Goodbye, Obi.

In 1999, my sister Trish and I had been roommates for about three years when she learned of an opportunity to adopt a kitten, so we decided to go see the two cats that remained in the litter — an orange tabby and a black-and-white cat with big ears, prominent fangs, and a white mustache. Both kittens were adorable, of course (what kitten isn’t?), but there was something about the kitten in the tuxedo. We’d already had experience with pretty, kind of haughty, cats. Tuxedo-cat wasn’t pretty — he was, frankly, kind of goofy looking. Naturally, we fell in love with him. We took him home and named him Obi, partly to match the awards-show-themed names of my mother’s two cats, Emmy and Clio, and partly because Star Wars:Episode I came out that month. Obi would turn out to be much more entertaining than The Phantom Menace.

Obi very quickly established himself as different from any other cat we’d had. We’d had lap-cats and high-energy playful kittens who eventually settled down, but Obi was both a playful goofball and a cuddly stuffed animal from the beginning. And he was loyal and clever enough that we began to think that he thought he was a dog. Without any reinforcement he instinctively figured out how to fetch things (usually those rings around the caps on milk bottles) and drop them right at our feet (or sometimes, when he got really ambitious, right in my lap or my hand). He was talkative and expressive, and he liked being around people. I soon got used to waking up with leg cramps from not wanting to disturb him while he lay between my thighs, or on my back, or on my stomach. He divided his time almost evenly between my sister and me, and instinctively knew which one of us needed him more, when we were bored, sad, or in pain.

Because my sister was paranoid that he would not know how to find his way back to the apartment if he ever got out, we got a harness and leash for him. That didn’t exactly go as hoped — once the harness went on, he refused to move. But oddly, he had no problem riding on my shoulder like some demented parody of a pirate and parrot as I walked him up and down the street, greeting pedestrians. I once took him to my then-regular hangout, Cleo’s Saloon, where he got a lot of loving attention from the other patrons until one elderly regular shamed me: “He’s not a dog. He’s probably scared out of his mind. What a terrible thing to do to him.” I didn’t take him out as much after that. Eventually he got too heavy for my shoulder, anyway.

Obi was the sort of cat who made people reevaluate how they felt about cats. I was told this by no fewer than four non-cat-people who met him. He was just ... likable. A good little boy. It’s really hard to convey what it was about him that made him so idiosyncratic and clever and special. The fact that he learned and responded to his name faster than any other cat I’ve known. How you could make a small gesture and he’d know you wanted him to come sit with you. How loudly he purred and how he sometimes was so relaxed and happy that he drooled a little (which was gross and funny and sweet all at once). His terrible, terrible breath, the origin of which we never figured out and the remedy for which we never discovered. How “Little Fang’s” overbite made his face so much more expressive and how his wide-ranging vocabulary of whines and gurgles and meows made it so easy for him to communicate exactly what he wanted from you, whether it be food, or for you to chase him, or for you to move over so that he could demand a belly-rub.

I think you could probably put 10 people in a room together to talk about their pets and nobody would be able to truly convey to the others what was special about their relationship.

A few years after Obi joined my sister and me, my parents moved from Philly to California and Trish headed west, as well. I don’t remember any lengthy discussion of custody, but since I was now the last of our little clan on the East Coast, and alone, it seemed natural that Obi stay my companion. The two of us lived a bachelor existence, two buddies, for about a year. And thank goodness for that, because it was a hard adjustment for me and he brought a little light into a not-especially-bright time of my life.

And then Obi moved, too.

It was at least partly my own decision, of course. I won a not-insignificant amount of money on a television game show and thought the best use of it would be to see the world. I planned a months-long backpacking trip through Europe and decided the best thing to do with Obi was to temporarily leave him with my family (including Emmy and Clio) in California.

I never made my trip to Europe. The reason why is a very long story itself, and not worth going into here, but the bottom line is that Obi never moved back to NYC. My family argued that he was enjoying the big house and the outdoors and tormenting the other two (older) cats too much for it to be fair for him to go back to living in two rooms with two windows, and, besides, I couldn’t afford it. I argued, they wore me down, and eventually I agreed with them. And of course it was a better life there. But he was still my little guy, and every time I visited I got a pang that maybe he would have been better off with me. Or at least I would have been better off. I sometimes missed him more than I did my parents and sister, to be honest. At least I could talk to them on the phone.

