Writing My Friend's Obit

Monday's weather: moderating after Friday's arctic blast; winds are down but there's moisture in the air. Probably rain tonight, and mid-temp blahs to follow for a week. Basil dead, sage hanging on, thyme OK, rosemary healthy. Who knows what's up with the oregano.
Monday's drink: I'm not drinking save for today, and stress, and my choice. Vodka and orange juice. Healthy and deadly. I don't really care.
Monday's link: The topic of tonight's post.

Look, none of us are immune to loss. Sitting on a bar stool this Saturday, wedged in between drunken Georgetown students cheering on Lord knows what, I learned that my friends JM, JB and B aren't friends by choice. We're family - whether we knew it or not - of the Gigantic Fantastic Green Plastic Travelling Family Love Buggy. One of us has had several divorces, one of us is adopted, one of us is plowing through a disintigrating relationship, and one of us lived mostly as a vagabond in our youth - staking our tent in this yard and that. There's a reason we're all so smart. And attached.

So there I was, watching my Spartans go down in brave and decisive defeat, picking up free Georgetown clothing that was scattered on the floor, jostling with collegiate-sized chunks of drunken testosterone, watching the younger Hoyas fade...fade...fade into alcohol stupor. And having a great time. Trading notes on who's seeing who, what's provoking what, where what the who came from. And sharing things I shouldn't.

Things about the turmoil in my life. Not that any of this is bad. But turmoil, whatever the result, is what it is. I promised myself I wouldn't say a thing. I promised myself again at the bar. This, clearly, was not a promise, as I spilled the beans. About the great forest I find myself happily lost in, again, after many years.

There was an elevation from said bean-spilling, although short lived. Before DrinksWithHoyas, I met with DG...perhaps one of my closest of chosen family. He's as smart as I am...and I'm confessing a lot with that. The message of our lunch: we age, we understand more. A loving man with HIV, DG said it most clearly when he heard my story and said: "You know, most gay men are afraid of aging, it's the terror that ends life. For those of us who have sat on our death's bed...well, we look forward to aging."

End of life means something else entirely. So it was when I went into work today that I knew I would have to deal with a friend's life ended. Brent Hurd, sometime *** employee, sometime journalism teacher, always optimistic bulldozer in my life. He died on a bike, hit by a bus. Apparently just coming home from the swim club he frequented in Bangalore. The news reports say his death was instantaneous.

I don't know if that gives me comfort or nightmares.

Brent muscled out into the world in a way I haven't. But weirdly, he never gave up hope that I might join him along the path someday; that I, too, was worthy of adventure and courage and striking out on life's razor's edge.

And today, I had to write his obituary. Write it, gather the video, edit it, time it all out, then deliver it on camera.

Fraud. That's what I'm saying to myself while I deliver this item on camera, if you watch the video. And you should. Oh, not him. Me. Fraud.

"You had no intention of going out on an adventure, fraud," it says. "You never believed in the rightness of journalism, did you?," it pokes. "You're all about comfort and complicity and stuffing dollars into your stockings," it mocks. 'It', my therapist would remind me, would be 'me.'

So I did my level best. I tried not to inflate him beyond his measure, nor tap him as a salestool for our company. To listen to him - through the years, and through his videos - and try to relate why his loss is important to my audience. If they care.

Who knows. But today, I wrote, edited and delivered my friend's obituary. He was alive and how, and now he's not. But I am.

And we are. And if anything is to come of this it's what I make it. So here's to being alive:
*to all the random meetings that grow like tropical fruit in the sun,
*to lifting a tankard, or a hand, with those you were meant to be with,
*to cherishing those who are your true family,
*to rebirth and renewal and everything that Shiva tears down.

Goodbye, and peace to you, Brent. And for the rest of us: goodness and no rest until the end.

Don't Dream It's Over

Friday's weather: moist and unusually warm in the air. 68 today and the hound is on her toes, taking me on super walks. Trees across DC now at peak; this town is lovely in autumn. Pumpkin on porch, not looking so lovely anymore. Oh, and my fall crocus are up and ready to bloom while the basil is all gone.
Friday's drink: again, water.
Friday's crush: on Joel McHale, star of "The Soup" and now doing live shows - C and I are going tonight to see him.

(ed note: most of what follows is basically copied from something I wrote and posted on another blog I write for. But as that's a private group thing, I wanted to offer this to friends here at the bar. Sorry, JR)

Hey everybody. I wish I could say this is going to be something smart, but I feel the need to be current more than smart right now. And smart was never my trump.

In these weeks leading up to the election, we all must have felt - whichever candidate we were supporting and whatever our ultimate goals - a tingle passing through the body of America. That feeling like nerve stimulation: awake aware, but what is it?

Each of us, no doubt, has our story to tell. Mine is two-fold. Quick, but two fold.

First: I was the primary anchor for ***'s live radio/tv simulcast for this event. Being ***, everything was fucked up, but we stumbled through. Election night is always the same: spurts of news, filling in between. I was filling in between when the bulletin crossed the computer/wire at the desk. I glanced up to my trusted colleague Jim, he saw it, caught my eye, and jumped right in.

"Doug, I think you have some important news to report."
(geez, I'm getting teary writing this. press on...)

So I had the great honor of announcing to the world - well, that tiny portion of it that was listening or watching to us, but still...millions of people - that Barack Obama had won the presidential contest and was now the next President-elect of the United States.

