In Memory of...

Our lockers at work.

Chris showed me a drawing in one of his textbooks, and I was feeling manic, so I said, "That's you, buddy, most definitely." And he took the joke and ran with it.

Samuel Christopher Knapp,

also known as:

Chris, Bob, Toned Mac, Madranis, Cap'n Ed.
You Intractable Bastard...
The Ultimate Badass, State of the Badass Art.

He asked me to call him Chris, and I said call me Charlie. Eventually, though, we were both Bobs. He killed himself, January 2001. I would like to show you a picture of him, but he would ask me to not do it, if he were alive. I don't think I ever understood him--I don't know if anyone could--but I will respect his wishes and his memory, since that is all I can have, now.

Chris and I were very different, but at the library, we were friends. We worked together, drank together, and told terrible jokes about library policy that made only us laugh.

Soon after we became friends, I made a mistake. I asked him to seek professional help for whatever was hurting him, the part of him that scared me, the part that killed him. He said we couldn't be friends anymore, because I asked him that.

But even after he said we couldn't be friends, we kept working together, we kept drinking together, and our jokes about library policy became our sub-culture of the department. We spoke a secret language of movie quotes, free-associations, and library jargon. We started calling each other "Bob" and "Captain Ed." Sometimes I had more fun at work than anywhere else during the week.

He said we weren't friends, but we kept helping and hurting each other in the way friends do. Chris gave me support and laughter through a terrible time in my life, and I felt like I gave the same back to him. I can't be sure anymore, and I'm sorry it wasn't enough.

There is something I can do now, to remember Chris, and the strength and joy in him that I saw far too seldom. I am dedicating my first published work to him, a piece of writing called "6:41," which Chris read throughout its creation, and which I could not have completed without him.

I miss him very much.