. There’s no one left in the world who loves me just for being born. (Editors Note: not true. I did. I do… ) Not sure where i was going with all this sorry.

Dinner is served and everything was DELICIOUS. I did not try the lamb obviously but by the looks of things it was not a winner. The kids barely touched it. Jazz kept gluttonously grabbing second portions of it to make it look like more people liked it than they actually did but i was silently keeping track of how much everyone was eating. Jazz has been gaining weight recently honestly I’m a bit worried. At his age his weight should not be fluxuating so much. All through dinner Jazz and FUTS are teasing me about different things. About how I don’t have a job. About how I can’t find a myself a girl. Hot sister is mostly silent. Sobazynski is staring daggers at Jizz. I’m used to some teasing from Jazz and FUTS so its fine i can be their punching bag. I think they actually bonded a little over it so at least something god came out of this night. But what really hurt me is when Jimmy would laugh or make a little comment. I know he didn’t really mean anything by it and he’s generally a cool guy it just hurt my feelings. Also i know he’s been in the family now coming on 20 years but i still think in-laws should know there place. It’s just plain rude to make fun of blood family. And Jazz rubs salt in the wound by acting like an Angel with Jimmy and his Mom talking about how sorry he is that Jimmy’s dad died. Meanwhile everyone knows how little he cared when my dad died. Whenever Jazz wants to talk to my side of the table he looks straight past Sobazynski and at my sister and completely ignores him whenever he says something.

Dinner ends. We’re all in the living room. I’m a little bit drunk but Jazz and Sobazynski are in a race to the bottom. Jazz steps outside to smoke. While hes out there I punch back. Bring up the odor. Question his masculinity. Suggest his date isn’t even real. Everyone is laughing having a better time without him there. He comes back in and the mood is immediately killed. Yinzer shows up. I feel a little embarrassed but I recover. Everything is normal for maybe 5 minutes. Jazz and the Yinzer are getting a little handsy. Jazz keeps looking over at my hot sister and Sobazynsky sees EVERYTHING. Jazz asks him what he’s looking at. They start getting verbal. Sobazynski is full of liquid courage and Jazz is rearing for a fight in front of all the women. A part of me is proud of Sobazynski for sticking up for himself. Thats his wife after all and Jazz deflowered her on his watch. Jazz calls Sob a little man. Sob makes a dig about Jazz’s weight. (I don’t think it’s okay to call evil people fat as a perogative. The only people it hurts are the fat people you are close to. Also Jazz isn’t even fat. I said earlier I was worried about his weight and it’s true that he’s put on a few but he was very skinny for a while and looks healthier now then he did than). “I’m big where it matters” Jazz retorts. Hot sister laughs. The laugh that was heard around the world.

 Sobazynski springs to his feet. He’s leaning over Jazz. Jazz kicks him back. Sob takes a swing. Jazz tackles him and sob hits his head on the table. Sometimes a man falls and hits his head and dies and that’s it. Dies just like that. That fall I was worried it was going to be nights out for Mister Sobazynski. But he couldn’t be more alive. He flips Jazz over and gets on top of him. He’s got his hands around his throught. Hee’s like a mad dog. Spitting and growling. I see a glob of spit fly out of his mouth and into Jazz’s eye. Jazz is struggling letting out this ugly scream. Something comes over me in that moment. Rage from the past year and a half boils up inside me and I snap. I’ve only snapped once before. In alaska. I stand up and I start kicking Jazz. Jimmy springs to action and he tackles me. He’s on top of pinning me down. I shake him off and see that Jazz and Sob are up too. Now theyre engaged in an old fashioned brawl.  I feel something around my leg. It’s one of the nephews. The younger one. He’s hanging on for dear life trying to pull me down. The other one is in the mix too. He goes after Sobazynski. It’s not fair. It’s a 4v2. Sobazynski tries to level the playing field by throwing his keys at Jimmy. Mid air they veer left and nail the kid right in the temple. He goes down should be lucky he didn’t loose an eye. The damn finally breaks and I start crying. Jimmy lowers his dukes and pulls me in for a hug. A wise man knows when to raise his arms and when to open them.

At this point the fight is basically over. FUTS tells us we need to go. Jimmy looks apologetic. Everyone gets kicked out except Yinzer. Hot sister leaves with her man. I give jazz a final look before I start walking home. So this is it. This is the end. I think about a lot of things on my walk home. It takes me an hour. I wonder how different my life would have been if I never met Jazz in Hershey park during Obama’s first term. Maybe i;d be happy. Maybe not. Sometimes Jazz makes me happy. I’ve been sad without him, but I wonder if the sad of being with him is worse than the sad of being without him. 

Its been a week. I’ve been sad without Jazz but I’ve also felt free. I’ve realized that I want to go back to school. I’ve been hanging out with my friend TJ more. Writing this has been cathartic. Maybe I can do some of this more. Thank you for reading friend. Jazz, if you got this far, I want you to know I’m still angry. But writing this has been cathartic. There might be room in my heart to forgive.

And now, Maury’s poem:

From the shores of montauk to the plains of Omaha
Ten thousand horses thunder their way west on their way out
Unleashed and unbridled their clamor a drowning but the loudest shout
From a hilltop I gaze upon their crushing majesty
Of A single tear falls for an unknown travesty