Dan
Photo by theoctothorpe
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to write this post. I have been doing all the usual things people do in grief: reading through emails, and looking at photos. Remembering, in order to let go. I’ve also had moments where I simply forget--or refuse to remember--that he’s gone. I find myself becoming angry over trivial things that don’t seem very important. I am writing this mostly for myself.
I met Dan a decade ago. We took several classes at the Graduate Center together, many of them under the same distinguished professor, a woman Dan secretly nicknamed “mother” because of her bearing. It was a nickname he soon started using for himself. We became good friends. Dan had an easy rapport with women. Maybe it’s because he grew up surrounded by them; he always had an embellished story or two to tell about the difficult, eclectic matriarchs in his family. He doted on his niece.
We soon discovered that we were both kinky, had birthdays a few days apart, and shared the peculiarly Irish habit of making light of difficult circumstances. We also shared a certain reserve, a tendency to keep people at bay a bit, combined with what seemed like a natural need to be of service to others.
He was brilliant, pedantic, and yet completely undisciplined. His inability to finish things could be exasperating, as was his cutting humor. I once stopped speaking to him for two months over a particularly sexist comment he’d made. He filled my box with contrite apologies. Direct expressions of feelings were pretty atypical for Dan. How could I stay mad at him? There are other things, that perhaps are best not mentioned in a memorial post. He was perpetually single, “always the bridesmaid,” quite fussy about men in general, and in particular those who saw him as a daddy type because of his looks. “No, no, no, no. No. Feh.”
It was Dan who got me my job at the “Marjorie Morningstar Academy,” his name for the college where we both taught.
He cultivated his curmudgeon side, especially at work. Students were instructed to call him Mr. Simmonds only, never Dan. His syllabi were full of rules that would dictate how a grade would be assessed and whether an email would be answered or discarded, unread. (“Discarded, unread” was in bold face.) Of course, anyone who spent five minutes with him knew he had a big heart. “My baby dykes all love me. I don’t know why!” he’d say. I knew why.
I’ve read a few comments in memorial posts about Dan’s "flamboyance." I suppose it’s true, though I never really saw him that way. Perhaps it’s because I saw all the different sides of him: the big, handsome bear with piercing eyes who was especially proud of his full beard, celtic tattoos, and 22 24 piercings (minus the one he lost ... somewhere), the colleague who could be charming, polite and reserved with everyone in the room, the friend who would send, in lieu of a birthday card, a birthday greeting with some dishy gossip about Lauren Bacall, with whom I supposedly shared a birthdate. The bottom who liked it heavy and spent more time on asspig.com than any reasonable person should. The friend who was always there when it mattered. .
Dan saw culture as a form of play and merriment, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of opera, theater, and movies. He connected to these things the way many gay men did. The mess of the world and our place in it can be safely projected and channelled through an absurd plot, a tragic starlet, or a libretto. It rode in on intellect and came out as sheer joy. We could have a fun conversation on just about any topic. Well, except politics.
We sometimes covered classes for each other because of conferences or illness. Once, I asked Dan to take over a feminist theory class where I’d planned a movie. He didn’t like any of my options, so I told him he could choose any film he liked, so long as it had a strong relevance to race and gender, and some possible connection to feminist theory. His choice? Cobra Woman. I should have known better.
Dan put a lot of effort into his health the past year, He’d been diabetic (when he’d experienced numbness in his hands and I told him he should go out for a manicure, his retort was typical: “Dear, Koreans do not understand fisting”) and he’d inherited his mother’s kidney problems. He set out to reverse a lot of his health issues, and succeeded. He lost weight, started taking spinning classes--the thought of Dan in a spin class still makes me laugh--and even gave up “mother’s” beloved cocktail hour. It makes his death seem patently unfair, but I’m glad he was able to accomplish these things. He was in a good and positive place. He had even started researching Irish plays and studying Gaelic in the hopes of getting back on track with his degree.
We frequently had different teaching schedules (he favored afternoons, I liked early mornings) so we often arranged to get together at work, which we did in December. It was the last time I saw him.
The office was full of students (mine, turning in their writing portfolios) and the good ones hung around to chat. Apparently, they had also been Dan’s students the previous semester. The place felt cheery and warm, the work almost done, and it all heralded a good, relaxing holiday. We talked about the gifts we’d gotten for family members and our vacation plans. He gave me his usual greeting and parting salutation: a big mwah kiss on the lips. It’s a tactile memory and one I keep replaying in my head. I don’t want to forget it.
Things I’ll miss about Dan:
His frequent emails, often silly forwards of links or images, with the subject line “tee hee” or “whee!” but also the many he sent with words of advice and encouragement.
“The Queens Home for Queens,” his homey, neat Woodside apartment, with its walls of books and thousands of DVDs (haphazardly organized--he could never find anything), and fun collection of “bearaphernalia” including the giant bear pride flag over his bed.
Trips to exhibits and galleries, usually orchestrated by le Duc himself, on behalf of my impoverished cultural education.
Sharing roast pork salad at his favorite Thai restaurant in Queens.
His laugh.
Our verbal sparring, which often ended with our usual terms of endearment: “cunt” and “cocksucker.”
The many gifts: essays and articles he thought I'd like, films, books, chocolates, and various “Dan-me-downs”: shirts, ikea lamps, furniture, boxes of books, even a pair of rubber boots.
The way he hummed, sometimes breaking into song. I could never hear enough to know what it was, but it always made me feel good.
The “scabies-ridden whore from Manitoba,” a sore topic for oh, about two years. Maybe three.
The boxes of chocolate chip cookies I’d find, when opening a drawer I thought contained envelopes. (We usually shared a desk as well as an office, the other one having been appropriated by our anarchist-feminist coworker, whose cooperative stance ended at the office door.)
Of my photos of Dan, only one or two are of him looking serious. He usually struck a rockette pose for the camera. I took some time last week to go through his photo account. Right in the middle of all the nonsense, the divas, the cartoons and absurdities he loved to post, there was just one photo of Dan, the one shown above. It was tagged “maternal.” Not the self-deprecating “mother” or “grey old mare” but the kinder, more positive word underneath. I love this photo because it shows the softness and gentleness he tried unsuccessfully to hide, and a hint of the self-protective stance one so often had to see through to appreciate him.
Dan was very much like a brother to me: grumpy, affectionate, solicitous, reliable, caring, constant. We were only a few years apart. His death was unexpected and sudden, and my grief is accompanied by new, unexpected fears of my own. I’d like to keep them away by doing what Dan would do: make some self-deprecating comment about being a hypochrondiac--and being proven right. But I don’t want to mourn his premature death. He enjoyed life, got to do many of the things he wanted, loved good food and drink, traveled extensively, and was immensely, unfailingly generous to all of his friends. At the end of the day, what else matters?
Dan, I miss you.
I am very blessed to have known you.