There is a lovely symmetry that two of TJ's closest friends...

...are expecting their first child.

Sometimes the world gets it just right.

Happy birthday, TJ! You know how before each venture...

...I'd tell you, "Try and stay off the news this time"? With all the words at my disposal, I can't express how much I miss you. Jackass. Love always and then some, Litsa

[Above:] TJ w/ Jeff and Doug at their shared birthday Bifrost blowout at the Elysian, Dec 1, '08. (I didn't post this one last year as my BlackBerry takes crappy shots in dark bars, but it's hardly the point now.) A hilariously fun evening wherein Summer (Jeff's wife) made savory cupcakes topped w/ bacon and TJ, who suggested Summer fry the bacon at his place so as not to tip off Jeff (or was it so Jeff and Summer's place wouldn't reek of bacon? I can't recall) had vast quantities of foil-wrapped bacon leftover in his pack. Some of which ended up pleasing Doug and Anne's dog (waiting patiently outside) thoroughly. Also, as I teased TJ the next day, for being a highly intelligent group of individuals, it was sort of great that roughly a third of the evening's conversation revolved around the Elysian's seasonal-only Bifrost beer.



[Above, previous two photos:] TJ and I on his birthday last year at Top Pot. I was in a remissive phase then, so we met at my place, I gave him his smaller-sized gifts that would fit in his pack for our walk downtown, where, as the birthday boy, he insisted we see Disney's 3-D animated, Bolt. (I whispered to him midway, "Gee, do you think the dog and the girl get reunited?" and he teased me I was ruining the suspense.) We acted like total dorks and kept our 3-D glasses on after the film ended and, of course, realized that w/ my balance problems and his lack of peripheral vision in one eye, this was not really a plan.

Present-laden and Disney-fied, we walked back up to Top Pot for mochas and donuts. (I gave him his larger-sized gifts at our annual Christmas gift exchange, where, as previously noted he gave me the same gift the second year running: a trip to Manhattan to meet w/ one of the two agents interested in my novel. I.e. the most thoughtful and generous gift ever.)

These two pics were shot near the end of our day. He had to attend a meeting for work, then some friends were meeting him at Smith. I was supposed to rest then rendezvous w/ everyone. By that time, I was too sick and had to pass, but he emailed me when he got home and thanked me for a perfect day and said how much it meant to him that so many of his friends arrived at Smith and how lucky he felt in general. And I know he realized that we felt lucky, too.

His birthday is tomorrow and I spent most of last night poring over 20+ years of photos, et al. Have concluded I am neither a fan of mortality nor...

...some of my early '90s eyeliner choices.

At the reception for Christy and Mike's wedding, August 1993. Copious hair and piercings for each of us. (I'd taken out my additional earrings as I was maid of honor.)

At 26, this is what TJ wore to a betrothal wherein his date (we were both seeing each other among others at this point; you need a schematic to chart our history over the two plus decades) was in the wedding party. He'd donned a more formal ensemble for the ceremony, then jetted to his apartment to change for the reception. Three years ago at Uptown Espresso, he teasingly apologized to Christy for this consummate young dude maneuver and she found both the memory and the contrition funny. Then he confessed to her that a large swath of the revelers (myself included) had filled his pack w/ the remaining beers before heading to the Camlin Hotel's Cloud Room to get properly smashed. She'd long ago seen photos of the latter and laughed at acknowledgment of the former, which she'd already figured out.

The editors at TMZ are getting hard and/or wet just thinking about it:

I want to underscore I'm in no way comparing being gay to betraying one's partner.

That said, you know how there is National Coming Out Day? What if we enacted a Show of Hands Everyone Who is Fucking Someone They are not Supposed to be Fucking Day and got all this over with in one fell swoop?

Dear Montana Senator Baucus:

You understand, sir, that the position of U.S. Attorney is one of import and responsibility and that the determining criterion for your nominee should not and cannot be that you have stuck your penis in her vagina?

