Johnny D

Subject: hold me
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 21:08:41 -0700
From: John D’Hondt
To: Richard Whitmer

OK, I am still waiting for a sign. I pray: Yeshua, fait moi un signe! Seriously, I need that little bon mot to move south, that crux de la croix, that petit chou, that spanish inlaw with yellow adobe walls in the bedroom with my name on the mail box made with a label maker.

John was a writer. He loved all things Belgian. He was an expert on Joan Baez and The Singing Nun, whose stories he told in hilarious one-man shows in cabarets around San Francisco in the nineties. He was my good friend and accomplice. Recently he was tortured by feelings nobody should have. Sometime over the weekend, he dealt with those feelings in a way that nobody should. My heart is so heavy right now and I’m left wishing I could ask, Johnny, who’s going to write your book about Dominique? Who else will call me on Sunday morning to say, “Fabio, I must have you! Peet’s and the library?” Who’s going to be our operation’s man on the inside at the monastery? Who’s going to comiserate with me about all these people turning the city into one big dog run? Who will make fun of the guppies at Harvest with me even as we cruise them over the olives and marinated tofu? And I really don’t think anyone else will regularly leave lengthy messages for me about Dusty Springfield’s career in the years before I was born. Johnny, if I believed in a next time, I’d curse at you and tell you to stick around next time. As it is, I don’t know what more to say except that I really, really wish you had stuck around.