Meeting David and Janie. Years later, Dr. Gerkelheimer Attends Wedding
I met David and Janie when Laurel Roth and I, along with a few other students, were driving up the East Coast, following our first year at college in Florida. As we reached what I think was College Park, but definitely Maryland, Robin enthusiastically described two friends she wanted us all to meet. We soon were at David and Janie’s apartment and I fell in love with them both.
Janie was like an R. Crumb character come to life. She was beautiful, with a big, incautious personality, a heartbreaking laugh, strong and funny.
David was the most developed person I’d ever met. He seemed brilliant, sensitive, sophisticated, and also very, very funny.
Within months, David and Janie had come to stay at our new commune, near Ithaca, NY. After they completed some school obligations in MD, we were all living in Ithaca. Janie started The Leather Guild, with Larry. David opened The Everyman Book and Record Exchange.
After knowing David a few months, I brought him to Los Angeles to show him off to my hometown friends. He fused with the only other person I knew with David’s abilities, Bruce Marquardt, and was immediately adopted by our entire tribe.
In 1998, I got married, for the first time, at age 48, to Shabnam Shademan. David was my best man, and gave a toast soaked in his profound understanding of human nature, spiced with esoteric Anthroposophic references, and scared the hell out of all toasters who followed.
This photo is of David, while making his toast at our wedding.
Whenever we spoke on the phone, David’s identity was Dr. Gerkelheimer, whose interest in my prostate was the only thing bigger than my prostate.
David occupied such a special place in my life that I never expected his seat to be empty. It’s been two weeks since he died. I thought I was done crying, but I’m crying again as I write this.