By Helen Harlan 

Andrew Cochrane had a catchphrase: “Can we talk about me now?” He used it often and was mostly joking when he did. Even now, probably three decades after he first uttered it, it’s still quoted by those who knew and loved him.

So here goes. 

I went to Sacramento Country Day School with Andrew for the better part of my youth, but we didn’t become friends until 1996, during the high school’s spring theater production of Michael Frayn’s raucous comedy “Noises Off.” By the end of the show’s run, we were inseparable. There was never anything romantic between us. I had a feeling he was gay in high school, even though we didn’t talk about it until much later.

As I felt the 20th anniversary of his death lurking, I wanted to write about the good times we had together. However, when I sat down to put pen to paper, I wasn’t sure where to start.

First I thought I’d tell the story of our good times through the soundtrack that backed our youth, through songs like Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy,” and the B-52’s “Love Shack.” Both were Andrew’s karaoke favorites. Like many white boys in the ‘90s, he dug gangsta rap. He would blast it full volume from the tape deck of his Mercedes, whom he called “Francesa,” as we drove through East Sacramento, windows down. 

I considered mapping our tale onto the drive north on the I-5. We made this trip many times in Francesca when we headed home to Sac from Los Angeles, where we both went to UCLA.

During the 383-mile-long drive, we would laugh at the names of the towns along the way. They sounded so country. “Who came up with these redneck names? Shafter Wasco? Buttonwillow McKittrick?” we would joke. 

Another good entertainment angle would be to chart his favorite moments on “Seinfeld.” Andrew especially loved when Elaine delivered Kramer’s faxes and Frank Costanza reflected on watching “The Net” with the girl from “The Bus.” 

Andrew dug Kramer the most. At one point, he started greeting his friends like Kramer did, saying, “Hey, Buddy.” One weekend in the early aughts, Andrew DIY’d a hot tub in the living room of his apartment in Santa Monica like the K-Man did that one time. His building manager wasn’t too happy about that. But Andrew did it anyway. 

On almost any New Year’s Eve, you could find us at my family’s Tahoe house at Northstar in Truckee. One time, we all went sledding and my “little” sister smashed Andrew’s face and entire body into the snow. He was over six feet tall, but she was a straight six foot, so she could take him and did. He didn’t care one bit. He loved the competition. 

I was most inspired to tell our story through the series of bars and restaurants we lived at on L.A.’s Westside, where we settled after UCLA, and narrowed it down to seven joints: The Gaslite, Casa Escobar, El Cholo, Swingers Santa Monica, The Liquid Kitty, Baja Cantina and Chez Jay.

At some point at one of these haunts, Andrew uttered the other phrase he would be known for: “I need to be served.” He wasn’t into order-at-the-counter or take-a-number chains like Chipotle. He was a snob in this sense for sure.

And yet he loved a dive, so we hung at Chez Jay, the legendary watering hole across from the Santa Monica Pier, more than any other.

Chez Jay was a lot like Andrew. You could order steak and lobster, but you ate it with peanut shells on the floor and Bob Seger on the jukebox. 

Andrew lived in J.Crew, grew up in the Fab Forties and gave piano recitals at The Sutter Club. But he also loved doing regular-person things like plastering tile in the bathroom with his father or driving the golf cart around his family’s almond ranch in Delhi. 

When he took one of those “What kind of a career should you go into?” tests at the end of college, he told me the test recommended he should be a plumber. Andrew was happiest at places with peanut shells on the floor. 

Most of those Westside haunts are now closed, but Chez Jay is still open. It’s 65 years old and beat Andrew by four decades.

Chez Jay is the last place that I, or pretty much anyone, saw Andrew Michael Cochrane on the night of August 9, 2004.

The next morning he was pronounced dead in his apartment in Santa Monica. He was 26. The obit says he “passed away suddenly.” I have since learned that’s often obit-speak for “committed suicide.”

We are conditioned to believe that people who kill themselves didn’t like life, but that wasn’t the case with Andrew. He did. We had a good time. I’ve proven that.

But I don’t think it’s worth trying to come up with answers as to why the good times weren’t enough to keep him going. 

It’s best to keep these memories alive, which is why I wanted to write this piece and also why I couldn’t settle on just one angle. So I settled on all of them. 

Andrew wanted us to talk about him. Okay, buddy. We’ll do that.

Where do you want us to start?

Helen Harlan is a journalist who’s a regular writer for Sacramento News & Review and Solving Sacramento.