rick is a guy that i’ve known since college… 40-some years ago. approximately five years ago, rick almost died because his body quit working. but then, for some reason, it started working again, just as they were giving up and pulling the plug. it was somewhat miraculous that he recovered, but he did.

i met rick at fairhaven, in 1979 or 1980. he was tolerably obnoxious — he was convinced that he was god’s gift to women, and was always trying really hard to put the moves on just about any person of the female persuasion with whom he came in contact, but, not being female, i only heard about it, second-hand, from other people who were female — and he smoked cigarettes, which meant that i didn’t hang around with him an awful lot, but i knew who he was, and he knew who i was. we had a lot of friends in common.

i moved to seattle, and rick moved to eugene, oregon, along with another person i knew from college, josh hirschstein. sasha frequented eugene for a while, as well, and rick, josh and sasha maintained the college friendship, while i went back and forth from seattle to bellingham, had a kid, went to the tech school, and a bunch of other stuff.

sasha, who is the drummer for the fremont philharmonic, said that i might be interested in reconnecting with rick in 2011 or thereabouts, and i helped him move the last of his parents’ stuff out of their storage unit when they died, and drove him to the hospital the first time he tried dying.

rick has never lost the opinion that he is god’s gift to women, despite the fact that he is now a greasy, fat, lecherous old man who last had sex with someone(s?) he met at “The Wet Spot”, a sex-positive “swingers” club in seattle, where he was the librarian. his constant, insistent babbling about all of the sex he was (or wasn’t) having, plus his VERY STRONG opinions about politics, not all of which i agree with, were the reasons i put a limit on how long i can hang around with him, but, never the less, i was rick’s transportation when he had medical appointments in seattle, or had to go shopping or that sort of thing.

rick is back in hospice care again, this time at evergreen, in kirkland. people who know more about this kind of stuff than me, have decided that rick is experiencing the final stages of kidney failure, and, pretty much the only thing that is keeping him alive is an intravenous drip. he is badgering his “staff” to disconnect the drip, so the probability is reasonably high that rick is going to die sometime fairly soon.