A favor for a friend
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
On the evening when my oldest, dearest friend asked me if I would, after his death, explain to his children why at his request the Gay Men’s Chorus had been asked to sing at his memorial service, explain to them in such a way that they would not hate him in memory, we talked also, over a beer at one of his new customary watering holes, of old times. We were discussing our high school yearbook, specifically the individual taglines, chosen by the yearbook staff and given to each of us, labelling us thereafter for eternity. His had been so vapid that I can’t remember it even now. It had always bothered him that he hadn’t been identified more distinctly; I secretly felt that he had been lucky to escape with something innocuous. My own little label was “Dimples are the root of all deviltry.” I never minded the deviltry part so much; I flattered myself that they had me there. What I hated was the reference to my dimples. My friend could not understand why it bothered me, and he said he had always liked my dimples. I didn’t tell him that when I was a child, it had seemed to me that all of my parents’ friends and all of the adult relatives recognized me only for my dimples. Those craters in my cheeks were always the first and often the only thing people mentioned when they saw me. It was as though in their minds I was defined by my dimples. When my friend and I left the bar later that evening and he reminded me of his request, I promised that I would do my best to fulfill his wishes. I would try to explain to his children that his late lifestyle change had been only a small part of our more than forty years’ friendship; and that while it contributed certainly to representing my friend, it did not define him to me nor would it, hopefully, to them.
