#83: Thank you, Matthew Perry.

Last night, my wife and I and two kids returned home from our nieces’s family birthday celebration. We immediately put our two year old to bed, and my wife started working on filling up our infant boy with food and formula, so he would sleep through the coming night. I started my nightly obsessive ritual of scrubbing down the kitchen and putting things away when I heard my wife call from the other room.

“Oh no,” she said. Unsurprised. “Matthew Perry died.”

“What?” I immediately stopped reorganizing the diaper bag and grabbed my computer off the dining room table to confirm.

It was true. Googling his name brought up a litany of articles all confirming his death by drowning. Each article sounding unsurprised, like the words were written months or years ago just waiting to publish. In reaction, I texted both my brothers and a few fellow Friends super-fans; then, we opened up HBO Max (still not use to calling it just Max) and pressed play on the pilot episode of Friends. There, onscreen, was a vibrant, twenty-four year old Matthew Perry saying his first lines as the character who would make him a household name.

“So, does he have a hump”?” Chandler asks, adding onto a joke made by his roommate at Monica’s expense. “A hump and a hairpiece?”

Across ten seasons of Friends, Perry’s performance of Chandler Bing would provide viewers with a witty, sardonic, sarcastic, self-conscious, and vulnerable character that became a fan-favorite. I gravitated instantly to the character, and during my own high school years, I very openly wanted to be Chandler. Not only did I model my speech and wardrobe after him, but I penned my own one-act play for a high school production where I portrayed a younger version the character.

At the time, I saw a lot of myself in Chandler Bing. Chandler wasn’t overly masculine nor was he very lucky in love through the first half of the show. Despite all of that, he was able to win people over with his wit and personality and eventually found his own happiness with his friends, his wife, and as a father of two. Upon reflection, I think that gave a young me something to hope for.

Reader, in watching or rewatching Friends, even back then, you could tell that something was going on with the actor behind Chandler Bing. Periodically throughout the show, his weight would fluctuate and there would be, what I can only best describe as, a light that went out in his eyes. (Reader, check out some episodes from Season 8 and 9, and you’ll know what I mean.) In viewing, I’d always ask myself questions about why Chandler was acting or looking a certain way but never really had the answers until last year when I read Matthew Perry’s book Friends, Lovers, and the One Bad Thing. Here, Perry gives a brutally honest account of his struggles with addiction that lasted most of his adult life.

At the end of his memoir, Perry is finally, after almost thirty years, clean and living a life that he thought he never could attain. He was clear headed, and it seemed like his life and career were ready for a second act. Reader, take look at interviews of Perry from around the publishing of his book, and you’ll see a man who is happy to have taken back his life. However, the book’s ending is a little melancholy. While Perry is finally clean, he does leave you with a sense that it’s for the current moment, and one more slip up could be the end for him.

When my wife called out from the other room about Matthew Perry’s fate, I immediately thought of a line I highlighted a year ago in his book, “It is very odd to live in a world where if you died, it would shock people but surprise no one.” I can’t be the only one making this connection nor feeling this way, but Perry’s premonition about his own death is unfortunately spot on. Reader, I don’t know if Matthew Perry fell off the wagon one last time, and I don’t know really want to know. Perry had a life filled with substance abuse and addiction and that has to have played a part. As a fan, I’d like to think that he had some peace in the final years of his life, and it was just his time. As I watched the first few episodes of Friends again last night, I began to think less and less about his death and more about the spunky, young man who wanted nothing more than to make America laugh.

And Matthew Perry did make us laugh. A lot.

And he continues to make us laugh.

Over and over and over again.

As my eyes started to feel heavy and everyone else was asleep, I turned off the TV and headed up to bed. Under the covers, light emanated from Kindle, and I scrolled down to Perry’s memoir and started reviewing my highlights from a year ago. One quote, in particular stands out now that he’s gone: “And have you ever stood on the water’s edge and tried to stop the wave? It goes on regardless of what we do, regardless of how hard we try. The ocean reminds us that we are powerless in comparison.”

Thank you, Matthew Perry.

And, thank you for reading.