is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Larry Huff.
I just learned that an old friend died late Sunday night in a motorcycle accident. I had known him for many, many years, and liked him, though we had never been really close friends. He lived with the family of one of my best high school friends for awhile, and then ended up being good friends with one of my college friends, and so on. If I were at home I�m sure I could find photos of him from the mid and late 90s, and possibly even the 80s. He was one of those friends a person has when a person lives in the same town for long enough that she gathers lots of different groups together from varying pasts and presents, and mixes those with all the people other friends have gathered from their pasts and presents. People mix and mingle, and some groupings stick, while others don�t. Every event is its own experiment in what works. This friend who died too young, he was one of those, someone who had been in one section of my large overlapping group of San Francisco friends for a very long time. He was a good part of a really good group.
So far there are no details about what happened and how or why�whether he was hit by a car or hit a car, and so on.
Larry was a guy who rode a motorcycle, drank a lot, and lived by his own rules. That�s one way of saying that he didn�t seem to get any tamer as the years passed, the way most of the rest of us did. Some will look at all the evidence of a life like that and see in it a failure to grow up. But I�m writing right now because I want to express a disagreement with that conclusion. There are many ways to grow up. One of them is to live precisely how you want to live, knowing the dangers. That is what he did, I believe.
When you say that someone rides a motorcycle, drinks a lot, and lives by his own rules, it makes it seem like you�re talking about an outlaw or what someone�s grandma would call a ruffian. But Larry was no such thing. He was sweet, and kind, and smart, when he wanted to be. I am not trying to whitewash the way he could be scary. He was loyal and treated his friends well. But he was also the guy whom no one is going to pick a fight with at a bar.
Most of my memories of him are from years ago, back when I was still living in SF, and a graduate student. There was this semi-magical long space of moments in time when lots of us did not have normal day jobs. Either we were graduate students, or, more likely�my friends have always been largely from the non-academic world, perhaps because I entered it so late�working in tech at the beginning of the dot-com bubble with its open schedules, working as painters or in construction, or perhaps not working at all (something that was once very possible in San Francisco), or �working from home.� And so we had a lot of time to hang out. And we used that time well. We populated bars and restaurants and movies and each other�s houses. We actually had a twice-weekly croquet game that thrived for a very long time, always filled with many different participants from all the overlapping sectors of our many friendships. There were the usual suspects, of course. But we also had many occasional-or-often types. I have a real picture-quality memory of Larry playing one day in Golden Gate Park. It is memorable because he was also a Large Man, and there is something simultaneously amusing and charming about a Large Man playing croquet. He wasn�t very good at it. He didn�t care.
I haven�t seen him for years. We would run into each other now and then at BBQs or bar nights. What strikes me right now is that I could have seen him a couple of weeks ago. He and some other old friends of mine were at a bar in San Francisco, and I was invited. I had planned on going. But when it came down to it I didn�t go. I didn�t go because the plan for the day was obviously to get drunk in the middle of the afternoon, at a bar that was the site of many of the hijinx of my younger years. On that day I knew I had to drive to Oakland later. It didn�t seem like the two things could work together. And also I�m older now. Getting drunk in the middle of the day, it�s just not something I do very often, mostly because I don�t want to do it. Especially when I�m housesitting somewhere that involves having a car with me. You know?
But on the other hand, I am utterly certain that it would have been a lot of fun. There is just no way it would not have been fun. Here I am, the person who sometimes writes diary entries reminding everyone never to feel so grown up that they can no longer enjoy a totally unplanned wild night out, and I�m staying at home house-sitting a dog instead of meeting up with friends because �I don�t drink in the afternoon.� You know? Normally the ramifications of the double life I lead are not brought home to me so starkly in retrospect. But there�s something that really seems appropriate about the reminder because Larry, though he would always treat me like I was the smart one, had a tendency to cut through the crap that lies between what people say and what they do. He was who he was.
It just so happens that both decisions would have been the right decision: to stay home and work or to get drunk in the afternoon. It�s just that I had no way of knowing how wrong the way I chose on that day would feel later.
***
I wrote this diary entry yesterday and let it sit overnight. Then, this morning, when I woke up and checked Facebook after making my way through the morning�s email drudgery, I was shock-surprised to find that Liz Dunn had posted a whole album of photos of all of us playing croquet. With Larry! Of course, it�s not entirely surprising since she was surely looking through old photos because of Larry�s death. But it�s so strange, and also somehow comforting, that she hit upon and then shared exactly the memory I was having as I sat on the couch yesterday feeling sad about the loss of a friend.
Here�s a fairly classic photo of Heidi and I from the album she posted. (I think I probably have about 18 photos of she and I making precisely those faces, where she�s saying something kooky and I�m attempting to intervene with rationality. It is by no means the case that I was always in the right.) There are also a couple of truly classic photos of Larry in the album, but somehow it feels profane right now to post them to my public diary. If you knew him, you can ask Liz about it.
10:50 a.m. - July 09, 2009
Liz Dunn - 2009-07-09 21:21:32
Yeah I think about whether we should have gone to meet Larry and Tony that day, also. Although apparently it turned into a wild all-nighter so I think my own mortality benefited from *not* going, although I do regret it in retrospect.
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