But remember when I talked about his doglike loyalty? Well it is a fact that for years, every time I visited, he would move right back into the guest room I used a few times a year. And I was told that every time I left again he would spend the next day looking for me or sitting at the door. And it is true that, when my family insisted I talk to him on the phone, I would say it was ridiculous when they said he would start purring when he heard my voice, but secretly I was thrilled by the thought.

Eventually Emmy and Clio died, and we were devastated. But then my parents’ household was joined by three other cats, and Obi finally got to be an older, crankier alpha cat the way Clio had been to him. And, right up until last week, as he passed 13, then 14, then 15, and 16, he continued to be a runner and a jumper and a scrapper, even as he started becoming bowlegged from old age.

It’s hard to explain how I can so much miss a cat that hasn’t lived with me for over a decade. But even after growing up with our first cat, Whisper, and then picking out Emmy and Clio for my parents when Whisper passed away, Obi was the first cat who chose me. He was my little guy no matter who he lived with, just as he was my sister’s. And as long as he was there, I never got another cat, out of loyalty to him. No other cat would have been quite like him, anyway.

Obi, I am so sorry I couldn’t be there with you yesterday when your time suddenly came. I am having a hard time even imagining what it will be like to go to LA and, for the first time, not immediately go find you to give you a hug once I walk through the front door. The thought that the things you do won’t be the first things my mother and sister share with me when we talk on the phone feels so strange. I’ve always missed you, but now missing you is too painful, and every time I think about you I get teary, so I’m trying not to think about you. But I love you, Obi-Wan, and you will always be my best boy.

Bowie and Me

"Look up here, I’m in heaven"

“Something happened on the day he died. Spirit rose a meter, and then stepped aside.”

1. TODAY. Several of my friends and family have left me messages asking me for my thoughts on the death of David Bowie or just intending to commiserate, which feels a little odd to me. They know (as does anyone who I’m close with or who follows me on social media) that Bowie was the closest thing to an idol I have in my life, but the thought of eulogizing him…? We didn’t know each other. I never met the man.

“We passed upon the stair. We spoke of was and when. Although I wasn’t there, he said I was his friend. Which came as some surprise.”

2. I always thought that I would eventually meet David Bowie. Maybe that sounds odd, but especially in recent years it hasn’t seemed that hard to meet him. My sister has met him. My boss has met him. Several of my friends have met him. I always figured I’d get my shot. That maybe the reason I hadn’t yet was because it would happen only when I had something, anything, I could say to him without losing my cool or seeming like a pretentious asshole or just being “a fan.” From an early age I had a fantasy that maybe we would be...not pals, but...colleagues? I always hoped he’d like me and secretly believed he wouldn’t. I’m so conventional. So boring.

“I feel tragic like I’m Marlon Brando.”

3. 1983. I first discovered David Bowie when I was a small child. It was the '80s, the peak of his career and the beginning of what is universally derided as his nadir (though honestly, in my opinion, the nadir lasted less than a decade. Not so bad). My sister got the LP of “Let’s Dance.” She played it a lot. Then I played it a lot. Bowie and Tina Turner in a Diet Pepsi commercial. Live Aid. Dancing with Mick Jagger and Dennis Miller making fun of it on SNL.

Then, not too long after that, I visited a cousin and found a cassette of “Ziggy Stardust.” I played it so much on the trip that he said, “You can keep it.” I did.

Now I know the choice is mine

“When all your faith is failing, call my name. When you've got nothing coming call my name. I'll be strong for all it takes. I'll cover your head till the bad stuff breaks. Dance my little dance till it makes you smile.”

4. I started asking for his new albums for Christmas. Cassette tapes of “Tonight” and “Never Let Me Down” (Mom and Dad didn’t know any better and neither did I. I loved Bowie’s version of “God Only Knows.” I was a kid).

“Life can be easy. It's not always swell. Don't tell me truth hurts, little girl, cause it hurts like hell.”

5. 1986. Then “Labyrinth” happened. I got my quarterly issue of “Bantha Tracks,” the “Star Wars” Fan Club newsletter, and there was a big picture of Bowie and George Lucas and Jim Henson. I liked “Star Wars” and Muppets and David Bowie, not necessarily in that order, and I guess Bowie liked Jim Henson and George Lucas, too, right? I swear I never noticed the bulge in his tights until years later.

“Though nothing will drive them away, we can beat them, just for one day.”

6. The ‘90s. The back catalog, in random order, whatever my parents decided to buy me. “Scary Monsters” came before “Hunky Dory” which came before “Space Oddity” which came before “‘Heroes.’” In junior high school I met another fan, Dan Walinsky (shockingly, he came out of the closet in college). We would trump each other by pointing out obscurities that the other didn’t know about. He introduced me to “Absolute Beginners.” I amazed him by producing a rare cassette of “David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht’s Baal.” 

