goofballs

Anniversary. The first time I saw her, after nearly 16 or 17 years had elapsed, she was noticeably thinner than she was in high school. But she was also stylish, in a way I didn't recall her being as a teenager. There was an anxious confidence in her. She talked in stuccato, gesticulating sharply.  We dined on bacon and eggs and talked about LA and TV and the Scientologists across the street, in their color coded collared short sleeves filing out of their Scientology busses as the Scientology private police force circled the big blue building on bicycles. We walked to her house, passing a vitamin store (a Scientology front, but I was just as fascinated to hear the dirt as she was to dish it). She offered, smiling, "did you know my maid is a Scientologist?" We passed a Spanish-Mexican church. This was unglamorous West Hollywood, where staff writers and upstarts scrape by. Of course Emily was also on SSI, for her problems. I browsed her selection of books - novelized fictio...

My garment bag - Seigel's Fine Clothing - looks like a body bag. My minds eye can see your grinning face asking "can I fit in it?" and trying to zip yourself up. You probably could, you were 90 pounds soaking wet carrying 5lbs of bricks. Now I lay it with care across my chair, over top my guitar cases, so that if I manage to bring myself to leave the house any time soon I can get my dress jacket and shirts dry cleaned for your memorial. That will be two weddings, two funerals. I wish I could erase the death by dousing it in gasoline and setting it on fire. Your size was the only small thing about you. I'll never forget sneaking out of the dorms for study hours and you being a fixture misfit in the computer lab most nights - all of us forming a ragtag tribe of proto-geeks. What was it you were always typing? I never knew until later the depths and breadth of your wondrous creativity - only that your joy was infectious and your curiosity boundless and that you h...