Of course the blah-blah and what-not and screw-ups continued: to McCain's concession, to Obama's valedictory. Only at the very end, as I queried all our guests/contributors about the evening, and turned finally to Jim did I really get it. Jim's comments - as always - were crisp, poignant, and, rare for him, at the very end, shaded by the emotion of the moment. He turned to me and said: "Doug, tonight we have not only witnessed history, we've had the unique privilege to be its clarion." As he did so he looked me hard in the eye, and I heard that unique signal only broadcasters hear: "help me out here. I can't talk anymore because I'm going to get choked up."

I, too, began to choke. But I had a job in the moment. "And there's no one I would rather have joined me to chronicle this moment but you," I said. Or something like that. Who knows. wrap! wrap! they're yelling in my ear. I wrapped and was out.

Which leads me to my second story. This has been a long ... very long ... campaign for me. At it's end I felt something best described as exhaustion. This is due in some measure to the big changes I'm going through, and instabilities and hopes and questions I have. To have them in such a profound way about your nation at the same time? It's like nausea.

The newsroom was popping corks as I left the studio. I came in and everyone (generously) gave a big hurrah, slurped a tiny bit of champagne and was out the door, as I had to be in early next morning.

Driving home I wondered. What just happened? Horns were sounding all throughout Washington. People on the streets waving, lights flashing, fireworks going up. I made it home through to discover perhaps the biggest crowd was at my feet. The U Street center - 13, 14th streets - was over-run with people. DC police just blocked it off: no cars, just revelers. Still, horns everywhere. Strangers embracing. The din of a crowd that has just won a World Series; oh, but even more. Cameras flash flash, whoooo's! rising and falling. A mob of joyous abandon.

I wandered in the mob for a while, still in my now slightly wrinkled tv suit and tie, makeup still caked on. No-one cared. "WHOOOO!" they'd say before just grabbing you by the shoulders. "YES WE CAN!" as they planted a kiss on your cheek. Is this what it is to win a war, I thought?

Yes, it is. I am very very tired now. Exhausted physically and emotionally. Just keeping myself from crying jags at inappropriate moments. To be clear: crying mostly for what this moment is, for where we may go, for belief in hope, and for the dizzying position of, perhaps, having been the voice that first broke the news to someone living in Nigeria, Indonesia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Brazil, Kenya.

Tonight I had hoped to come home, make some tea, shut off and uplug every TV and just sit in the quiet of my house. And I expect break down sobbing. That's not a bad thing. It's just, I guess, what you do to process a moment of history. However there's comedy to hear tonight, and friends to meet tomorrow fresh off the campaign trail with their own stories to hear.

So I'll just say that I am very, very proud to call myself a citizen of the United States, and to number so many of you my friends.

The End of Days

Sunday's weather: Seasonably cool and cloudy, but not in keeping with the last several days of sun and warmth. No rain in sight, making next week dry. The maple out front is about 1/2 turned; all leaves edged in orange, yellow and red, with a few leaves keep crimson in the center.
Sunday's drink: water, as per keeping with the new regimen from personal trainer Will.
Sunday's link: To a new documentary made by my friends Simone and Rich. Labored over, more like, for several years of their lives. An enviable accomplishment - everyone take a peek.

Our friend - social friend - JJG threw a masquerade party last night. He's got a wicked cute house with a double-sized backyard, and the evening was, as always at his place, well done. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

Well, except not. Again and again the economic train-wreck that is our nation at present kept coming up. Unbidden - people were just volunteering comments, policy prescriptions, blame, and worry. Double up on the worry.

Mind you, this is a fancy Arlington house, on a lovely evening, sitting among friends in the landscaped yard amid the firepots and ponds, wine glasses in hand, lights strung overhead, all of us decked out in the adult game of masks. A decidedly privileged experience in a world of so much want; but the kind of privilege people have come not even to notice. Like the sky: always there, but rarely seen.

Last night I saw a level of nervousness in people that I've not seen before. The phrase "the end of days" came up on several separate occasions. One friend (who I don't think I should even tag with initials for privacy) who I care for greatly (though have fallen somewhat apart from in years) admitted to losing 20 pounds in two months - all because of worry of how bad things will - not may - get. This has been an unusually clear-eyed person; to hear such fright knocked me for a blow.

C has taken to using the subtitle of this blog - "...the capital of a crumbling empire" in conversations and I'm quite fine with that. I chose it for a reason: I have for sometime believed ours is a largely economic empire that is unspooling and we - we have neither the will to acknowledge this and disengage from it nor the ability to control it to our favor anymore.

OK, lah-dee-dah. But what the hell do I know, right? So when friends with more experience and wisdom of the world begin agreeing with me, without qualifications...well now I'm starting to worry.

This comes at a bad time. Like there's a good one. Nationwide people are just tweaked out by the election. Washington has a ginormous case of the jitters because whatever happens, this town will be a swirl of job-changing over the next year. And me? Well, 1 1/2 years in therapy have put me on a path of openness to change and emotion...neither of which can be controlled. Opening up to some change is often an invitation for change in other areas you didn't ask for it. Opening up to emotion means that they will arise as their own force - whether you want them to or not. After several years asleep I am a jangle of movement. I just can't predict where.

So you can see: not really loving the "end of days" meme. But it's coming up again and again.

Where are we at, and where are we headed?