I have been trying to start this for weeks. I want to find a way that all this makes sense or means something but I cant. Reading the other posts it occurs to me that we each had our own version of Mark, all of them true and compelling.
I met Mark in 1988 in the Lower Haight in the infamous 714,710,708 flats. He was just back from India and moping over Liz, the girl who did not wait for him after all. He was very beautiful, with long blond curls, a great smile and a tender way about him. He was thinking about Buddhism and questions of spirituality, drawing many mandalas. We embarked on a long and torturous relationship – over 4 years of “relationship wrestling.” Mark was an infuriating boyfriend – he slept all day, had to choose the appropriate albums to play while putting on each individual article of clothing, was very messy (that room!), always late, and very attractive to the young Nubiles from Arcada and various other places. He would hold court on that ratty curved couch in the bay window, a cigarette and his guitar, wearing a plaid bathrobe. 708 was full of adoring transients and Irish people. Mark had great love for the fighting/crying Irish poets in the neighborhood.
When I moved back to NY, we became pen pals and I still have lots of Mark’s mail art from his Dada phase. He had the greatest handwriting – perfectly formed and even. He was so naturally creative in so many ways – music, writing, talking, socializing, criticizing. I loved going to galleries with him – he was so easy to talk art and culture with. Our phone conversations lasted for hours and always included detailed lists of what he was reading and what he recommended – he had finally finished that damnable Pynchon. Every single time he called, he would pretend to be from the county sheriff’s office or my college alumni association. I never fell for it but that never stopped him. I would just wait for that familiar “woo hoo.” He really enjoyed playing with my kids and got along well with my husband who shared his attitude that the “party is where I am.”
For all this, Mark also had a desperate quality about him. This usually related to drugs and drinking but also to experience and pleasure in general. He wanted to push it all the time. He was rarely relaxing to be with – always challenging one to think harder or differently, to explain, to defend. He really did live a life fuller than most. Here is an excerpt from an epic email Mark wrote just two weeks before his death:
“Me, I seem to be exiting some sort of season myself, breaking out of a self-imposed exile to trouble with other humans again. My efforts at maintaining an approachable exterior and facile charm only serve to remind me why I withdrew in the first place. I find that my years of polishing a versatility, an ability to travel and have commerce with the maximum number of social strata and situations has left me a particular handicap- I’m too smartass and cutting for the idiots, and too (negatively) experienced and unshockable for the hoi polloi. I know: 9/10s of the world would be happy to have my problems, if that’s in fact what they are. It occurs to me that none of this is very funny, and somewhere along the line I promised myself that I would never write more than three paragraphs without at least attempting lamely a lunge at humor; gravity can be deadly.
Here’s more unfunny business- I’ve made up my mind to write, early often and at length. I’ll still lay abed and strum guitar mooning aloud about my suffering, and I enjoy drawing and pushing colors around a page, but if I have to pick a muse to court with seriousness in mind then let it be Calliope.”
Back on that couch at 708, we used to each other stories. Mark always ended his, in a strange German/Jewish accent, “you may wish that there was more, but there isn’t, that’s it, there is no more.”
Goodbye dear friend, and thank you.
Alison Fennell Vaccarino
