This morning I got up and went to work after a night of god awful insomnia. Why is it that when I have insomnia my dog seems to also? She paced the apartment the entire nite.

So I get to work and the store is a wreck cuz a couple people quit or disappeared this week and a couple others got sick last nite. So, we get everyone into recovery mode. I'm straightening tables. And while I'm straightening the trade paperback table, I find a book I haven't seen before. The author is Matt Clark.

A few years ago in Baton Rouge, I knew a Matt Clark. Matt was an incredibly bright guy who had more than a few quirks. He liked to wear bow ties. He was fond of disco and odd music. He was also the director of the graduate writing program at LSU. And from what I've heard he was incredibly well liked and respected in that program.

Matt and I had a bit of a dificult relationship. I'd be lying if I said we were great friends or perhaps friends at all. He was very much a part of the circle of people that I was a part of as well though.

The one time that I was really a part of his life was after a party he had. Matt had a big ceramic statue of the RCA Nipper dog. One of our friends decided in a drunken fit to 'kidnap' it from Matt's house during the party. The next day, four of us drove around Baton Rouge with the dog and a Polaroid camera. We took pictures of Nipper at an LSU campus glory hole. We took a picture of Nipper browsing gay porn at Hibiscus Books. We took a picture of Nipper posing with tourists at the state capital. And a couple more... And then we taped one to his office door on the LSU campus. Over the next couple weeks, we mailed the pictures to him one at a time. We even got a friend of one of us to mail one of the pictures from Paris. Or maybe we just planned to... it's been a while...

From what I remember Matt was both equally annoyed and amused.

I was a very different person back then. Somewhere along the way, I became a very bitter, very angry soul. I was difficult to be around. I became upset and overly angry very easily and very often. My friends grew distant. My relationship of several years fell apart.

After Dave and I split up, I began to take stock of my life though. I changed jobs and found myself really loving the new one. I started getting a lot more exercise, eating better, etc. I found joy in my life again. I started to really *live* again.

Matt lived a couple of blocks from me in the garden district of Baton Rouge. His boyfriend, Chad, was one of the few people who was always friendly with me, no matter how grim I got. I rode my bike a lot around the neighborhood and I often saw Chad and Matt walking. We'd chat a bit and then go on our ways.

I distinctly remember one day though that Chad stopped to chat and Matt continued walking toward his house. Chad told me that Matt didn't mean to be rude but that his stomach was bothering him a bit.

New Years Eve, or perhaps another holiday, was around this time. A group of us got together for the nite to celebrate. Chad showed up without Matt. He wasn't feeling well again. We felt bad for him but I remember a good time being had that night.

A couple of weeks later, my doorbell rang one day. When I answered the door, another friend of our circle, Jenny, was at the door. I didn't think much of it, because Jenny also lived in the Garden District and she'd often drop by and take my dog walking with her.

And then I noticed that she'd been crying. I've never felt power of words so much in my life as in that next moment. When Jenny asked me if I had heard about Matt. He'd been diagnosed with liver and colon cancer. And his diagnosis was terminal. I felt like I'd been physically shoved back through the door into my house. I was literaly in shock for a few minutes.

I never saw Matt again. The day he hurried off as Chad I chatted was the last time I saw him. As his illness progressed, he saw only his closest friends and family. Within a couple of months, he was gone. And he was only 31, the same age as me.

His memorial service was one of the coolest things I've ever been to in my life. At his request, bright colors were worn along with leis. Flowers were everywhere and not funeral arrangements. Dr Seuss was read. It was a nice day, of sorts.

During the time of his death and after, I discovered a lot about Matt that I had never known. He liked a lot of the same types of fiction that I did, magical realism and such. I never really knew that he had written that much either.

His death had a profound effect on my life. It was one of the greatest lessons I ever learned. I discovered that I had had this incredibly interesting person near me for a couple of years who I had kept at a distance with a lot of unnecessary attitude. It sounds like a simple thing. But it's not.

For me this was an enormous lesson. The more I really found out about Matt, the more I realized that if I had been more accessible, he and I probably would have become much better friends. I think we would've had some incredibly interesting conversations about literature, art and the world. I think I could have learned a lot from him.

I promised myself to never forget this. And I've done a pretty good job. I'm still happy... most of the time. :)

Well, back to this morning. I saw this book and thought to myself, "how sad... my Matt never got published and now there's another Matt Clark writing novels." And then I flipped the book over. And saw a picture of the Matt I once knew.

For a moment again, I had a physical reaction. I had to go to a part of the store where no one else was working. My stomach felt incredibly hollow, my eyes teared. Matt's novel got published...

Wow.

I'm home from work now and it's raining like hell outside. A perfect night to curl up on the sofa with a book, huh?

I'll tell ya all about it later....