Oh, look. White food...
Pork, milk, potatoes; and okay, some of it has gone golden-brown in the oven but it's all still white at heart, white in the mind. And at least it has the grace not to be ironic. This is straight up-and-down, entirely Quin. First time he ever fed me, he fed me pork.
I don't think he ever did understand the vegetarian impulse. He played up to it manfully, once I found a way to tell him; that same enthusiasm he used to bring to all our projects, like an uncle joining in with games of make-believe. Just like that. Whether we were forming bands or falling in love, starting a business or going radically Zen, he only ever offered us a token seriousness, a superficial commitment that never touched the iron underneath. Is that why they call it irony?
Listening to us now - those of us who are here, those of us we hear from - I guess he was absolutely right. Take it cheerfully, one day at a time, don't give anything credit for tomorrow. I always did eat meat, in other people's houses. The bands split, generally before the first single, sometimes before the first gig; so did the lovers, generally. Micky always went bust, when the funding ran out. At least one time it was Quin's money that did the funding, but he never would have lent more than he expected to lose. He was just buying into the fun of it, like giving the boy a new guitar for Christmas. A loud one.
But then, what did we do when the tables turned, when he gifted us the opportunity? We paid him back, of course, in his own coin. We played nurse with that same glib enthusiasm, and struggled to stay steely underneath. He cost us money, he cost us time, and we bought into the earnestness of it all, but only on the surface. We made-believe that it didn't matter, that his dying was just as significant to us as our lollygagging had been to him, and just as superficial. Take it cheerfully, one day at a time, don't expect to find him here tomorrow. Don't feel committed.
You can give up a year, easy, if you don't believe you'll need to.
And then, what do you do after? This, of course. You do the survival thing, you keep in touch. You have anniversary dinners. You get whittled down. You can lose ten years, easy, you can lose as many friends. And the ones who are left, the few who don't go away - well, they'll never be the ones you'd choose, and you know that they haven't chosen you either, and sometimes you just have to be grateful to the food.