I just couldn't resist, Dave would have laughed at the title. I know if I wrote that Dave actually loved and was inspired by Kenny G and show tunes no one go for it! On a serious note, I have been reading these blogs and all of you have David and music in common, I can’t share much about that (though I was there while he was teaching himself guitar when he was about 16 and It was hours of repetition of some classic rock song I wish I could remember and now I can’t ask). He practiced in the room below mine and only one short section of the song over and over and over (a chord? verse? see I am a music dummy) I hated it. We fought a lot about it too. Because I know a lot about the early David, I thought I could tell some of what I said at his funeral, here.
Dave, as he eventually went by, had three distinct phases of his life, two of which I watched and lived through with him. These are the “Davey,” “David,” and “Dave” phases.
Davey was my first friend in the world and even though he is one year and 364 days older than I, he only felt older for maybe 4 years. The rest of the time I felt like the older sibling, worldlier and the caretaker. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of Davey and me playing by the spigot of our first house making “doodie” cakes in the mud, Davey staying up late to watch on TV something which I had no interest in called the moon landing, and of course many many memories of Davey in trouble and the punishments to follow. Davey, age 7 or so stealing baseball cards from the 7/11 and my dad burning his entire collection in the fire as he protested and cried, And Davey having to “run away” around the same age because he hit the dog (he was put on the street corner of our house, a corner house on a street in an “anywhere USA”) and me smuggling peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to him from inside. I don’t think my parents made him stay more than a couple nights (actually, he came in that night after I begged and cried to my dad to let him back home – this set up a president – David getting kicked out and me helping him get back in. I remember once talking to him on a pay phone from my high school telling him how he could get in the house after having been kicked out, yet another time). If you are not a younger sibling, you can’t know the idolatry one has for her big brother, no matter and likely in large part because of his misdeeds.
In the David phase, starting around age 13 or so, (he was a REALLY late bloomer), there was more trouble, like sneaking into R rated movies (and I believe even on X rated one), and smoking pot both for which he was punished. Because I was innately a sneaky liar who never got more pleasure in young life than getting away with something verbotten, what mystifies me still is that I never, NEVER understood why David told on himself for these infractions, I mean he OFFERED this information, he wasn’t suspected or questioned – tattling is a job, in most families, reserved for the younger siblings. Danny is still pissed that Dave robbed him of this pleasure!
David is responsible for some turning points in my life and is responsible for me seeing my first tranny at 15 in the Oxnard Greyhound station as I traveled alone to Santa Cruz to visit him. I read John’s blog and I once went with Dave, in the middle of the night, to the radio station to play around on air and of course play records. I just remember it being dark and laughing a lot.
Like all good big brothers, David introduced me to many things important in my life like music, satire in the form of Saturday Night Live and Firesign Theater, and he strongly influenced and help shape my sense of humor and appreciation for the absurd and anything theatrical.
But most importantly, Dave gave me the love of my life, my husband, Nick, albeit begrudgingly. In fact Dave is solely responsible for Nick’s relationship and mine. Had he not told me upon my asking if he had any cute roommates, “yea, but he wouldn’t like you” I might not have taken the dare.
Although, I can’t really attest to very much from the Dave phase because I was off immersed in my own life at this point – I will always remember one family trip to New York, where both my mom and dad’s entire families (for the most part) lived. We went in 1999 or so, We were adults in our 30’s, I even had a kid by this time (my daughter Gretta who stood up with Alex at Dave’s wedding). We went to New York for my cousin Lisa’s wedding. Me, Dave, Danny, Nick and a bunch of oddball part relatives we had never met were seated together at the loser table. To entertain ourselves, Dave and I spoke in Cockney accents the ENTIRE day all while running a commentary on the strange nuptial rituals of Queens, New York. The highlight being, as we are all seated quietly at our tables, the bride making her entrance to the reception on a hydraulic platform from the floor below which elevates her to the floor we were on one story up. Its magical spectacle bedazzled us jaded kids from LA where they hadn’t done this kind of thing in the movies since Buzby Berkeley!
David and I were particularly overjoyed with the fodder we could make of this. Although Dave was not one to really laugh out load violently, but rather he smirked and almost giggled, but a deep alto giggle. We recounted this wedding and weekend now and then and I am only sorry that Dave is not around to remind me of other hilarious details I have forgotten. Dave was always good for this. He remembered everything or preached like he did. And David was probably the person in my family who appreciated my sense of humor best and because I am a co-dependant narcissist that’s what matters most, right?
Aside from having a very keen sense of humor himself, something I can tell you is that my brother was a very strange and complex mix of tender innocence, yes; I said innocence and gruff, even prickly, old ornery man. He wanted two things: to be loved and listened to. And he sometimes made it hard or unpleasant to do this, but he managed to achieve both, I believe, through his music and friendships. If you stuck around through the prickly parts you got through to the loveable Dave core.
David was an authority on everything (well, that’s what it seemed like to me) and when my daughter Gretta was about 4 I questioned her about how she knew something, she replied simply that she knew because she was a “knowist” and I immediately informed her that she had better take a number, because she came from a long line of knowists and Dave may have been at the front of the line.
As so many people know, Dave could keep you on the phone for hours but in the last 16 months of his life I mostly emailed him. I have saved all these correspondences, knowing I would want them. I only wish I had started earlier and had more. His tone is so evident; I can literally hear him speaking, which he couldn't do very well the last several months of his life. Ironically, David lost the ability to do two things he loved most, eat and talk. But, he was able to play until the end.
I miss David and think about him every day. I suppose I knew that we would have to suffer the loss of each other (and Danny, my other brother too) after all; we are “peers.” I just never expected to loose my brother half way through my life. I will miss him everyday of the rest.
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