From: mara@panix.com (Mara Chibnik)
Subject: Rob Bernardo
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 13:50:00 GMT
Organization: (getting there)


Remembering Rob-- through everything that's been said here, and in
email, and in the phone conversations I've had since I got back to
New York-- remembering Rob is wonderful.  It's when I realize _why_ 
I'm doing all this remembering that it aches.

Rob was already a fixture in soc.motss by the time I got here, or at
least it seemed so.  (Of course, at that point _everyone_ else
looked like a fixture to me.  That's  the cabal effect.)  I had
occasional exchanges with him, always pleasant but not always
agreeing, but we didn't really get to know each other well until I
proposed to him.

Proposed? you ask.  Well, you see, it was the time of the conceptual
family, and there was a brief vogue of folks' claiming to wish that
they were otherwise sexed, gendered or orientated [sic] so that they
could marry each other.  Meanwhile, in another thread (dare I say,
"back at the ranch"?) Rob's kitchen was being drooled over by an
impressive number of people.  Rob responded that he was surprised to
find his kitchen an object of such admiration, and added that all he
needed was a husband to cook for.

So, in email (I'm nothing if not discreet, at least sometimes), I
wondered whether he'd consider a (married) woman for the job, adding
possessively that Marty wasn't up for grabs.  I expected polite regrets,
but his answer (in toto) was, "What about gropes or pats?"  That was
our betrothal.

I never did get to that kitchen, just as Rob never got back to NY.
But I did meet Rob, in San Francisco last October.  He put together
the motss dinner for us there (and it was so dark in the restaurant
that I didn't get a really good look at the color of those eyes).  
We had just arrived that day, so our talk was mostly about touristy
things.  By that time we had a regular and not wholly unsubstantial 
correspondence going.   I felt, as I often do, that meeting face to 
face was important, but that our real conversations would be mediated 
by keyboards.  I wasn't really right about that.
 
The following month I got a note from Rob saying that he planned to
visit his family on Long Island and asking whether I'd be willing to
organize  a supper gathering for him here.  (That, in fact, is how
the NY dinners got started, folks, so there's something else for which
we have Rob to thank.)  Rob cancelled that trip because of Mark's
death.  Somehow, at that point, we began to supplement email with an
occasional phone call.  It added an emotional dimension to our
exchanges that I can't quite describe.  It doesn't happen with
everyone, and when it does it usually means that email becomes a
very secondary and unsatisfying  channel of communication, but this 
was not so, for me, with Rob.
 
Too soon after that Rob called to ask a favor.  The news from
the lab wasn't good, and he thought it was time to tell his family
that he was HIV+.  He asked my help in looking up support groups
so that he could refer his mother to one when he spoke to her.  I
made a couple of phone calls, was treated by all of the people to
whom I spoke with remarkable warmth and considerateness, and was
happy to report back to Rob that there was a group not far from his
mother.  He called me back after he'd spoken to them himself, sounding
greatly pleased.

We managed to cram a long-term friendship into just over a year of
close acquaintance.   I was away for almost the exact time of Rob's
hospitalization.  I returned to seventeen messages on my answering
machine, mostly about unrelated matters, but including calls from
several motssers trying to reach me about Rob, some wanting me not to
find out, first, by reading it in the news.  Thank you, all.

As it happened, Jim Wood's call came in just after we walked in the
door.  I'm still awash in grief and overwhelmed by the suddenness of
it all.  But I'm also struck, not for the first time, by the magic
of this family of ours, at the deep emotional ties we have forged
with our impersonal computers, and at the commitment and generosity
people here have towards each other.  Rob was part of that, and will
always be part of it for me. 

Mara, still teary


-- 

  Mara Chibnik
  mara@panix.com                Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Xref: sparky soc.motss:35196 soc.bi:10824