RIP KLEANTHES

Goodbye, my friend.

JERSEY CITY, NEW JERSEY

Rest in Peace Kleanthes. Kleo. Kle-o! Kleo, I didn’t know you long, but I feel I knew you well. You’d made it that way, because every damn time I’d walk down the street you’d strut down your stoop and extend your big bearlike hand and say something like, “Nicky, how the hell are you, where the fuck are you, I haven’t seen you in a minute,” even though that ‘minute’ was usually just a week at most and never any great magnitude of time. “Come up here dammit,” you’d then say after I’d grasped your grip, “come up here and smoke a bowl with this old man you big handsome fuck,” and no matter your insult of me, and no matter the task I’d at hand, I’d oblige you, and follow you up to your little sitting area with your camping chairs and cigarette butts and settle in for whatever you’d have to say — even though our neighbors would warn me not to. My super even told me, “Nick, I’ve known that man for twenty-five years, stay away from him, he’s a weird, crazy guy,” not realizing that his telling me you’re a ‘weird, crazy guy’ would make me all the more likely to talk to you. You were a character, and couldn’t help being that character. Yeah, you were uncouth at times. You said a lot of slurs, Kleo, a lot of slurs. But you were a fat old Greek man in his seventies, you were expected to. That didn’t make you hateful though, no, I see that, I know that. Well, except towards the Dominican family that lived in your downstairs. You didn’t like them. “Why is it that every fucking night there’s a party, what the fuck are they celebrating besides not being Haiti, the racist bastards,” you’d complain. But that wasn’t indicative of anything more unpalatable. You loved humanity, you loved living. You were just gruff, rough with your words, direct with your dialogue. You hated bullshit, and bullshitters, and admittedly, they were pretty loud… I live more than a few doors down and sometimes I hear them going late into the night… But they loved you, Kleo, and they were the ones who told me about your death. 

That moment is now burned into my memory; I was walking back from Lincoln Park, the sun having long since set, interchanging calling with a friend and listening to Don Toliver, when Oscar, I believe his name is, came upon me. I didn’t recognize him, and thought to ignore him; it was your advice, I remember, not to talk to people on the street past midnight. “The Westside is still a bit wild,” after all. But then he said “Nick,” and I froze, caught off-guard how he knew me. “You’re Nick, right…? You knew Kleo…?” he asked. “Knew Kleo…?” I replied, his tense noted. And then he pulled out his phone and pushed in my face a photo of yours. “I’m sorry to say that we found him yesterday,” he frowned, a tear in his eye, a tear in his heart. “And I thought you should know… He always spoke of you… The big man… He loved you… He loved your stories…”

I loved your stories too, Kleo. They made me question what I’d thought, what I’d anticipated, about people. About characters. I know we aren’t flat, that we’re variable, malleable by both circumstances and choices… But I expect us, lazily, to be compositions of certain, 'intelligible’ parts, the cohesive joinings of particular attributes… There are, without doubt, some ‘constructions,’ some ‘models’ of person, that manifest more than others… The broccoli-haired teen that listens to Yeat… The moon-tatted ‘Hufflepuff’ who rails against the patriarchy… And yes, Kleo, the tight-panted Dominican man who cranks loud music… But Kleo, you were no such person, no such ‘construction.’ There could be no ‘model’ for you, you were a real original. You were a hippy gangster union man, a local 311 and a regular 420. I still crack up about what you told me about Woodstock... “God, Nicky, the babes there, I’d three in the tent when Santana was rocking, and two more when the Dead were… I’d hair down to my ass, and more ass than I’d ever known… God, there was nothing like it, nothing…” And at your story from your time as a plumber, your time spent working with other pipes… “You shoulda seen this one day, Nicky, I got called into this broad’s place off Madison, this nice woman’s, classy as shit and fine as hell, and when I arrived and asked her ‘what’s the problem, ma’am,’ she told me she was and right then and there stripped down bare to her lace… I felt like John Holmes, Nicky, John fucking Holmes…” And like John Holmes, you knew the underworld, Kleo, an underworld passing if not gone, the bad shit, you were a pot dealer, a pot dealer for ‘Irish Mickey,’ a Mick crime lord thug who came after you for all you’d got when once you’d missed a payment and failed his quota… “He broke both my goddamn pinkies, but not my spirit,” you’d told me… 

I don’t think it was possible to break your spirit, Kleo. You took pride in your durability, your endurance as a man. It was in your name, you’d said. “You know the guy I’m named for, right Nicky?” you’d asked me. And I did but didn’t, it rang a bell but didn’t jog a memory. “Not really,” I’d replied. “He was a stoic, one of the great ones,” you’d then explained, beaming with pride and making me laugh. “Like Seneca and Zeno, a stoic!” Well, Kleo, you were no stoic… You liked the snow a bit too much, as it turns out… But you were one of the great ones… RIP.