Towel off and mull it over.

Signed,
Everyone with Functioning Cognitive Skills

[And, yes, he is a Democrat. Lest anyone think I don't play fair around these parts.]

Promise I'll return it in good condition:

Does anyone have an ether mask I can borrow until February 15th, at which point both of our birthdays (which we made a huge deal over), Christmas (ibid) and sundry holidays will be over?

New York State Senator Diane Savino's erudite, wry and eminently logical defense of gay marriage:

I've long maintained that unless gays add plutonium to the mix, there is no way they are going to fuck up marriage to the degree straights have.

Here New York State Senator, Diane Savino, systematically dismantles the arguments against gay marriage and she makes me even prouder to be an American:

http://jezebel.com/5417973/heroine-alert-diane-savino-ny-state-senator

If you'd like to thank Senator Savino for her conviction, you can do so here:

http://www.nysenate.gov/senator/diane-j-savino/contact

Pretty sure legendary WaPo editor, Ben Bradlee, just hurled his tumbler of scotch across the room:

I devour the best of contemporary lit and biography and historical tomes and classics with the same appetite with which I pounce on sundried tomato ravioli, but I'm not above the occasional copy of Star or US Weekly. (Indeed, as I confessed here long ago, I even had a subscription to the latter way back.)

But I just received a Washington Post "Breaking News Alert" stating, "Tiger Woods says he regrets transgressions" and like all sentient creatures, I can't help but think, Aren't we on the brink of enacting health care reform? And fighting two wars? And is our Bush-inherited economy still as reliable as a meth-head with a key to your house or did I miss a meeting?

Again, I know I'm not alone on this: I don't read the Washington Post or the New York Times, both of which I check several times a day, for gossip. Archaeologists typically consider division of labor as the launching point for human civilization: news organizations of all mediums, leave who's-fucking-who to the print and online tabs and, please, for the love of our current civilization, stick to your purpose and cover actual goddamned news.

[Postscript two hours later: WaPo just sent out another "Breaking News Alert" stating, "NIH authorizes use of first human embryonic stem cells under new policy." Which is substantive, actual news. Hooray! Also: maybe we control the world with our minds now.]

So, today makes eight weeks...

...since he died and while the shock has subsided, the pain has not. When I wrote a few weeks ago that I'd sever any limb to have him back, I wasn't dallying in metaphor. Furthermore, I'd make the incision myself. 1) It'd be worth it and 2) it would hurt less.

Everyone, including my shrink, tells me I'm holding up wonderfully under the circumstances. (I hadn't been in therapy for a year but made an appointment after he was confirmed dead and I resumed shortly after the "memorial".) As noted, I'm tenacious by nature, but an indescribably huge portion of the credit goes to my family and friends, particularly my mom, whose love and insight have been sheltering and spot-on.

We've just completed the first month, November, in which he was alive for no part and I now believe the ancient Greeks were wrong: the world is, indeed, quite flat.

And now, let us raise our soy hot chocolate to ladies w/ uncanny timing and boundless good hearts:

Last Wednesday, as I was out running errands, it was pouring rain and gunmetal gray both in and outside my head. When I arrived home, I discovered the most delightful early Christmas gift from my beloved friend, Jade: a fuchsia basket bursting with a panoply of chocolates from Dylan's Chocolate Bar, one of my favorite places in Manhattan and the known galaxy. And the thought behind the gift was the best part: she said she wanted to remind me of the sweetness in the world.

This morning as I was reading the front page New York Times story on the horrific execution of the four police officers outside of Tacoma, I received a text from my dear friend, Maria, saying she wasn't sure if I was awake yet but wanted to let me know she'd left a surprise for me downstairs by my building's front door and for me to retrieve it before it was absconded. I was already half-dressed (clad in shirt and bra but still in my pajama bottoms), so I threw on some jeans and headed for the elevator. And there by the main entrance was an enchanting bouquet of a type of lily, I believe (I'm not the world's most adept horticulturist), a Godiva chocolate bar, and heartfelt and witty card.

