Here, This Other Thing for Roger

In case this doesn't show up on the "I remember" blogs Roger's Far-Flung Correspondents have been writing, I'll leave it up here for awhile. This is addressed to them, among whom I felt more -fetched than -flung. Kind of like Roy among the Mouseketeers. To illustrate: http://bit.ly/10fP411 ; http://bit.ly/18I8ujI

Well kids, all of what you've written is the Roger I knew in-the-flesh for about five (five!) years, including Kevin Lee's implying a naturally priestly outlook, a high priest at the temple of The Movies.

Like a couple of amateurs on a park bench in the Endless City of Writing (never try to shed your amateur status), our e-mails gossiped about you more than you may have guessed; the outcome of that is somewhat apparent in certain of the e-mails you've produced. The truest outcomes are of course up to you.

I was angry at ol' Rodge twice. Part of our kinship rested in a knowing that, no matter how one may get to roaring, there's always a friendly whimsy to go home to at day's end. One anger was the sloppiness in not squashing a couple of human roaches constantly drooling Muslim-bashing on the commentaries. That section had begun to get very readable for awhile. Then these one or two poop-spreaders began making some threads look like an inner city junior hi-school boys' room smeared with militant puerility.

The other was the morning after I wrote Roger an attaboy for his final essay. I'd believed him. Michael Mirasol passed around a sad note and I replied with a tut-tut. It was what I'd been advising Roger privately for a couple three years by now. He was gonna back off on the workaholing and skate into his eighties, writing all anew, the time to try his hand at being his own Sebald (whom he admired and accused me of being), whatever, however, whoever.

So I wrote him an attaboy. I lay down to sleep; as my head hit the pillow, there was Gene Siskel with that wry smile of his, looking at someone standing behind me to my left, saying "Welcome home, Roger." Ooooh, shit, I thought. As you know, his beloved partner has been dead for years.

A few hours later Roger was dead. That rascal! Whattaya gonna do, though?

Roger's last seven years were like a star novating. The face made kinda cute by horrendous medical mistakes has now been shuffled off, but the corona of inner energy he propelled into our space and time is quite present, very busy, and worth very many attentions. Some will ride it for the rest of their lives.




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