[ I’m submitting this as a possible front page dedication to our once partner in crime. –Fat Bastard Hazen ]

SEVERAL YEARS WITHOUT WEISSENBERGER

He was a solid piece of majenta’s heyday to date, back when it was New Mexico localized. First time I remember his presence was from the essay, A Year Without Bukowski, and I remember thinking that he was going to carry a torch for majenta which I couldn’t — the ability to keep an eye on the act of writing itself, while he did it.

And he’d probably show no contempt for me, while he turned definitely away from that statement if I spoke it in his presence; and he’d only feel a little bit of discomfort, for a short second; and then he’d get on to realizing that the moment was always his as long as it wasn’t disrupted by such commentary.

And then he’d forget it. Like he probably forgot I turned down his weed for mine, at a majenta party at a cafe we all went to — and turning down anybody’s weed — how out of character was that?

Hey Todd, if you read this, try offering ***ley some weed — guarantee he won’t turn yours down for his — because he never fucking has any.

This happened back when if you were on the inside you could probably get a shot at that bullshit front of a cafe called EJ’s, from behind the counter as long as you didn’t mind that brief stare from Clay, the manager at the time; a stare which said, “Did you really just ask me for a bit of my whiskey, knowing I’d give it to you, but at the risk of my keeping you at arms length for as long as I could remember the incident? Are you really that naïve, that you think it’s not only so insanely decadent here that I sometimes think of quitting my position, just to escape the work environment I’ve created, but that it’s also just plain free? Is that the pampered world your little poetry-puking pussy-ass had been living in up until I met you and immediately hated you — for asking every waitress out in the place but the one I liked most, then dating her by default? And now you’re thinking free shots, just ’cause you know they’re back here?” Then he’d get back at me by getting me so drunk that I’d almost drown in the bathtub if I made it home at all.

When Todd and his girl at the time moved back to Albuquerque from Taos, he said they had been the kidney stones, pissed out by the mythologically ruling mountains of the town. The myth goes that the Taos mountains either take in or spit out new inhabitants. (Hey, do you think Julia Roberts’ checking account had an effect on those mountains?) I always pretty much thought of that bit of folklore as a really poor excuse for the glib, Native American plagiarizing, New-Agey taint on witch-hunt style gossip which always presides in Taos; but that kidney stone gag really tickled me good.

He also was one of few people participating in a contest I held during majenta’s release party at EJ’s, the least celebrated Jack Daniel’s dispensary of Alb, but I remember he was one to guess a Kafka quote in my awkward contest. Here it is:

“Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world and perhaps even guiding them a little is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all.”

I still love him for guessing that, out of a multiple choice including Ice Cube and Emily Dickinson among others.

There was another quote he cited in his essay, “A Year Without Bukowkski,” that writing wasn’t a thing you thought about, woke up one morning then went and learned how to do — one either had to write or one didn’t.

But about four years ago, maybe more, Todd said something that would ring in my ears over the years, yet never quite sink in until just now.

I was over at a friend’s house in Albuquerque and I was pleased to hear Todd was going to be coming around to hang out since we had some mutual friends — and indeed he did — and that’s when he told me he had quit writing.

“Yup,” he said.

He’d quit.

Said he’d gotten a lot of email from various writers across the country, after announcing it to a certain website.

I’ve been sitting here for about a half hour, tweaking this essay and thinking about his decision. It’s a decision of which little can be said. That’s why I respect it most I guess.

Like having written a note to some strange woman or another — as was my habit back when — then looking at it and wondering if I really want it to get to her. I could go over in my head the pros and cons and whatever I might want to go over, but still be left with nothing at all but the decision itself, wanting to be made by or for me.

Or maybe that’s not such a good analogy, just something I’m thinking back on by association — but like the tossing of such notes — which I probably did a lot more often than sending of them — no-one who has ever written a godamn thing, or anything worth a godamn anyway can blame him for having quit writing.

Nor is he dead — nor can we mourn him or think too hard about the decision if we want to get on with our work.

But we sure as fuck can’t blame him.

Me I don’t drink whiskey, anymore; and like ***ley, I don’t keep weed in the house at all.

No, I’m seeing a woman now; I’ve got something going with her that made me drop all my vices but Dr. Pepper. Sure don’t send letters to strangers anymore either. Well — other than the occasional cover letter, of which I’m infinitely more embarrassed than anything romantic I’ve ever sent.

And I haven’t stopped to miss any of that ghostly shit at all, since I stopped — haven’t missed it but for a quick, thirsty second now and again.

I wonder if that’s how he feels.