In Memoriam

Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul. You could not call him Jean. You could not call him Paul. “My name is Jean-Paul,” he would say. “Call me by my name.” And only Jean-Paul could say that and not come off as a snob.

He was my best drinking buddy. Whatever lies I may be telling myself elsewhere in this extended monologue, here, I want most clearly to tell the simple, yet baffling truth.

I already said he was my best drinking buddy. When he came from Rome in the springtime or from Australia in late summer to spend time with relatives in Atlantic City , he would know which bars to find me in. He never called. He never wrote. He just showed up and the party would begin.

Only Jean-Paul could keep up with me on my all night sprees or my three-day binges. No need for speed. The alcohol was fuel enough for him and for me.

Only Jean-Paul lived to drink as I drank. And only I was shielded from his knowledge of his dying, that he could not live for even one more year.

It was only after his funeral a few short months later that I found out the truth of his dying of AIDS and that he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, partying his ass off with me, without me knowing. “Because that would have changed everything, had you known,” as his Nephew explained to me. He had wanted to protect his knowledge of his dying from me so that in his final days everything would be as they had always been with us: A giant party that could not, would not, did not stop.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 33)