I met Prashant the old-fashioned way: at a bar, in the
flesh, face to face. I saw him wearing a tank top at the Midnight Sun and could
not look away. I wasn’t sure if he was on a date or not, so I handed him one of
my cards when we both happened to be near the bathroom. This chance meeting in September
2008 led to a relationship that I can only categorize as intense and sporadic.
In fact, I feel weird writing about it now because I don’t know how much he
shared with his friends and how much I can say without going too far. I even
hesitate to invoke the designated abbreviation, which is more commonly used
nowadays to refer to a large social networking site. It was that, but it was so
much more, at least from my perspective.
During our first private encounter, at a critical moment, I
uttered the phrase, “Just go with it.” Prashant found that oddly titillating
and it immediately became our catch phrase. I’ve always wondered how much he
told his friends about me, starting with this bawdy story and continuing through
our other adventures. Now that he’s gone and I’m writing this down, I stupidly fantasize
that one of his close friends will read this tribute and make the connection: “Oh,
you’re THAT guy!” To be a character in one of his stories would represent the
greatest honor.
One time, during a brief trip to Guerneville in July 2010, I
had the chance to witness Prashant holding court poolside at the Triple R. He
was there with his softball brethren for a tournament or something and he looked
simply radiant in his little Speedo. To say that he had a magnetic personality
is a ridiculous understatement. He commanded attention, but not in an imperious
way. He was a true entertainer, that’s for sure. As such, he left everyone
wanting more. I can only imagine what it was like to be around that warm,
delightful energy on a consistent basis, and I hope that his close friends
realize how fortunate they were to experience that kind of sustained intimacy
with such a tremendous human being.
We bonded over our passion for “Jeopardy!” and joked that someday,
after we finally found the right time to date each other legitimately, we would
end up as one of those obnoxiously competitive couples on a couch, shouting our
responses in the form of a question. As he wrote in one of his last emails to
me, "I'll be around for the foreseeable future, so hopefully we can make it happen sooner than later."
I’d like to think that I’ve learned my lesson about putting
things off and assuming that there will be time to make it happen. In order to
drive this lesson home, I sometimes read through our conversations on Facebook,
a kind of self-punishing act that never fails to make me laugh out loud at his
witty, raunchy language. The last time I heard from him, three weeks before he
passed, he sent me a short message: “HNY baby.” As far as I know, this was one
of his favorite terms of endearment. At least with me, he used it all the time,
along with some other turns of phrase that I will not repeat here. Now, every
night when I go to bed, I reach for my cuddle pillow and say out loud, “C’mere,
baby.”
When tragedy strikes, people often ask, “What were you doing
when you heard?” In my case, since I’m a voracious reader of THE NEW YORKER, I
can tell you that I was in the middle of an article by Nathan Heller called
“Semi-Charmed Life” (14 January 2013) when I learned that Prashant had died in
his sleep. A few days later, still reeling from the news, I eventually finished
the article. The last paragraph left me breathless and transported me back to
that first night I laid eyes on Prashant.
“At some point, it is late, too late, and you are standing
on the sidewalk outside somewhere very loud. A wind is blowing. It’s the same
cool, restless late-night breeze that blew on trampled nineteen-twenties lawns,
dazed sixties streets, and anywhere young people gather. Nearby, someone who
doesn’t smoke is smoking. An attractive stranger with a lightning laugh
jaywalks between cars with a friend, making eye contact before scurrying
inside. You’re far from home. It’s quiet. All at once, you have a thrilling
sense of nowness, of the sheer potential of a verdant night with all these
unmet people in it. For a long time after that, you think you’ll never lose
this life, those dreams. But that was, as they say, then.”
