RIP SPITZ

When I emailed Mark Spitzer out of the blue, asking him to write the forward for my one and only novel, I Fucked Up, I had not spoken with him for over 5 years. I reached out confidently, cockily even, as just an “old student of yours.” Not really mentioning the depths of our already complicated relationship as much more than student and teacher.  

This has always been my style: hide the messy bits in fantasy, mystery or razzle-dazzle unless there was something to be gained from slopping the carcass down on the kitchen table and inviting everyone to dig into the guts. Spitzer though was always the exact opposite. He never hid the messy bits. 

I dodged explaining myself or where I had been for the intervening years, simply stating that “I had returned from my mission with most of my original body parts intact and a manuscript for a book that I think I am about ready to share with the world.” I told him that I needed a forward “written by someone who finds these collected words and thinks there is value in exposing them(selves?) to the world.”  That was pretty much it, I had reached out to a past Frenemy/mentor/ideological rival with a banal and vague request for his time and ended my email with just an afterthought, “Also, how is life?”

Spitzer, as he always seemed to do with requests for help, replied with a “Sure thing, send it my way,” and I went from living in a garage in Southern California, with plans of becoming an itinerant inventor and salesmen, to being asked to be the graduate student assistant at The Toad Suck Review, pursuing my MFA in creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas. I had to get my application materials prepared while I drove across the Southwest on a road trip with my ex’s son, arranging to take the GRE along the way, with everything I owned, again, condensed to the space of my trunk. All in all, a pretty typical state of affairs for my life, and one that Spitzer never blinked an eye at.

When I had formally been accepted to UCA’s grad school, Spitzer put me up in his house until I got a side-hustle picking up dog shit at a local vet clinic so I could afford to get a place of my own. That is always who Spitzer will be to me: The guy you can intellectually beef with over the secrets of the universe, not speak to in 5 years, and immediately be there to help pick you back up when you might be spiraling harder and faster than you ever might realize.

Yeah, in my head I know he is now gone, and those helping hands have lost their rugged, outdoorsy form, but I feel them still in my heart, around my shoulder, offering my sell-out-self a beer, a joint, and place to stay warm in the cold embrace of infinity.

RIP Mark, and thanks for all the fish. 

Benjamin C. Roy Cory Garrett