the legend of blackie

i saw this on stereogum:

Gary J. Malone, chief of psychiatry at Baylor All Saints Hospital in Ft. Worth says, "You can't pour vodka on a turnip and have it say anti-Semitic remarks." (Via Newsweek.)

and i think we all know what that means, right? yes. it means it's time to move to new zealand. i mean mel gibson is clearly going to start imposing his vast personal regret on us all out of some sort of PR-induced sense of shame and i just don't think i can handle that. he's icky. i don't want him following me around offering to pour me another cup of tea or rub my shoulders.

nope. it's time to do the off. up up and away like the man says.

this week it's really begun to sink in that we're going -- and when i say "sink" i'm picturing some paunchy guy with cement shoes frowning at the hudson river.

i've gone away before. i've gone away long-term before. i've even moved places i have little to no knowledge of before -- LA, Honolulu, San Francisco. this is the first time i'll move somewhere so far away i won't be able to afford to visit home. the first time i'll move somewhere where the plan is to stay at least three years. the first time i'll move somewhere where the decision to bag it is not one i can make on my own.

and there are a lot of people i'm going to miss.

last night i got a drink at dalva with blackie. i met blackie at my first burning man in 1996. he was a friend of wanko's and we all camped together on the outskirts of madness. when i moved to san francisco shortly thereafter i called him up. and then i called him again. and again.

then he called me back and confessed he had no idea who i was and why did i keep calling him?

ha ha.

but we met up, at blondie's, back when it was double-size martini bar for hipsters and not a double-price martini bar for assholes, and we got to be friends. we hung out on saturday nights, bar hopping in the mission. we made vast bowls of fresh salsa. we laughed over old pick-up lines. we hitched around maui. we quit jobs and got lucky and told stories and rubbed sleep from our eyes and made it through stage-two of life. no longer kids, not quite adults.

it was blackie who was going to travel around the world with me in '99 but couldn't make it. it was blackie who helped me pack up and move once in less than 24 hours. later i peformed his wedding.

and we're both married now. he's a father, too. he doesn't call often, or even call back often, but i know him.

so last night over yucatana food, i tell him why he's my friend; because i can be honest with him. i can tell him what's really going on with me, even if it's not pretty. and i can tell him what i think of what he's doing, even if that's not pretty either.

you can't find that stuff lying around on the street. that sort of trust needs to ferment.

that's what i'm thinking about five days before departure.