From: amz@cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Subject: these last ten days or so
Followup-To: soc.motss
Summary: for rob bernardo
Originator: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept. of Computer and Info. Science
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 02:23:54 GMT

[chuck fisher, who stayed by rob's bedside through these last days
*and* kept a number of us informed about rob's condition one or more
times a day, asked that he be allowed to write rob's obit to ba.motss
and soc.motss before the rest of us said our pieces.  he should have
realized that love and grief do not keep contracts.  terry bartlett
and jess anderson have already posted their own (characteristic)
notices of rob's death.  i have something a little different to
say...]

-----

those of you who still have eyes to see will have noticed the
flood of postings from my keyboards since the beginning of this
month.

part of this is familiar to motssers of some vintage: during the
summer i regularly post more, because my schedule is a bit less hectic
and because (since jacques is always off at his family's summer place
way down east in maine for the season) i have loose time that i would
otherwise be spending with my man.

and i've told you all about losing my patience with the extraordinary
intrusion of irrelevant crosspostings into this group.  (i note that
such crosspostings have dropped in a week to almost zero - not, i
suspect, because of the guerilla crossposting counteroffensive of
1 and 2 august, but more likely because some earnest soul has been
politely but firmly pursuing the thoughtless crossposters one by
one.  but perhaps we did make some part of the point.)  this action
was liberating for me, as i've explained here.

this has also been a time for fighting the phobes and the fools and
the aliens by the textbook technique: encouraging interesting or
entertaiing threads by following up on them, starting many threads,
offering other topics (frivolous, serious, everyday, academic,
extravagant) that people might want to follow up on, saying things of
the sort you would want to hear in the hope that others will say
similar things.  with some energy and effort, this almost always
works.

but the precipitating event was hearing that my friend rob bernardo
had suddenly and unexpectedly stumbled up at the threshold of death's
door, with pcp and several other infections.  i was seized with a wild
energy, throwing postings that were outrageous - and introspective and
analytic and various combinations of these - against the threat of
his death.  take THAT, death, i said, in as many ways as i could.

magical thinking, i know.  and more: i didn't mention my motives on
soc.motss, magically supposing that if i did not name it it would no
longer be so.  (i understood all this from the outset.)

 i first met rob in 1979, but we really became friends though
 soc.motss.  the first correspondence i have saved from him is from
 1988; by then we were talking as old e-friends looking forward to
 meeting face to face, which we did shortly thereafter in palo alto.
 soon we were exchanging long letters about our relationships and
 feelings, and bouncing off one another on soc.motss, on topics like
 masculinity and effeminacy, the nature of sexuality, and linguistics
 (of course, since rob was trained as a linguist at berkeley).

my postings are a kind of memorial to rob, in three parts: the
weekend of outrageous crossposting (with collaborators - arne in
particular - who however did not know about my motives); about a week
of postings in many styles, but aimed primarily at celebrating sexual
experiences and gay sexuality (my own take from a _diseased pariah
news_ viewpoint); and a last set of postings of various sorts, but
centered on those talking about rob or taking off on ideas that rob
had broached with me (which i did not post until all hope was gone
that i would ever be able to discuss these topics with rob again).

i know he heard a little bit from this before he died; i wish he
could have heard more.  but of course it wasn't *for* rob, but
for us, the ones who still live.  that's the way memorials work.

arnold