Chrissy

There's a movie about my friend.

Roughly two decades ago, I met a woman who changed my life. My brain can get squishy, but I think the first memory I have of my friend Chrissy was meeting our supervising professor. We were the two new recruits to the music composition program at the University of Massachusetts—Amherst.

I was there under duress. I had not wanted to move from Saint Paul, MN, my for-real home. My family was in the upper Midwest, and my sister was having children.

When my partner and I arrived, in different cars, at the aparment in Sunderland, MA, I found it acceptable. I had never seen it before. I had never seen a picture of it before. I accepted it as my responsibility. It was my obligation. My partner would be a brilliant intellectual luminary, and my job was to make that happen. The apartment was horrible.

It, however, was my home base. I put up curtains to cover the 1980s-inspired mirrored wall. I took the bus into Hadley to buy groceries. I started teaching at the local middle/high school, the choir kids’ parents livid with me for replacing their cancer-ridden, long-time choir director. I absorbed their rage, knowing they were hurting from a history I had nothing to do with.

I lived in that horrible apartment for a year before taking control of the situation. I applied to the music composition program at the state university down the street. I already had a really good gig teaching kids about American colonial history at the “best-documented” small town in America. I just wanted to do my thing. My partner wanted me to do his thing. I thought that was a shitty attitude, so, when UMass said “join,” I said, “sure.”

I was evaluated for my music theory knowledge. My mother had seen my love of music early, so I had studied music theory privately since 5th grade. I had a BA in Music. The professor evaluating me made me cry. It was bad.

I was, however, placed in a good assistantship with the theory professor, assistant visiting whatever, all the nonsense words they throw at us to say we are not valued. He needed to prove himself. Academia is a horror show. For him, that meant verbally beating the shit out of his TAs. We were humiliated daily and told it was part of the process.

After our first meeting, scary prof with Chrissy and me, Chrissy and I walked by the W.E.B Dubois Library, a structure famous for shedding its bricks. More than once, I saw a brick fall to the ground, thankfully behind the metal fences UMass assembled to prevent people from getting too close to the precarious tower. Someone built a building without realizing books have weight.

I was gutted on that walk. I had believed myself capable and talented. The professor had ripped my confidence out of my belly, splattering it on the wall. I don’t know what I said to Chrissy as we walked past those Cold War monstrosities of UMass, but I do remember she responded with something like: “But did you see his shirt?” I was in tears. She was commenting on fashion.

The several years I spent at UMass were precarious. I was in a bad place mentally, socially, and physically. I feel enormous pride in the community I built there, but that community was made up of things that were specifically neither my partner nor my graduate school.

The pride came from things relating to Chrissy. She used to tell me she thought I was a prisoner in that Sunderland apartment. I would get angry, and she would give me a Sweet-Tart to shut me up. “Live your own life, Kevin.”

My composition professor, the man I was supposed to emulate, would call her “stupid” during composition seminars. When I would tell her I thought he had been a dick to her, she would respond with, "Do you like his music?” Well, no. No one likes his music. Chrissy’s conclusion would be an obvious “So who cares?”

My pride came from Chrissy’s insistence that it is okay to be happy. I was not happy during the time I knew her. She would not accept my bad attitute. She’d yell obscene Peaches lyrics in my face until I laughed.

Yesterday, Chrissy’s mom made a post on Facebook referencing the fact that Audrey Shulman had visited. Audrey was Chrissy’s best friend. As Chrissy died from a brain tumor, Audrey cared for her, doing the work that some of us who benefitted from the absolute joy of that agent of chaos should have been doing. We all owe Audrey a great debt.

I have a copy of Audrey’s book, a really great cookbook that I have treasured as a fitting memorial for Chrissy.

I didn’t know she made a movie.

I couldn’t watch all of it. There are scenes in hospitals that I just can’t process in relation to Chrissy. I will watch it someday, but not today.

Odessa A’zion plays the fictionalized Chrissy. I’m kind of angry with her. There are moments where she moves her head in a way or flicks her hand in a way that makes me think I’m watching my friend. I don’t know how she gets off playing the woman who dragged me kicking and screaming through the worst 2 years of my life. She is brilliant. Audrey clearly taught her about the flippant happiness of Chrissy. Thank you, Odessa. And thank you, Audrey.

And Bette Midler is in the movie. I’m a puddle.

Chrissy came to see me once upon a time in Saint Paul, MN. She came to my little apartment and we went to dinner down the street at a restaurant with dueling pianos. She liked that stuff, live music with people playing around and not taking themselves too seriously.

My former partner did not attend the recital Chrissy and I put together at the end of our graduate program. I begged him to come, but he didn’t. I had written a saxophone quartet that I really liked. My partner said he didn’t like saxophones. Chrissy said it had a good “squack.”

I’m glad I had Chrissy around to make things right.