I read Angie Bowie’s smutty memoir when I'm 15. I adored it. “The Lance of Love.” Later that year I became a junior reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News. When my “class” “graduated” from the teen section they gave us a present: Go through the Daily News’ pile of free shit and take one thing you want. “Bowie: The Singles” is right there. I grabbed it. Another teen reporter cursed me out. I was first. Suck it.

“I bought you a pair of shoes, a trumpet you can blow, and a book of rules on what to say to people when they pick on you.”

7. I was not popular as a teenager. The opposite of popular. I was a chubby musical theater performer with a high, over-articulate voice and a funny walk and I went to a jock high school with fewer than 100 students in my grade, who assessed you when you first arrived and that was IT for seven years, until you graduated. No, I was not “out.” But I listened to David Bowie and felt like it was okay to be weird.

“Walls have got you cornered. You’ve got the blues, my friend. And people don’t like you! But you will leave without a sound, without an end.”

8. I never “dressed up” in junior high school. Or in high school. I didn’t wear makeup or have New Wave haircuts. I would have liked to. There was really only one rule my parents had that had total primacy. “Do not embarrass us.” So I was preppy. I would have liked to have dressed up.

By the time I was old enough and confident enough to make my own decisions it felt too late to dress up. And I was never tall enough or thin enough or androgynous enough.

David Bowie probably would not have cared. I did.


See? Conventional. He probably wouldn’t have liked me.

“Don't talk of heartaches, I remember them all. When I'm checking you out one day to see if I'm faking it all. Can you hear me? Can you feel me inside?”

9. But I loved David Bowie. I loved his music, I loved the questionable choices (drum and bass? Tin Machine? “SpongeBob SquarePants”?) as much as the unquestioned ones. The first time I was mugged in Philadelphia, I was wearing a ski jacket and carrying a busted up Walkman with a cassette of “Young Americans” in it. The mugger made me give him the ski jacket. Then he took the Walkman, took a look at it and said, “I don’t want this piece of shit” and gave it back to me. I kept “Young Americans” and had it with me in the cop car. But the cassette case was still in the pocket of the ski jacket. Oh well.

“Love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.”

10. Eventually I have every Bowie cassette. Then I start replacing them with CDs. I love him. Even after he said he wasn’t actually bi. When he says he likes things that I like, I feel like we're connected. He shows up in the “Twin Peaks” movie. Of course he loves David Lynch, I love David Lynch. I stay on the phone for an hour desperately trying to request “Must Be Talking to an Angel” when Annie Lennox is on “A&E By Request.” I can't get through. But Bowie does. What does he request? Guess.

I wind up reading every bio of David Bowie I can get my hands on and EVERY TIME I thrill a little when I’m reminded that he was born on a street called “Stansfield Road.”

I see him in concert more than once. Wait, there’s a story:

“Now. Not tomorrow. Yesterday. Not tomorrow. It happens today.”

11. It’s the mid-’90s. In college, just moving on from cassettes to CDs. I’m reporting for the NYU newspaper and once again, I’m first to the free pile. This time it’s “1. Outside.” Love it. Review it. To this day I’m haunted by my lack of fact-checking, I refer to one of the characters on the album as “Baby Jane.” She's “Baby Grace.”

I now fact-check for a living. For a newspaper.

But back to the story. Bowie is treating this as a “comeback” (we wouldn’t know the true meaning of that until 2013) he’s performing in Jersey that week, and he’s at Virgin Megastore signing albums. I line up outside. The line’s around the block but I’m going to meet David Bowie! A DJ from some radio station or another asks if there’s anyone in the crowd willing to do “something stupid” for David Bowie concert tickets. I am. He asks me to jump up and down on one leg screaming, “I love David Bowie!” I thought it would be something more stupid, that was easy. I got off easy. I got tickets. My sister came with me. But then they said, “Mr. Bowie is tired now and done signing.” I was 10 feet from the door. No meeting.

They say that at the Outside concert Nine Inch Nails fans left in droves after NIN was done their set. I don’t recall that at all. The concert was amazing.

“I can’t read and I can’t write down.”

12. TODAY. A message from a friend at 9 AM, “I’m so sad.” I’m not ready to get up yet so I put off whatever bad news it is. I wake up and hear “As the World Falls Down” coming from my roommate’s room. Odd. I come out to take my shower and he stops me. “Did you hear the bad news?” “What?” “I don’t want to ruin your day.” It dawns on me. “David Bowie died, didn’t he?” “I’m sorry.”

