One of my last blog entries has a photo of him during Second Thanksgiving.  While everyone mingled and drank, he was disco dancing in the background.

And that was him.  The first time I ever met him,  he had been to the Farmers Market that day (he was an amazing cook), and within four seconds he was accosting me with a cucumber, holding it up to my mouth like a microphone.  “Who are you?  What are you doing here?”  He had a big wicked grin the whole time, ’cause that was him too.

He was one of those people who drew you in immediately.  I mean the guy literally warmed up a room.  I had only known him a short time – three and a half months – but I took it for granted I’d know him forever.

My last memory of William: in his apartment at the Chelsea, drinking shots of whiskey…Jefferson, Thomas and I introduced him to YouTube (what decade were you living in, Willem?)…and, just like that, he was hooked…suddenly he was ecstatic, pulling up songs and videos from the 60’s and 70’s, stuff he hadn’t seen in years…really hilarious stuff….a Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood video complete with artistically blurred shots of her on the beach…and we were all watching and laughing hysterically.  Then we put on the BeeGee’s and Willem and I danced… Jefferson and Thomas watching from the couch and rolling their eyes at our awful choice of music.  But Willem didn’t give a damn.  He’d do anything he wanted to do… he’d say anything he felt like saying, and it was impossible to be offended by him.

“Show me some moves, Willem!”  I told him.  So he did.  We taught me the correct way to do the twist and the mashed potato, all with a cigarette in his mouth and a glass of whiskey in his hand.  And the dude had moves. He talked about the Beatles when they were young and Amsterdam when he was growing up.  He talked about the boat he was building (his baby). Later he read us all Bob Dylan lyrics in his best gravelly Bob voice…then Dylan Thomas poems…and honestly, that man could read poetry (and it wasn’t just the sexy accent either).   He had passion. He was hilarious and silly -  but honest and kindhearted.  He could ask a poignant question – one that, had anyone else asked, you might get offended – and you’d answer him honestly.  You knew he wanted the best for you, and it came from a place of love.

Willem: always the center of attention

Memory of Willem –  He knows some famous, hardcore experimental filmmaker, a lesbian who does really edgy, raunchy sex stuff… he is asked to audition for the lead in her new S & M film…he’s never acted before in his life, but he doesn’t let that stop him –  he gives it everything, despite the fact that he’s a straight guy playing an abusive leather daddy with lines like “You’re my bitch, bitch!”…and he practices his  for us, really getting into it, making me laugh till I cry. “I’m gonna be a star!” he tells us.  ”I need an agent!”

Memory of  Willem – taking me aside the last time I saw him…his voice low and his eyes kind…to tell me that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

Willem – telling us his cat is really a “Can-Can Girl” … then petting her back to which she instantly responds by raising her butt.  ”See!  She’s a Can-Can Girl!”

I had thanked Willem in the acknowledgements for my book.  Even though I’d only known him a short time at that point, not even a month, I’d wanted him in there.  It had been a crazy time in my life, and he’d given me kindness and comfort when nothing felt stable.  He made me feel stable, which is incredibly ironic since he’s spent so many years living in the Chelsea Hotel of all places…the least stable place in the world.

The last thing he told me, the last time I saw him, right before I left his apartment…make sure to get his last name right in the acknowledgments.  Well, not the very last thing.  The very last thing was him with a big smile, tapping his feet and singing “These Boots Were Made For Walking” as we headed to the elevator at 2 am…

I’ll miss you, Willem Van Es.

This is for you:

I taught Russian lit  this year, a whole unit on Checkhov, and I know I will always be a sad imitation of Skip, who  can rip a short story out by the root…but there is something to those Russians.  Everything is extreme.  Tolstoy’s favorite part of the bible was Revelation 3:15-16: I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm–neither hot nor cold–I am about to spit you out of my mouth.…and see, I even put it in another color because this whole blog entry is so fucking depressing. In fact.  I’ll give this blog a good title that can act as a warning…I’ll even make the font small so it’ll be hard to read…

…and, truth be told, there is something so freeing about having a blog and saying what you really feel and knowing others can read it, or choose not to read it, but that it actually exists.

