peter pantswize

When Earl texted, “Call me when you get a chance,” my heart stopped. He doesn’t send texts like that. Earl’s texts are links to songs, The Chipmunks on half-speed, something he wants to sample, a dumb video of a cat crashing into a greenhouse. A casual “hey lady.” So the moment I saw those words, I knew something had shifted.
Something had happened.

I called him immediately.

“What happened?”

It still doesn’t feel real. Peter was living his life, being unmistakably, recognizably Peter. He looked happy. Healthy. Stylish. Cool. He’d recently gone to Europe. He’d just had a birthday. That weekend he posted a video inside the stupid “Dancing Queen” bathroom at my friend’s bar in San Francisco. I noticed he had been running in the same circles with a guy I was seeing and other industry people in SF. I almost reached out like, “Hey, I’m hosting an event there next month!” but held myself back. I told myself, don’t bother him, don’t annoy him.

I had spent years annoying Peter. And as we got older, I kept my distance. I rooted for him quietly. I loved life on his behalf, because I loved him in a distant, nostalgic way. But no, we weren’t close. Not in the way people like to quantify closeness.

What we had was a chapter in our 20’s stitched with drunken nights, studio hangouts, and intoxicated conversations in model apartments about shared sadness, fears of never achieving things we dreamt about. Things we felt entitled to but didn’t always know how to work towards. Moments that irritated Earl, the witnessing of toxic relationships, and 3 a.m. emergencies. Stinky feet in the penthouse. Mutual dumb blonde moments that invoked the same glare of disappointment and sighs of frustration from Earl. Creative writing and FreeFall Fan Fiction. We went to cool shows and shared car rides as a trio. Me, wine-drunk and insistent, claiming I could make them stars if they would just let me manage them.

I know everyone loved Peter. Everyone had their connection with him, deeper history, longer stories, consistent presence and contact. But I promise you this: not one of you can rap The Gray Area or the Suede EP word for word the way I still can. Not everyone has the Google Drive links to the album they were working on but never finished. Not everyone heard his lyrics as the poetry they were. Not everyone could sit with it and analyze it and respect it the way I did. The music was dope, his delivery was crazy, Earl’s production was insane but as a fan of Peter’s writing, I always wondered if people truly recognized how beautiful his pen could be.

Alexa, play “Stolex.”

I was his biggest fan (and I’ll fight anyone for that title). I really believed I saw the creative brilliance in him more clearly than anyone else did. And being in those rooms with both of them meant everything to me back then. They were making the kind of music I loved, and I was writing as much as I could, trying to make beats, trying to be as cool, as creative and intentional as they were. And that era, with all its chaos and its quiet tragedy, shaped me in ways I didn’t understand until much later.

When Earl and I broke up, he moved on with someone else, and we had zero contact for nearly five years. It was respectful. It was necessary. I feel like the distance and refusal to be cool with each other stripped everything down and allowed us to return, eventually, as the close friends we were always meant to be. Peter and I stayed cool. We briefly worked together in San Francisco. He hit me up for rentals in Oakland when I managed buildings there. Landlord questions. Happy birthdays. Merry Christmases. “Don’t break your neck on those skates.” in the DM’s.

Communication was cordial. Scattered. Familiar but ultimately, distant. The truth is, I can’t tell you much about his life in the last 10 years, beyond what a person scrolling Instagram could glean. But I can tell you this: Hearing that he passed hurts me in a way that refuses to be organized or reasoned with. I’m devastated, and I’m painfully aware that it’s in a way that mildly irritates my ex.

Grief can be territorial like that…mapped, measured, graded, compared. People say and do strange things when they’re hurting. And in all of that noise, I feel strangely isolated. I’m trying to be respectful, extend condolences, check on the people who knew him while holding in how fucking sad I am and trying to make sure that sadness lands in the “appropriate” places.

That’s the impossible part.

Peter was someone’s best friend, someone’s brother, someone’s boyfriend, uncle, son and their grief deserves the primary space. His real life mattered far more than the pocket of memory I kept him in. But his absence knocks something loose in me that I can’t distance myself from. His art and my proximity to it was woven into a very specific season of my youth, and I’m just now understanding that some threads hold more of your creative identity than you ever realized. I know he wasn’t just important to me. He was important to a lot of people. He had a light. He was fun. He was funny. He inspired people. He was the kind of person who made you want to be sharper, funnier, more alive. A better artist. He was charming, silly, intelligent and cool. He had that rare, quiet gravity that shifted the energy of a room without intention. People like that do not come around often. And when they do, they tend to alter the worlds they inhabit. And when they’re gone, it tends to fuck you up in real devestating way, despite how much time has passed.

RIP Peter Pantswize Edgewize.