I'm sorry for not posting sooner. I was in California for a job interview when I got the message from Robert. I have written many, many journal entries about Patrick, and I will post a few of them here. I can't quite bring myself to transcribe the one I wrote the day I met him, when I was 14 and he was 20. Maybe I will the day I find my favorite photograph of him... I wish that I could have been at the service, and not stuck in an awful traffic jam. I was thinking about everyone who cared about him, and I hope to have a chance to meet all of you someday.
Victor, the recording of Bring Him Home... I asked Patrick to send me a recording of him singing so many times, and he promised that he would, eventually. If there are any more recordings, could someone send me a copy?
Journals:
September 6th (after two or three glasses of wine): i remember when you sang Les Miserables for me in Rittenhouse Square Park, the day we met, and you let me smoke your merit ultralights because it would still be another four years before I could buy my own. you sang me this, and then you had to make up silly lyrics because your voice made me cry, and you sang Summertime for me and then we both cried because it was the song you'd sung at your mother's funeral a few months before we met. and you gave me a train schedule with your telephone number and address on it. 1303 south broad street, over don jose's beauty supply, which we never saw open in the five years that you lived there, even with all of the evenings we sat on your front steps drinking iced tea and talking about everything in the world. you made me a mixtape with big audio dynamite's innocent child, and the cranberries' pretty and i made you a mixtape of tori amos and cat stevens. and on my fifteenth birthday, you told me something that changed my life forever. do you remember when i would go with you to weddings and i would play that silly little casio keyboard while you sang? and then i turned sixteen and you were twenty-two, and you told me how your life was, and all of the things that were wonderful and terrible and i think i sensed that someday we might be where we are now, but i wasn't sure which of us would go first, because i was such an angsty sixteen year old and you were wild. but you were such an optimist, it was impossible to be around you and not to have some of that rub off. and one night, you came to la tazza to see me read poetry, and you told me to "do it again, but this time like you're faking an orgasm" and a cult classic was born that haunts me to this day. you gave me tickets to see you in carmina burana and that's where i brough chris on our second date, the same night you introduced me to mark, and they made us happy and miserable. and years went by and we grew up a bit and you moved to alaska. and when i saw you in december and nearly passed out and you seemed so happy, if maybe a bit lonely, and we loved you so much
December 17th, 2004: PATRICK!!!LJ won't let me post this without writing an entry. Apparently a squealing exclamation as a subject does not constitute an entry. So, last night I was at Cabaret with mysteryjesse, kaecyy, southstman and the others, and this guy who's with southstman apparently wants to take our picture, so I'm thinking "who's this nut who wants my picture" (since I'd just been hit on by the two most Jersey guys ever as I parked my car- no offense to those of you from Jersey) but I pose with southstman and the guy, who's hiding behind the camera and a beard, takes our picture, and southstman says "I think you know my friend Patrick?" And I die. Like can't stand up without help for a good three minutes. (After three minutes, I realize that sitting is better.) And then can't form complete sentences for a while. Who's Patrick? you're asking, since many of you haven't known me since I was fourteen. When I was fourteen, I took an acting class at University of the Arts. It was a summer program for high school kids. Accidentally, Patrick attended one of our classes, thinking it was his freshman movement class. Something clicked, and we spent the afternoon running around south Philly(which, of course, I had never done before), going to cafes (believe it or not, my first time hanging out at a cafe) and smoking cigarettes (I think this may have been one of the first times for that, too). He sang songs from Les Miserables in Rittenhouse Square Park, and had more confidence than anyone I had ever met before. I was, of course, completely in love, as much as a fourteen year old can be desperately in love with someone. On my birthday, Patrick became the first gay boy ever to break my heart, and therefore the beginning of a long and ill-fated trend of falling in love with gay boys. Also responsible for much of my political and social idealology, in a way neither of us ever could have predicted at the time. As I stood there at L'Etage surrounded by my favorite people, I realized that Patrick is quite literally responisble for it. (Directly, actually, as he introduced me to southstman in the first place, and hence I started attending Cabaret.) And then he moved to Alaska and I didn't see him for years. Until now. This means that in a span of about three weeks, I am going to get to see EVERY SINGLE ONE of my favorite people in the world. I feel so lucky.
