| B ob also understood desire and physical passion. He had to, it was his job. When I met him I couldn't comprehend that he had sex with his models. They seemed so perfect and to the eye of the beholder he did not appear perfect enough. But of course he did have sex, lots of it, almost to the end. He did have special affections and regular trysts, but discreetly, on the qt. To me he was indulgent to a fault. He knew when I was doing something foolish or dangerous with a model. He never hesitated to point out the drawbacks and consequences of a free-fall to the mattress with some of the guys we knew. He spoke his piece, all right. But he seldom tried to make a decision for me, even though he usually knew what I would do even before I knew it. Afterwards, when he was right, he was neither judgmental nor self-righteous about his precognition. Bob did not crowd my fragile environment, but he kept an eye on it. I t is only clear to me now just how much of an eye he did keep on things. When I was in the hospital two years ago, I really thought I might die. After I was home from the hospital, I was very weak for about two months. Bob kept calling, even though I wasn't seeing models. Night after night he kept me on the phone, compelling me to talk even when it was hard to push the words from my body. At that time I wondered why he didn't just let me rest. Now I know that he was making me recover my strength, insisting I keep up my interest in working, letting me know that things were just on hold for a moment, but that he and the guys, any guys, would be there and available as soon as I was ready for them. Bob called day after day to feed hunger, once again, and make me well. H e knew what I liked, what models would excite me or work well with me and often he pushed me when I hesitated. He was always right, it seems. I usually regretted the times I took a pass on his recommendations. He knew because we talked about them, in the same language, forged from our interconnected adventures with the same guys and with guys who could have passed for the same guys. I t seems as if Bob got very sick and went very fast, even though the end played itself out over the span of a year. I remember him telling me about the original problem, his prostate, how he dreaded going into the hospital for it. He took good care of his health, yet his body was becoming old and full of problems. He seemed almost puzzled by it, it disturbed him, even though he seldom complained about anything. It was not the looking old that bothered him, but feeling old and becoming too tired to do all the things he wanted to do. He was a man with countless and unending projects which trailed forever the hub-bub of excitement each day and each new model brought to the tranquil mirage of the AMG back lot. I think he must have kept so busy all his life that when he turned around one day and discovered his body had grown old before him, the hourglass rapidly emptying of sand, he surely said "Good Lord, how did this happen?!". . .and not at all prayerfully! I n his heart he hoped that if he just got back in that studio everything would be okay. But when he did venture back into the studio, he would get too tired. It must have felt as if the world was shrinking around him. I talked to him a couple times in the two weeks before his final hospital visit. He was tired and I would offer to stop talking so he wouldn't exhaust his precious energy talking to me. But he stayed on the phone for long periods. I knew by then to stop everything and give him all the time he wanted. I knew an end was coming to our conversations, and soon this connection would be broken. I didn't think ahead, however to what it would be like to never again monitor a phone call, with Bob delivering his message in our code, new model standing by, not understanding a bit of it. W hen talking to Bob as his season changed, I found him becoming more accepting of what comfort I offered, and thankful for it, too. Even though there was little I could provide to make things easier for him, Bob knew my offers were from the heart, he knew I could sense what was happening to him, and that I cared. After one of the last two times I talked to Bob I had to cry after hanging up the phone, so clear was the unfamiliar but unmistakable tone of despair in his voice. It was something I'd never heard from him before. I had to let him know I detected it without acknowledging its power. The day he went into the hospital he asked Wayne to call me and give me his number at the hospital so I could call and talk to him. I never got through to him. Then there were no more chances. O ne other of our last calls is branded in my memory. Talking about another's recent death (a subject I had placed off-limits for awhile, so he must have brought it up,) our conversation wandered about, seducing us both, finally, into confronting some thoughts about afterlife. I offhandedly discounted it (talking without thinking,) and he quickly, and with a flash of his old energy, rejoined and admonished, "Now, how do you know that?", followed in true form by his deductive "There are lots of things we don't know much about. You don't claim to know everything, now do you? I know there are an awful lot of things I can't even begin to understand. You know as well as I do that there are many, many things neither one of us has the foggiest notion about. I don't know what happens after you die. I'm sure no one does. But I do know there are all sorts of things in this world we just don't know the first thing about, things we don't even know that we know nothing about!" Hesitating long enough only to hear my accord and catch his breath, he allowed me to agree with him that there likely is no God as created in the popular imagination, but if we admitted that we do not know and understand everything, then we also could nor rule out some kind of life after this life we've known, or some force greater than ourselves. To argue differently would be arrogant and foolish. Just as he reconciled his beliefs and his situation, I think he just may have hung on for those five weeks in the hospital, stubborn even as death cast its shadow in the hallway, logically insisting that since this wasn't his idea in the first place, even though he might ultimately have to go along, indeed had no choice, he was not budging an inch until they agreed to call the journey by some name other than death. B ob never allowed hurtful jokes. He was more often outraged by absurdity than humored. He savored irony. He did not have to argue with intelligent people, because his keen mind would instantly slice right through every embellishment and in a flash reconstruct any situation in concise deductive terms. With pure logic and with lessons learned, he could quickly dissect each situation that arose and in a flash impose reason and order on it. He almost always had arrived at the heart of each turn of events well before I even guessed the direction things were headed. Bob did not humor fools. He understood and accepted other people's limitations, and he asked no more of any man than what was within that man's reach and understanding, but nothing beyond the tools that man could summon or command. I learned from Bob. He was always pleased and satisfied when a bulb lit over my head and he saw I had figured out yet another of the not complicated, but just as often also not immediately obvious "rules of life", figured out something he already knew, but which I was just coming to understand. He had already had many of the experiences I was now having, and he did his best to illuminate my darkness. He did a lot for me, and he was available at any hour. .and over the years I had to call him at some strange hours. When I did, he had what I needed. I was lucky that I had the honor and the privilege to do a few things for him. Now there are no more chances. W hen I came face to face with this installment of my destiny in 1970, Bob was 48. He died at 70. Now I'm 48. Twenty two years of time separated us in the living of our lives, and I knew him 22 years. It sure went by fast. I never really thought of it ever ending. So I learn another lesson or two. 70 suddenly seems so young. I can't say exactly what the first thing I received, back in Ohio in the 50s, from AMG, (really just another name for Bob.) But I recall the first thing he taught me the first day I met him in person on a sunny surreal day in 1970. He prompted me to take a tawny skinned, taut and tan sometime boxer back to the Saharan Motel for a momentary free-fall into my fantasies. On the way out Bob let my man of the moment go ahead, while he took me aside to say goodbye that day, and out of earshot of my boxer he counseled me not to be too generous, that no matter how brilliant the flash of eternity I might briefly glimpse, I'd never be able to give this intimate stranger less than this first time (even though he would never be worth more since most of the mysteries promised by the muscular young stranger would surely be revealed to me now, nor was it ever likely to be any better than it would be on this very day.) Anyway, my boxer would just go right out and squander every cent of it on booze, whether I gave him a little or a lot. Bob was right then, and he stayed right. But that first rule must have come with a wink and a nod, because Bob was generous beyond measure with me. BOB WAS, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, MY FRIEND. - David Hurles |