Here's My Reason

I tend to keep the overly personal writings away from B&E. But seeing as the lines between private and public continue to blur, and since this is something dominating my thoughts at the moment and also might just explain my recent absence from B&E, I’m going to say a few words about my good friend Michael.

I met Michael in college. We were in a play together. He was two years older, and a 20-year-old seems wise to an 18-year-old. While we were still in school, he decided I was funny. He was a very funny fella, so it felt like an honor that he thought I was funny, too.

Shortly after I graduated, Michael tracked me down and asked me to provide as many voices as possible for some radio plays he’d been writing. I’d pretty much given up on the acting thing by this point, but Michael was a hell of a writer, and I (wisely) decided that this would be a Very Fun Thing To Do.

I was not wrong. The room was filled with extremely talented and funny people. Most were connected to Michael’s roommate Jordan. They had a vocabulary for humor that gets defined within tight groups over time, and it was everything I had to keep up.

Michael was collaborating on these particular radio plays, and I was really just starting to get into this thing some of us call writing. Watching him work was very educational. We’d read something that was very funny, but “not quite there yet,” and when we came back to read it again the following week, it was completely changed and funnier.

He was the first writer I’d ever seen be so ruthless with his own writing. He had the maturity and confidence to cut good material. This was eye opening to me. And it’s something I still struggle with. It’s very hard to “kill your babies,” as we often say in my writing group.

At some point, during this time, I asked him to read something I’d written. It was my first play, and it was an immature piece of writing. (I didn’t know that at the time, of course, but it really was.) He was honest about its failings but also supportive, kind, and encouraging.

We recorded the radio plays, had a blast, and then that was it.

At that time, Michael would do these union electrician jobs that paid quite well (for what we were all making during those days in the mid-nineties), and then he’d find himself with a chunk of time off.

A few months after the radio plays, I got another call. “I built a puppet theater, and I’ve adapted Faust to be a comedy for puppets!” Later I would do his puppet adaptations of Beauty and the Beast, called The Devil’s Pants (“I’m not the devil but I wear the devil’s pants”) and Sartre’s No Exit, called Hell is Other Puppets.

He went to film school, and I happily participated in a few of his short films.

When he finished film school, he joined my writing group (which I only joined in the first place because of a friend I met through Michael). He always had insightful things to say, and his output (in terms of pages) energized the group.

He was someone I assumed would always be in my life creatively. I was wrong. As I’m sure you probably already gathered by now, Michael passed away. It happened exactly a week ago. He was on vacation with his wife and her family. He went off snorkeling on his own and, somehow, drowned.

My relationship with Michael was unlike the others in my life. Michael and I were close—we could talk about our lives for hours and have fun socializing. He was always the best of company.

But it was creativity that brought us together again and again. I wonder if, without it, Michael and I would’ve wandered in and out of each other’s lives. As it was, our writing kept us coming back for more.

There is a creative hole in my life now, and I feel it keenly.

A few years back, Michael’s old roommate and best friend Jordan died of cancer. It had been a painful time—Michael was there at the final moments and had watched Jordan’s declining health over a long period of time.

After Jordan’s funeral, I was riding back to NYC with Michael, his wife, and two other friends I didn’t know well. Michael was driving, and I was in the passenger seat. Jordan’s wife had become close to the hospital priest, and someone in the car asked if Jordan, who was not Catholic, had been read last rites. I don’t remember who, but someone said they were pretty sure he hadn’t.

Michael, in a quiet voice only I could hear, muttered, “Great. So he’s in hell, too.”

I burst out laughing. And Michael started laughing. The back seat hadn’t heard what he said, and they were confused and concerned. We couldn’t stop laughing for some time.

I’m craving a moment like that now, but the person most likely to deliver it is, of course, Michael. I’m going to miss him like hell.