I realize I'm not as funny when I chronicle how grateful I am, but the fact remains I am grateful to so many for so much. As I wrote the other day, there will come a time I return to penis jokes and such. (Today's Facebook post: "Like Thomas Edison and his light bulb, whomever develops a sensor that detects free-floating particles of douchebaggery will steer human history permanently for the good.") And I can feel myself inching that way: humor gets you through this nearly as much as anything. In the meantime, though, I'd fail as a writer and as a person if I ignored the incredible kindness surrounding me through one of the two worst years of my life.

So how 'bout if I split the difference and write how fucking grateful I am? While I mostly still feel like I'm stumbling blindly about, hour by hour I'm figuring this out. (And look! I just inadvertently wrote a Sheryl Crow lyric.)

"Take comfort in your friends"--Michael Stipe, R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" (and, well, just common sense):

My close friend, R, is in town and we had a toasty good afternoon yesterday that included story swapping, his wise counsel as someone who has been through this (he lost someone he loved deeply to an aneurysm, i.e. like TJ, she was here then gone in a blink), much laughter at long-running jokes, borscht, maple buttercremes, and a long walk.

Not bad under the circumstances.

Much love, fellas:

I spent a bittersweet but delightful afternoon yesterday with S and P at the Vivace on the northeast part of Broadway. Last Thanksgiving weekend, the three of us and TJ corralled at Dilletante, swapping tales and laughing ourselves silly. (TJ and I then went to a furniture store on Pike Street to retrieve a chest of drawers I'd purchased. With typical strength and perhaps a wee bit of bravado, he carried it under one arm from the store to my car around the corner and repeated the process when unloading it in my garage and riding the four floors up to my condo.)

S has lived in Los Angeles for years and, as such, he couldn't make it to TJ's memorial. P attended the vigil, but was in Paris for his awesome wife's 40th birthday when the memorial came. (I consider her a dear friend, too, and was all in favor of them adhering to their long-planned jaunt. As I relayed, TJ would have been the last person to want to fuck up anyone's travel plans.) S and P loved TJ and vice versa and S, with his usual insight, suggested that when he came to town for Thanksgiving this year, we gather again and raise our mochas to TJ.

We did and told stories of his life and caught up on our own and the whole thing felt right and good.

Well, that clears that up:

Turns out, despite my best cheerful efforts and the love of those around me, the holiday season and grief mix about as well as a kitten and a cobra.

It's bittersweet...

...that you can spend 21 years, i.e. half your life, intertwined with another and still feel as if you didn't have enough time. I'm thankful beyond measure for the days he and I had together. And, of course, for my Nobel laureate family, friends, and colleagues.

To paraphrase the line from "A Hard Day's Night": gear, fab, and all the other pimply hyperbole:

As I wrote on Facebook yesterday afternoon:

"Hey, dudes! I'm not sure everyone knows this, but I have been cane-free for three weeks now, the first time I've walked without cane or crutches since the four month remission that ended in January. So, high fives and cheek kisses all around! Carrying things in two hands! Yippee!"

So far, I've received 33 "likes" and 14 comments and the whole thing is dipped in a big bowl of awesome sauce and rolled in honey bunches of greatness. I'm more touched than Pamela Anderson in her honeymoon video. But, you know, nicer.

After 18 years, I know the cage door stays open as long as it stays open, seemingly independent of how healthily I eat (which is almost all the time) or how routinely I stretch and go for a walk (ibid). So, I'm sanguine but thrilled.

You take your good news where you can get it.

Hey, all! A bit of an update:

Seven weeks in, I think I've returned everyone's first round of incredibly kind phone calls, emails, and responded with thank you cards to the bevy of flowers and gifts I've been massively fortunate to receive. However, and this is a "problem" I am grateful to have, I am still not caught up on the second and, in some cases, third and fourth rounds of communications.

