to be loved by duke

at this moment in time i'm supposed to be saluting some friends and acquaintances at essence magazine's 2nd annual black women in hollywood luncheon at the beverly hills hotel. but, when i opened my eyes at 10 a.m. today, i immediately realized how difficult it was going to be to attend yet another masturbatory hollywood award season opus.

it so doesn't matter.

it became even harder to motivate myself after receiving some news on my facebook page that rocked my world.

"Melissa invited you to 'Melissa Duke-Mooney Memorial Service' on Sunday,
February 22 at 2:30pm."

because of the way it was worded i honestly thought it was some kind of joke. i had just read duke's last irreverent status update a few days ago. she was fine.

but then i read the rest.

Event: Melissa Duke-Mooney Memorial Service
What: Ceremony
Host: Neil Mooney
Start Time: Sunday, February 22 at 2:30pm
End Time: Sunday, February 22 at 3:30pm
Where: Eastwood Christian Church

naturally, i was like wtf? i quickly pulled up duke's facebook page and after sifting through dozens of sympathy messages i realized that this was no joke. my girl, melissa duke, was no longer breathing and i had no idea why.

i immediately contacted two mutual friends--lisa and claire. claire was the first to respond. she wrote that duke had been in intense pain monday night, slipped into a coma on tuesday and was gone early wednesday. bacterial meningitis. then i had the unenviable task of informing lisa, who was at the hospital with her young son and hadn't heard the news.

like many of duke's friends i am stunned and shocked beyond words. duke provided a significant amount of our daily light. she was equal parts sun and moon. and at 41, still very young.

naturally, at times like these your mind is awash with memories. duke and i first met at a press junket. at the time she was a publicist for fox and i was the pop culture columnist for the fort worth star-telegram. i fell in love with her instantly because she was so outside the norm for a studio flak. duke exuded warmth, seemed genuinely interested in who you were as a person and didn't really involve herself in the journo class wars--"the my paper is bigger than yours, etc. bs." she treated everyone the same regardless of circulation figures or tax bracket.

our time together in l.a. was brief because she and her husband packed up their bags and moved southeast to nashville. i was truly saddened but understood perfectly when she said, "it's about quality of life issues."

throughout the ensuing years duke and i kept in touch. i remember getting the first pictures her oldest daughter and then chastising her for not sending photos of the second baby in a timely manner. we also used to bump into each other from time-to-time at various junkets. she would always take care of me. and, one of my great pleasures was jumpstarting the friendship between duke and lisa, when lisa and her family moved to nashville.

last year when i started this journal--because that's what it really is as opposed to being a blog--duke was one of the first to send her love. she wrote:

"I just wanted to let you know that I've been reading your blog....and I LOVE your voice. It is clear, true and feels like a friend. You have a gift with words but it seems the way you see the world....the way you prioritize (for lack of a better word) is your true gift. Your words inspire and have got me thinking more about my own priorities.

I know we only pass each other in junket life....barely knowing one another really but I am enjoying reading you - getting to know the real you. Thanks for sharing.

Continue to find the beauty.
xo Melissa

P.S. I have some tomatoes for you - get to Nashville!!"

i'm so glad i saved that note. i always will. yet, i'm saddened that she perhaps didn't realize that she was more than just a junket pal.

i'm sorry duke.

i'm sorry that it took your death to hammer home an age-old cliche. you really do have to tell folks how much you love them while they're still here.

c u later girlfriend. xox

say wot?!!

this is a happy day.

three thousand years ago when i was a grad student at BU/harvard, my friend denis peycher introduced me to a song that would eventually come to define that most enjoyable time. i had it on tape but god only knows at what point my parents threw away that era of my life that was once stored in the family garage.

