Rob Bernardo was my friend. I suppose it's common to underrate that simple statement, just as we sometimes underrate the person to whom it applies, taking it for granted that what we value will always be there whenever we want access to it, to the person who embodies it for us. As we probably all know, and as recent events show, these days we get far too many rude shocks, as fate and the plague break our hearts yet again.
Of my many important friendships forged in the domain of email and tempered by the later privilege of face-to-face exchanges, that with Rob was by far the most extended and developed. It was so comfortable, so usual and dependable -- I'm sure for us both -- that how it came to pass is now more or less lost in the shifting sands of time. I had been posting to soc.motss (then net.motss) for only a few weeks when one of us wrote to the other to discuss some point or issue, and thus began an ongoing exchange that would soon reach heroic proportions. We would write huge, 200-300-line letters, sometimes two or three times a day, day in and day out. I can't imagine how we ever found the time for this, and after a couple years we both kind of scaled it back a bit. But the massive archive of our correspondence contains letters for most of the days, going back to late 1986. In fact, it turns out to be 5,322 letters over the course of 5.6 years, amounting to 14.9 MB.
I can't think of a subject of any importance to either of us that we didn't treat extensively somewhere along the line. We poured out everything, the histories of our lovers, disappointments, triumphs, favorite foods, pet hates, fellow motssisti good and bad, current fascinations, foods, hobbies, passions, tricks, far-flung speculations, political aspirations and conflicts, and so on, all of it tempered by a goodly share of joking at one another's expense, tartly bitchy remarks about ourselves and others, ridiculousness of every stamp, all of it some part of the glue that cements the variegated mosaic of a loving friendship into a single harmonious creation.
We had good fights, too, though we were always very careful not to go too far, or at least to yowl "Foul!" when one of us did go too far. Only one topic was absolutely taboo, and this is my first and only reference to it: Rob was 5'4" tall, and the word "short" never passed my lips, because he was extremely sensitive about his height; references to "short people" made him instantly see red. He was allowed to make jokes about my excess of growth hormones (not that I'm so very tall, 6'2"), but the converse was strictly off-limits.
In April of 1988, we finally met. My birthday is in May, and so is the birthday of Oriana Spadix, Rob's horse. In his characteristic fashion, to mark the birthdays and my arrival and also to inaugurate his then newly remodelled kitchen (Herculean labor that was!), he gave one of those great parties that made him the Perle Mesta of Concord (for the younger folks out there: Mesta was a founding member of the Jet Set when glittering people were still getting around in piston aircraft; she was noted mainly for great society parties involving Everyone who was Anyone). Rob arranged for a substantial fraction of ba.everyone.anyone to be on hand at this party -- 40 people, maybe -- and as usual, the food and the company were plentiful and delicious (uh, er, hm). It was such fun, and we got along perfectly. Although we were close physically, neither of us was attracted to the other erotically, so we never had a sexual relationship, which in some way probably made it easier for us both to feel secure when we said "I love you."
As it turned out, AIDS was a reality in our lives from the day we met, because no sooner had I arrived at Rob's than I got a phone call from Madison telling me that one of my greatest great loves had died in New York. The party the next day did a lot to lift my defeated spirits. Eight weeks later I was back in California for the first motss.con, again staying with Rob. I picked up a Bay Area Reporter on my way out of the first night's con event at the Eagle, and the next morning saw the obit of another old boyfriend from Madison.
But the con was a great boost. Rob's computer connection back then was a terminal and slow modem to PacBell, where he worked, and I rushed to make the first posting from the con to the nation and the world (I think I beat out Steve Dyer by mere minutes). One thing the con did for both Rob and me was to provide us a common base of about 80 friends and acquaintances to alternately dish or sigh about. Sadly, three of them -- Doug Mosher, Seth Miller, and Mark Nilson -- have since gone the way of so many, and like Rob himself, others will all too likely follow eventually.
What that time represents now is a deep pool of mostly pleasant memories. I have to say -- I mean, I need to say it -- that unlike the recent death of my mother, which I received as a kind of timely transformation, somehow fitting and fair for her 83 years, Rob's death at 40 seems terribly unfair, untimely, and unfitting, and it fills me with a sadness and regret beyond describing.
It hardly seemed to us possible this past January that it had been nearly four years since we'd seen each other in the flesh. Somewhat by hook and by crook, I'd managed to get the boss to pay for airfare and conference fees so I could attend the NeXTworld Expo at San Francisco's Civic Center. When the expo itself ended, I took BART out to Concord and spent a delightful few days visiting with Rob.
So much had happened to both of us between this visit and the earlier one. I had a new job and various associated challenges. Rob had found a new job, then been laid off; he had spent many months trying to find another one suitable for his interests and background. He had taken the test and found out he was HIV+, and understandably the HIV infection became a central focus of his life, the more so as his cell counts dropped and he started having increasing numbers of listless, low-energy days. But the periods of feeling pretty well lasted a fair while. We had talked of doing a camping trip together, though nothing every came of it. We'd also talked of his visiting Wisconsin, for he'd never been to the Midwest. This was all set to happen July 20th, but the week before he started getting sick with what would prove to be the final illness.
As Arnold mentioned in a posting not long ago, the major recent project was a highly developed and technically complex landscape garden design, full of all sorts of Rob's favorite kind of fun: solving problems. In a way no one could have foreseen entirely, this landscaping seems to me a metaphor for Rob himself. I've often wondered if my friend ever made a wholly unpremeditated move in his life. For he always seemed to me to reflect in advance of every step. Certainly he did when speaking, his remarks coming in short bursts punctuated by many "um"s and considerable silences. We wrote back and forth endlessly about the landscape, considering what would go here, what would go there, myriad detail upon myriad detail. Mind you, this all started five years ago and only recently started to become a reality. Yet once a decision was reached, he would move with conviction and outward assurance. And he totally loved doing the work. He sent me photos of the garden not long ago, and when it matures -- will it, I wonder? -- it should be quite splendid.
Now that things have turned out as they have, so bewilderingly final and unfair, I expect I'll think of this last project as a kind of cherry-blossom symbol of Rob. You know, in Japan, when the cherries are in bloom, you see lots of old guys sitting under the flower-filled trees, apparently sunk in reveries about the ancient traditions. The cherry blossom is a symbol of the samurai, because unlike so many flowers, it does not wilt on the plant; rather, it reaches the peak of its bloom and drops off in full flower to die. So here was a growing, vibrant person, reaching his peak, then like the samurai, dropping unexpectedly in full bloom. What else could it be except unbearable?
I expect to see him again. For two months now, including last night, I've been seeing my mother in my dreams, so I know that whatever dreams are, she's in there, quite alive. I'm sure it will be the same with Rob, whose intense deep blue eyes, slightly worried look, and ebullient outbursts of laughter will probably delight me the rest of my days, if only in my memory or in my dreams.
On my office bulletin board I have a snapshot of the view from
Rob's back porch, looking up at Mt. Diablo; it matches the
complementary panorama of another photo, from the top of the
mountain looking back down toward the house. To me, these pictures
symbolize much that is California and much that was Rob Bernardo,
known to many, loved by many, and forever to be lovingly
remembered by me -- rest in peace, dear friend -- as
rob@mtdiablo.concord.ca.us.