As everyone familiar with grief knows, it is a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process. I can feel myself inching in the right direction and some days I can discuss and write about him and how I am doing quite fluidly, surprising even myself. Others, like yesterday when I was downtown getting a jump on my holiday shopping because I am not quite fa-la-la-la-la this year and would prefer to sidestep the onslaught of wreaths, lights, Santas, et al, things leap out unexpectedly and I find myself nearly crying in the middle of Williams and Sonoma because I inadvertently stumbled upon their Popcorn Lover's Kit I gave him as part of his birthday gift last year. And again, this is obviously not specific to me. It seems ingrained in the process of learning to live one's life, in many ways, from scratch.

So, if you haven't heard from me a few days after your kind, thoughtful, and in some cases, hilarious-in-a-way-he-would-have-appreciated-most-of-all phone call or email, please know how much you mean to me and how much I value your reaching out. Most days, I return at least a few and I consider them a true gift and not a chore, but other days, the simplest tasks seem to require Herculean effort. But I will get back to you soon. Not because I have to, but because I love or value you deeply.

I am tenacious by nature, but all of you are helping to sustain me in ways that if I enumerated would fill every book in each library across the globe.

In the midst of the worst year I've encountered, I am still profoundly grateful and fully aware that out of the nearly seven billion fellow humans currently sharing the planet, I was graced with one of the very best lives.

And yes, one day I will again make penis jokes and such. For my own sanity, mostly, and because he'd want me to continue moving to a lighter place and reclaim my title as "Miss Potty Mouth", one of his many nicknames for me.

Still and always,
Litsa

"Incidentally, this record is available in the foyer"--Eric Idle

As with any death, TJ's has had its attending share of absurdities and inanities. Folks are still posting on his Facebook page (if you believe he can hear you, as I do, and we'll get to that in a sec, can't you just talk to him directly?); his Facebook page is still up almost seven weeks after his death; a local theater company that is ten grand in the hole and who bears someone close to it who declared personal bankruptcy over a year ago has started a "memorial fund" in TJ's name (yes, that last one was awkwardly worded, strictly for legal reasons); TJ donated money to said theater company last year, but had no intention of acting for it again (if you disagree on the previous point, you're calling TJ a liar); he had last acted for said theater company at a staged reading in September 2007 and in one of its plays in April 2006; the aforementioned individual close to said theater company used to literally beg me to write about it, despite the fact I repeatedly declined (TJ was a brilliant actor, but with few exceptions, the best part of the company's repertory); TJ had stepped down from the board of said company years ago because he thought it was poorly managed financially (TJ excelled at investing and cash-related matters); because TJ's family knew none of the above, the aforementioned individual has turned TJ's death into an ostensibly charitable money-making opportunity, despite the fact TJ, while being incredibly charitable with money and time, never would have contorted the death of any of his friends for his own purposes, and he did consider said individual a friend, which makes the whole shebang that much more of a clusterfuck.

Having said that, I, of course, have no control over any of it. Which is where the whole "letting go" thing comes in. And circling back to an earlier point, yes, I do believe TJ hears his loved ones, not because he was messianic or something but because that is what I believe. And clearly, others believe it, too, or they wouldn't keep writing to him on his Facebook page. But this is among the things that bemuse me: if you believe he can hear you, certainly Facebook is not the conduit, is it? As I've written of here and elsewhere, during different points of my life, I've been a believer, an agnostic, and an atheist. I respect anyone who arrives at his or her conclusion after vast periods of reflection and not based merely on the geographic locale into which he or she was born.

For the past few years, I have again believed in an omniscient deity, fully stipulating, as I have with each of my prior beliefs, that I might be wrong. Ultimately, I believe we leave this life not knowing certain things and the best we can deduce is, at its core, an educated guess. I have family and friends of all philosophical and theological stripes: the thing that unites them is that each has an active mind and a kind heart. And I believe these are the most important traits of all.

