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Thursday I went for a walk with Peter. Peter’s my oldest extant buddy in San Francisco. We were twinkies together, our friendship going back to 1985, when we shared the coolest apartment in town with his cool black cat Francesca, who’d occasionally fall off the ledge of our living room windows. “Reeeee-OOOWWWWwwwww” we’d hear as she took the two story plunge.
Peter’s been losing his eyesight for years now, slowly, and is adapting to a distorted, gradually disappearing world. But rather than withdraw from life, he’s developed the wisdom and compassion of a contemporary bodhisattva, although I’m sure he wouldn’t like me using that term, but that’s what he is to me, someone bound for enlightenment, parsing out advice and wisdom to all who cross his path.
He’s such a vibrant presence, a 21st century Oscar Wilde, as smart as he is silly, immediately accessible and immediately intimate. When we were in Paris a few years ago, walking down a street in the Marais that he and Luis, his partner, had been down a few times already on their own, seemingly every shopkeeper, barkeep and waiter leaned out of his doorway and shouted “Salut Pierre!” “Bonjour Pierre!” like in a Minnelli musical, every one of them already bonded with this bon vivant. In a taxi, Peter engaged our driver using a vocabulary of about 10 words, “Paris… ah! Quelle belle ville! l’architecture! les musées! les gens! C’est magnifique!” and on and on, exclamation point after exclamation point. Because he couldn’t see our husky-voiced female driver, he kept addressing her as “Monsieur,” while she kept unsuccessfully and comically correcting in her deep manly voice “Madam! Madam!”
Peter has what my friend Steve calls an “outdoor” voice. In museums, he is allowed to view sculptures with his hands, and since he’s often not aware of the volume of his voice, or the proximity of his fellow art enthusiasts, after he’s fondled a statue’s privates and when he thinks he’s whispering to me “Oh my, those Gauls were really hung!” he’s actually addressing an entire room of people who then all turn to look at my deeply red, but delighted face.
Having lost so many friends over the years, I’m so grateful to have him in my life, a life that flickers in Technicolor whenever I’m with him.