Remembering DLR

 In high school, I became friends with a kid named David Lantham Reamer. He was just about as cranky as you can imagine someone would be who had to hear "Reamer? I hardly know her!" on a daily basis. We used to drive around in his Honda Civic, sharing cigarettes with the windows rolled down even on the coldest nights, listening to the mixtapes he was an expert at making. Not just song choice, either. He made elaborate tape cases with liner notes written in tiny letters in his distinct handwriting. He wrote me lots of letters too, typed out in lower case or spaced all over the place sometimes, in the manner of his favorite poets, ee cummings and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He wrote poetry and took lots of photographs with an old Canon. 

Before he died, he was a photographer. Specifically, he was a food photographer and a damn good one. Before that, he was a chef. He did some other stuff too, but the main thing he did was collect really cool stuff. He had a voracious appetite for music and poetry and food and outdoor stuff and cool people. I guess I count myself among them. Not because I think I am cool. I know I am cool because David really liked cool people. People became more interesting and cool after having known him. 

In high school, David liked this girl I carpooled with. I thought she was kind of bland. It turned out she just wasn't a morning person and maybe didn't like me all that much. Within a few days of knowing her, he had learned all these cool things about her and tragic things and suddenly she seemed to realize how beautiful she was, because she smiled more after that, and wore more things that reflected her heritage as a Native American. He wasn't the kind of guy who said, "smile more." He made you smile because he was funny, and he made you smile by pointing out all the beautiful things about you. I like to think he helped her see what he saw in her. He knew how to become a person's friend and then capture what was cool about them and build on it and make something beautiful and cool. And as his friend, I wanted to make something cool too. 

It's hard to explain why we drifted apart. First, it was because of college. Actually, first it was because I broke his heart in a really tough manner that seems okay when you are 18. But he still hung out with me. We stayed friends in the beginning of college, writing back and forth but in the long run, I wanted to remain an arch-hip asshole and he wanted to just enjoy himself. I begrudged him Bob Marley for some stupid reason. We met up in California in 2001 and hung out a few times but we lived every so slightly too far apart. Our season had passed.

I learned yesterday that David died of late-stage pancreatic cancer last year. He was 46. He died on February 21, 2021. Lawrence Ferlinghetti died on February 2, 2021, at the age of 101. I like to think Ferlinghetti was waiting for him with a pack of cigarettes or a joint at the Pearly Gates and the two of them hit it right off. 

He left behind a wife and a dog and a cat. He also left behind hundreds of poems and thousands of pictures and hundreds of people who he made more beautiful than they were before he met them. There isn't a scenario where we would likely have become close again. My only small regret is that he didn't know how often I thought of him, and how fondly. I hope he knew, or knows. I hope he thought of me fondly, too, and wished me beauty in the world even if he wasn't there to see it.