With all this in mind and prompted by my friend Eric's recent and brilliant interview w/ John Cleese, I opted to view Monty Python's Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life, and Search for the Holy Grail back-to-back yesterday, each for roughly the millionth time. And, of course, while I understand the underlying and collected meaning of them is essentially agnostic, the god I believe in would be the first to find these films masterworks and utterly fucking hilarious. I will not believe in a god who does not believe in Python.

So here are the lyrics to my favorite Python song, that obviously, closes The Life of Brian, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life":

"Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble; give a whistle
This will help things turn out for the best

Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly, chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle
That's the thing

Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the bright side of life

For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain
With a bow
Forget about your sin
Give the audience a grin
Enjoy it
It's your last your last chance, anyhow.

So, always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke
It's true
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you

And, always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the right side of life
(C'mon, Brian! Cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the bright side of life
(What are you gonna do?
You come from nothing--you're going back to nothing
What do you lose?
Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life
(Nothing will come from nothing!
Cheer up, you ol' bugger!)
Always look on the bright side of life

And this week's shout-outs go to:

• Christy, for graciously allowing her birthday dinner to be postponed twice, (once when TJ went missing and then again when he was confirmed dead) and while it wasn't the locus of what should have been and was an evening to honor her, she kindly didn't ask or expect me to pretend what is going on is not going on. And we should note she was his friend, too.

• Hilary, for a deeply meaningful and darkly hilarious dinner at Quinn's after which I got the closest thing I've managed to a full night's sleep in six and a half weeks.
  

• My cousin, George (yeah, I know, same name as my brother, but they're named after different grandfathers), for volunteering to purchase and install a router so that I might have wi-fi. (And as such, I'm writing this from my living room now. Hooray!)

• My parents, for a fun-under-the-circumstances lunch before they dropped me off at grief counseling.

• Eric, for his outstanding-per-usual interview with John Cleese (http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/11/qa-john-cleese-plans-on-living-forever-or-at-least-long-enough-to-pay-off-his-alimony.html) that prompted me tonight to rent Life of Brian, Meaning of Life, and Search for the Holy Grail, all of which I intend to watch for the millionth time tomorrow and should have thought to have rented weeks ago.

• My new friend, Gary, for being a spectacular listener and for reaching out to an acquaintance when many would have looked the other way. Also, he is a gifted thinker, conversationalist, and artist who helped today pass in a vastly superior manner to yesterday, which was hellish.

• Kate, for sending me one of the most insightful and understanding letters I've received since this began and whose awesomeness continues unabated.
  

• Jade, Yahoo!'s overnight editor, for her otherworldly level of insight and who chose one of their photo highlights for me: http://tinyurl.com/yjrnprz

• My cousin, Mary, for her unfailing compassion and ability to make sense in the face of cacophony.
  

• My brother, George, for continuing to prompt me to laugh when it's seemingly impossible.
  

And if I forgot you, please, speak up: I'm a bit fuzzy-headed now for obvious reasons. Really, though, I cannot thank everyone enough. I remain grateful beyond measure.

There's been a lot of "letting go",...

...to use grief parlance, the past few weeks.

The irrefutable facts remain, though: Tuesday night made six weeks since he was due at my place; Wednesday six weeks since he was "officially" late by the time frame he gave me; tomorrow will make six weeks since he was confirmed dead and seven weeks since we spoke on the phone; Sunday eight weeks since we saw each other in person for the final time, in my living room, going over instructions for bunny duty (he was taking care of Xander while I headed to Portland for three days).

Of course, those numbers will move in only one direction, growing larger with each passing second and with no plateau or respite.

As Elliott Smith once sang, "Oh, well. Okay."

I just received the New York Times Breaking News Alert that...

...Rudy Giuliani has decided not to run for governor of New York.

Which means one of two things: he has either deduced that his batshit presidential run ("I'll sit out lots of primaries then I'll disavow gays even though a bunch of them were my friends when I was mayor!") has permanently soured him with voters or he's about to announce wife #4 and this one is his sister.