“There’s something in the air.”

13. 2000s. They’d been predicting it so long I had stopped worrying about it. I am sure I will still eventually meet David Bowie. My sister meets David Bowie. She’s working background on SNL when he performs. She sees him casually leaning against a wall smoking. She couldn’t get me in to 30 Rock. I’ll get my chance.

After a long run of albums that include, in my opinion, some of the best work he’s ever done, (1. Outside,” “Heathen,” “Reality”) I see him in concert again. Again with my sister, this time in Los Angeles. Macy Gray opens. She’s great. But he’s better. Does an entire encore of “Ziggy Stardust” songs, which shocks me and thrills me. On the way to the car afterward we see Dave Foley from “Kids in the Hall” waiting for a bus, which amuses us. We wonder if he enjoyed the concert. Later in the tour Bowie has a heart attack and recedes from public life. The few times he makes an appearance he looks tired. Bloated. I start to worry that I’ll never even get to see him in concert again, let alone meet him. But then he starts showing up again. He’s slimmed back down. “The Next Day” comes out.

“I got seven days to live my life or seven ways to die.”

14. November 2014. I have never been to Chicago. It was never in my top 10 of places to visit. But I fly out to Chicago to see the “Bowie Is” exhibit. No photography allowed, but I sneak a shot of the street sign where he grew up. Stansfield Lane.

“You’re watching yourself, but you’re too unfair. You got your head all tangled up, but if I could only make you care. Oh no, love, you’re not alone. No matter what or who you’ve been. No matter when or where you’ve seen, all the knives seem to lacerate your brain. I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain. YOU’RE NOT ALONE.”

15. TODAY. I read the CNN obituary. It ends with, “David Bowie’s music was a salve for the alienated and the misfits of the world.” I laughed out loud. FUCK YOU, CNN.

My boss texts me, "Let me know if you need to take the day off."

I keep my shit together at the shrink's office until he says, "Just because you didn't know him doesn't mean it wasn't real."

“They say, ‘Hey, that’s really something. They feel he should get some time. I say he should watch his ass, ‘My friend, don’t listen to the crowds.’ They say ‘Jump.’”

16. A digression. It's the 2000s. I’ve told people this and some people don’t believe it, but it’s true. I don’t have recurring dreams. But I used to have SERIALIZED dreams. I have dreams where I see people and they casually refer to events that only ever happened in other dreams. This happened through much of the Aughts and I became semi-convinced that when I was asleep I was actually astrally projecting to an alternate timeline. That's how strict the continuity of my dreams was. In those dreams, David Bowie often appeared. We weren’t best friends, but he knew who I was and that comforted me.

A sample conversation: “I should have known you'd be here, Chris.” “It was a great show.” “Well, thank you. How’s the work coming?” “I’m working on it.” “Well, let me know, I’ll do a backup track. You have to get moving.”

I was in a major depression for much of that decade. The dreams stopped somewhere around 2011, which is when I started getting serious about my mental health. I don’t know what that means.

“Chimes.Goddamn, you're looking old. You'll freeze and catch a cold. 'Cause you've left your coat behind. Take your time.”

17. A few days ago. My colleague at work sends me a link to a website: “What David Bowie was doing at your age.” I tell him, “I know damn well what he was doing at my age. More than I am.” At the “Bowie Is…” exhibit every item around every corner showed me how prolific and prodigious and YOUNG Bowie was for most of his career.

“All the days of my life. All the days I owe you.”

18. I thought I would meet him eventually. And I think now I didn’t meet him because I frittered away my time and my youth and did not make art. If I had made art I would almost have certainly run into David Bowie eventually.

“Down in space, it's always 1982.”

19. 18 months ago. David Bowie, apparently, is diagnosed with cancer. He turns around and records another album, writes music for the “SpongeBob” musical and collaborates on “Lazarus,” which, honestly, I enjoyed but did not love. Some of my friends HATED it. It’s a show about a man who lives forever and cannot die. I can’t possibly imagine what was in David Bowie’s head at the time.

He started young. He made history. He had a body of work spanning 50 years. He inspired me as a kid and now I definitely won’t see him again in concert. Two days ago was the last time I would unwrap a new David Bowie album.

“I know when to go out. I know when to stay in, get things done.”

20. I hurt like I knew David Bowie. I never got to meet him. But I have decades left before I’m 69. Time to get things done.

“This way or no way. You know I'll be free. Just like that bluebird. Now, ain't that just like me?”