Random Thoughts
Here are some of my many Greg memories and thoughts. Bullet style for those of you with places to be and things to do.
1) Greg bringing home a mannequin, taping a screwdriver in its hand to look like a weapon, and setting it up in the living room of our house off campus at Rice. It scared me every time I came downstairs for two months straight.
2) “Bring it on”
3) Driving with him in his VW rabbit from Houston to DC and back for various holidays and summer. I recall that we heard the George Michael song “Faith” about 437 times during one of those trips. I think of 24-hr road tripping with Greg any time I hear that song, which is not often these days, mercifully.
4) Calling random people “coach” for no apparent reason.
5) Naming our house cat (not sure who decided we should get a cat or why) Rosalita after the Bruce song of the same name. That cat was a bit of nightmare, but the name was cool.
6) Greg sneaking into my room and playing “Load Runner” on my Macintosh computer, which is about 1,000,000 times less powerful than an iPod Nano these days, late at night in college. I think at least once I woke up confusedly with him huddled at the computer looking sheepish.
7) Greg posting Anita Bose’s “Water Dissolving” poem at our house in Houston. Wow. Beautiful and sensual. Sometimes one of us would just stop and read it again silently. When the other one of us walked by all that was said was “Dude…”.
8) Greg meeting my high school friends after I moved back to DC and all of them finding him to be as engaging and funny as I did after about 2 minutes. He had that kind of “aw shucks” magnetism. It was genuine and you saw it right away in him.
9) Look at the photo gallery on this site. Greg could look happy and natural and fun in any picture without trying, because he was all of those things. When I take a picture I look like I am still confused about how to properly smile. And I consider myself a fun and funny guy. Greg had it mastered and couldn’t hide it if he wanted to from you or a camera. And let’s be honest, women loved it.
10) Greg’s writing. He shared some of older and newer (at the time) stories/pieces, and I was grateful for it. There were many and all were interesting reads. I remember Ba…Boom from his HS years and the one with the perfectly cracked computer screen that got published while we were still in college. There were many more.
11) I dare you to find someone from our days at Rice who disliked Greg. His personality and freedom of thought made him instantly likeable by all, regardless of background or interests or anything else that makes people different from each other. Greg was real and anyone who met him knew it.
oh my God, Mark, all of this is hilarious. And Greg and I were JUST talking about Water Dissolving and you and how much you liked it. Thanks so much for sharing.
Any chance we could convince Anita to post the poem here? 🙂
It’s a bit steamy for this site (and very inappropriate) but send me your emails and I’ll send it! I actually just found it in a copy of the Walt Whitman literary magazine circa 1986. I’m at ajbose@yahoo.com.
Anita – I am half laughing and half crying to know that you and Greg were discussing this so recently. Greg will be greatly missed by all. – Mark
And that knocking fist in the air with the head knodding. Bring it on.
Jen Cooper, my roommate at Will Rice & a close friend of Greg’s, found an old copy of Blonde on Blonde (a monthly artsy tabloid publication) from 1988 with Greg’s piece, “The Right Build for the Job” – one of the stories Mark references above. Jen was kind enough to scan it as a PDF & email it to me, so if anyone would like me to send it to them, just email me at ktrail@alumni.rice.edu and I’d be happy to share it. Mark is right – Greg’s writing was amazing.