My pole dancing teacher says I forget to breathe.  When we solo dance at the end of class to the song we have picked…well, most of the time I don’t remember those five minutes, in that dark room, sliding across the floor and rolling around, crouching low like some hungry animal or whipping myself around the pole in combat boots or, other times, just grinning to myself and prancing…feeling my arms reach above me for the next surprise life has to offer me.   Anything.  Everything. Bring it on.  Yeah, it isn’t what people think, pole dancing.  But, according to Janelle (and I believe what she tells me, because I admire her greatly) – I forget to breathe. And my response, when she said that…without thinking, yeah, you’re right, and I forget to breathe in my everyday life too.

Is that what you were talking about Skip?  Breathing?

I’m not trying to be deep here.  In fact, I will admit I know absolutely nothing about anything ever ever ever. But I do know I’m lucky. And I know Lynn lived and loved fully enough for two lifetimes…and I know  it means so much to me, those of you taking the time to read me…even just a paragraph now and then.  And please, if you think of something, agree or disagree, anything at all, say it in the comments.  I don’t want this to be a void, this blog…

I guess what I’m saying… I hope this website doesn’t paint my life as all roses and icing, ’cause some days really suck.

I haven’t talked much about losing Lynn here…the first few days were really hard.  And then I started feeling better.  But then something would happen…like I’d be flipping through my phone contacts and see his name and feel this piercing stab…I’ve lost people before, but somehow this is different…so unexpected and so fucking unfair.  He was way too young, too kind…okay, I’m gonna stop now.  ’Cause it is such a downer.  But  I had to do it… ’cause if I want to be honest, to show you who I really am, I have to show you the hard times too…anyway, everyone cry big fat sobbing tears for me ’cause my life is so hard…I know it isn’t.  I have a roof and people I love.  And I had fun last night…which is what I had intended to write about in the first place before I started spewing all these hot/cold/lukewarm words…

(edit)

Okay, I just cut a whole paragraph I had written.  It was about lost souls in LA. I cut it because I realized I could never say  it as perfectly as West does in Day of The Locusts (heads up: this is some super gorgeous/depressing shit):

….The police force would have to be doubled when the stars started to arrive. At the sight of their heroes and heroines, the crowd would turn demoniac. Some little gesture, either too pleasing or too offensive, would start it moving and then nothing but machine guns would stop it. Individually the purpose of its members might simply to be to get a souvenir, but collectively it would grab and rend…

…Once there, they discover that sunshine isn’t enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don’t know what to do with their time. They haven’t the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn’t any ocean where most of them came from, but after you’ve seen one wave, you’ve seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a “holocaust of flame,” as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash.Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.

See?  Wow,  I mean, what is the point of describing Hollywood when Nathaneal West has given us that?  Luscious. perfect. prose.   And that is everything I wanted to say, and I can only dream of one day being able to express myself with a millionth of the power West did…that is Hollywood I am feeling right now.

But here is what I need to focus on, and I will even put it in a different color (because these are good things, and because, obviously, I just learned how to use the color button on WordPress and am officially color-happy):

It is Saturday night.  And there is salsa music from the complex behind us and loud Spanglish and hysterical beer-fueled laugher.  And on our other side, in the new condo (East Berlin, as the Girls called it) someone in standing on the porch smoking a cigarette and talking on his phone…and my new neighbors seem nice, and their door is open often, and they laugh a lot, and it makes me feel not so alone.  And my parents, who I get to see soon in Philly…and I’ll get to walk Old City with my dad and Matilda…and there is my new nephew in Miami, and his name is Caleb and he’s healthy and I can already tell from the pictures he’s a genius.   So there are good things.  There is Oklahoma, there are friends I adore…

And there are all of you. And those are the good things.

And tomorrow I will tell you about last night, becasue it was true Hollyhood night.  And for now I will force myself to put on lipstick and walk to the end of the condos, because there was an invitation on my mailbox…there is a party at the end of the complex.

and I have to go, right?  Not just for me…for you. Remember, I’m using this site as an excuse.

UPDATE:

i did it.  i put on lipstick and wore that shirt in honor of West.

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