Spoken at Sky's Memorial Service - September 22, 2007

As I was walking home from dinner on August 18^th, I found a puppy wandering down the street. Only when she wandered into traffic and was nearly hit by a car did I realize that she was a stray. I hesitated for a moment – what responsibility was this dog of mine? – but the knowledge that Sky would kick my ass if he ever found out otherwise prompted me to fetch the dog and bring her home with me. In the days that followed, it even crossed my mind that, if I couldn’t find her owner, I might drive her across the country and give her to Sky.

I bring this story up because – right now – it’s a large part of what I have of Sky. In the days and weeks since Sky took his life, people have often sought to share common memories of him with me. ‘Do you remember when…’ they say. And the answer is always ‘no,’ whether I’ve said so or not. No, I don’t remember.

There’s the story of how we first met; that I remember, as at this point it’s mostly just a story. With great serendipity, Sky was assigned to show me around Crossroads on my first day of eighth grade. Me, I was too cool for school; here was this scrawny kid whose earnestness and emotional honesty was just too much for middle-school me. I squatted by a tree in the alley, observing the rest of our classmates from afar, while Sky stood next to me, trying to engage me in conversation. Eventually he asked what I liked to do for fun. I said off-handedly that I played a lot of D&D – had to use the acronym, you understand, to keep out the uninitiated – to which he responded, ‘Really? I play Dungeons & Dragons!’

‘Aw, fuck, am I going to get stuck with the nerds again?’ I thought to myself. Not fifteen minutes later, Sky introduced me to Dan, and much of the succeeding fifteen years fell into place.

Now, besides that story, I find myself drawing a blank. I mean, I know that we lived together in college, I know I got him his first non-academic job after graduation… but concrete recollections are nowhere to be found.

At best I can remember certain gestures, smells. Anybody who spent time in close proximity to Sky knew he had a certain musk. Good, bad – it was Sky. Or the distinctive awkwardness with which he moved his arms. One of the photos from a recent Christmas shows him flipping off the camera. Understanding a photograph to not be an indivisible moment of time, but to actually record some minute duration, I can see recorded there enough time to identify that idiosyncratic motion of his. Or, lastly, I can summon up the way he would lie across his bed reading homework, gently rubbing Fuzzes – an orange shred of fabric which formerly served as a babyblanket – across his mouth and chin.

But the rest, the rest is gone. I’ve asked myself ‘why can’t I remember’, but the answer is clear: I won’t let myself remember. I can’t let myself remember. To remember him would be to acknowledge his absence. Without memory, there is nothing to miss. And right now, it would be too much. I mean, how do you go back to work when someone who has been so much to you is no longer here? How do you do your laundry or go on a date? I mean, each time I’ve done something since the 26^th of August, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is the first time I’ve kissed a girl since Sky died,’ or ‘Oh, this is the first time I’ve watched a sunset since Sky died.’ To remember would be to remember doing my laundry with Sky, or working with Sky, or just being with Sky.

After leaving LA around Labor Day, I returned to Brooklyn and started looking for a home for the stray puppy, who has since been dubbed Orphan Annie. I found a lovely couple from Portland, who make furniture for a living and whom Sky would have loved, to take her. They had a dog already, and needed a playmate for him. Now their dog and Annie are the best of friends, and I know that Sky would have commended me not only for taking her in, but for finding her such a great home.

And that’s what I have right now from Sky. If he was a nerd, then he is the kind of nerd I aspire to be. That responsibility that demanded I take in that stray, and that earnestness that was too much on the day that we met: these are the things I am clinging to as I greet each new day in the anti-Sky world. And maybe, just maybe, as the days go on, little slips and shreds of experience will fall onto the pool of my days and blossom like origami into memories that I can accept one by one. And maybe that way I can remember him and mourn him without the enormity of his absence overwhelming me.