For years all i could remember of that song was the beat line, "say captain, say wot" and not the artist. today i typed in that phrase in on my itunes account and bingo!

denis, who was from paris, was fond of european hip hop. he was always listening to songs in languages none of us could understand. i was initially introduced to him by my friend elisa gaffney from london. we called her spoon because of her family's wealth. all of us were part of a group of students who had formed a club called SPC (School of Public Communications) International. Among the members were people from egypt (anwar sadat's daughter), the uk, south africa, spain, italy, france, greece, malaysia, canada, germany, mexico, brooklyn, ireland, india, switzerland and sweden.

i'd like to say that our motley crew spent a considerable amount of time at cafes poring over pertinent world events but we really didn't do very much of that. our days (in between classes) were spent at rumple's, a precursor to starbucks just across the street from SPC. but we spent most of our time perusing that wine store on harvard ave. (two bottles for $5), stocking up on refreshments for our nightly chat fests.

with a group so complex and diverse the only things we generally didn't talk about were religion and politics. our gatherings were really all about the cultural exchange. we were all fascinated by our respective life stories and i am a wiser and more enlightened person now because of those meetings.

denis, however, was somewhat of an instigator--always making fun of the trust fund babies, of which there were many. he would also make cracks about the brits and our one indian friend who was having difficulty adjusting to life without "servants." denis also introduced me to gay life 101 and convinced all of us to accompany him to buddy's one night, a famous gay bar in the copley square area. it was the first and only time that i've ever danced all night long without once sitting down.

one night i suggested we have a surprise birthday party for spoon even though it wasn't her birthday. spoon was in on the ruse but felt guilty once everyone started bringing her presents and spilled the beans. i was in charge of the music and as a former dee-jay, it was a welcome assignment. it was the early '80s and disco had pretty much run its course. at that time i was listening to a lot of duran duran, journey, hall & oates, rick james, michael jackson, police, spandau ballet, culture club, marvin gaye, prince, thomas dolby, lionel richie, after the fire, kajagoogoo, earth, wind & fire, men at work and clash.

i made a mix tape (god, remember cassettes?) and took it over to spoon's back bay studio where the jam was being held. we were all rocking (with spoon's weak-ass speakers) when denis shows up with this vinyl. "you've got to play this," he said.

i was a little leery. i'd never heard of the artist or the cut and didn't want to damper the flow. but he kept insisting and to this day, i'm glad he did. the "captain" song became our party staple along with "she blinded me with science," "dancing on the ceiling" and "rock the cashbah."

so, today i've been ushered back to a time when i was happily unfocused, absolutely immature and totally enjoying the experiences of a lifetime. although denis and i both moved to new york at the same time after school and kept in touch for many years afterward, i suppose i should have suspected something was amiss when the christmas cards stopped coming. it wasn't until i had reconnected with gilles, another SPCI friend, about four years ago. he informed me that denis had been dead for just over a decade. AIDS. denis had contracted the disease from tom, another SPCI member from sweden. tom died while denis and i were still in touch but it never occured to me...

i had also lost touch with spoon. she returned to london and eventually married and had three kids. two years ago i was able to track her husband down through a random press release and we were happily reunited in london in '07. it was the first time we'd seen each other in 22 years.


mitch, the only other american member of the group, has moved from brooklyn to manhattan and is a vp at one of the largest pr firms on the planet. gilles runs an AIDS center in manhattan, russ has gone back to canada and i suspect the others are all doing well wherever they are.

today, i'm really missing all of them--even francine, the skinny and arrogant winch from paris whom none of us really ever liked.

tonight i'll lift a glass in their honor while i'm listening to da captain. take a listen.

miss rosa revisited

today's visit to the nursing home resulted in a couple more surprises. first, i ran into an old neighbor who actually works with alzheimer's patients at the facility. two, miss rosa, who was all over me monday with hugs and kisses, didn't remember who i was on tuesday.

oh well.

i wasn't really disappointed because she's at an age where the memory is the first to go. and besides, she was still warm and friendly. so much so that i got up the nerve to ask her some questions. yes, she is from germany and has been in the states since the '60s. and yes, she did recall the war and said, "i could never understand the hatred. it was so stupid. it made me sick."

again, it was hard to understand miss rosa as her accent after more than 40 years in this country is still really thick. but she did tell me she enjoyed her birthday and that her daughter had sent her some new kicks, a pair of walking shoes which she proudly showed off by lifting her right leg.

it's good to know she has somebody.

as for dad, he's still not eating the way he should and that concerns all of us. he was a little reflective today. he recently lost his first cousin in atlanta, a gem of a man who kept that side of the family together and popping. dad hated that he had to miss his funeral.

"i was just thinking back when i was a boy," he said wistfully. "i think i should have stayed in atlanta longer because i never got an opportunity to know any of my family." dad's father brought him to ohio when he was just a boy and he didn't get to know many of his relatives until much later in life. i only saw my paternal grandmother about three times in my life and each time she never knew who i was.

i wonder if rosa still misses her family back home--if she has any regrets.

perhaps i'll find out tomorrow.

rosa

god knows i hate hospitals and nursing homes. i loathe the smells, the sights and the sounds of them. if my dad wasn't in one, i'd never ever go near one. but after yesterday's visit i dislike them a little less.

on monday after stops at two malls and a grocery store i drove up to the extended care facility my dad now calls home. he was a little listless and was lying across his bed when i arrived. after about 15 minutes of small talk he suggested that we go sit out in the lobby. we opted to sit around the big conference table in the sun, across the hall from where a few folks were watching a big-screen TV. seated at the table with us was a woman i had recognized from the day before when i had lunch with dad in the facility's dining room.

her name was rosa and she was very lively. as dad repeatedly beat me at tonk, a game i hadn't played since college, rosa was talking to everyone that passed by. she had a thick german accent and at times see-sawed between english and german.

i'm not sure she realized she was doing that.

at one point she looked over at me, attempting to put together a child's casper the friendly ghost puzzle and marveled at how well i was doing. she also informed me that it was her birthday as she sorted through the snacks that a nurse had just given her.

"look at what they have given me!" she said in broken english. "it's my birthday!"

"well, happy birthday!" i said enthusiastically.

rosa smiled and went on about her snacks and how she loved lemon pop. it was really hard to understand her at times so i just smiled and nodded. she offered me a cookie and i gave it to my dad because i'm not really trying to eat nursing home food! she asked if he were my father or grandfather, but i couldn't determine what she said after my response.

it was my understanding, however, that spending your birthday in a nursing home with relative strangers probably wasn't emotionally satisfying. where was her family? did she have one? what about friends? my thoughts were broken up by another woman who had joined us at the table. this woman, apparently near deaf, was clearly agitated because she was strapped to her wheelchair. she kept screaming at the nurses and aides and told one of them, "i feel like i'm dying!" she said it so loudly i'm sure she woke up st. peter.

and, across the hall, when a man started mumbling loudly to himself. rosa, in perfect english told him to "keep it down over there!"

i almost fell off my chair.

just after these incidents--rather events--my mother rang, asking me to make yet another kroger's stop to pick up some pot pies for her dinner. i kissed dad and patted rosa on her shoulder and said "happy birthday miss rosa." she smiled and waved goodbye. as i made my way down the long hall to the exit i began wondering who rosa was and why was she here? was she a holocaust survivor? i couldn't help thinking that she was a great story needing to be told.

on my way to the grocery store i was consumed with thoughts about how she must be feeling. it was her birthday and she's in a nursing home with no family in sight, surrounded by a bunch of people with varying degrees of dementia and celebrating with hard cookies and a can of pop.

that was so lame.

it occured to me that i might be in rosa's wheelchair one day. that's when i knew i had to do something for her and for me. i bought rosa a birthday cake and some candles.

i'm glad i did. i will always remember the look on her face and the way she squeezed my hand and kissed it when i put the cake in front of her and said: "birthday girls should have cake on their birthdays." she then kissed both my cheeks, put her arms around my waist and ordered me--in her broken english--to kiss her cheeks, too.

with perishables in the car, i had to drop and run but i hated to leave her--alone. again.

i hope that random act of kindness made her day. i hope she knows that she's not alone.

i never asked rosa one question during the time i spent with her on monday but i learned so much just by being in her presence.

i kind of feel like it's my birthday.