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Bill says: “Write a post about me!” So here goes that….
William Gatevackes is a garrulous drunk and an irascible curmudgeon of a gambler. He is a cheat and a liar and by that barometer of character he is the finest man I have ever known.
I met William Gatevackes in Tay Ninh. He was losing a fistfight with a Cao Dai holy man. A fistfight where the fists were full of knives. He was bleeding into his eye from a bad cut. Apparently, Bill told me later over stale American beer, calling a Caodaiist a Buddhist is a good way to get shanked.
Once William Gatevackes wrestled a lion. We were on safari and our rifle shells had gotten wet during a freak hippo attack that we barely escaped with our lives. We were drying ourselves by the campfire, Bill cooking a fresh zebra steak and myself playing selections from Cosi Fan Tutti on the harmonica when the lion rampaged in out of nowhere, as if created ex nihilo by an angry God.
Okay, I can’t keep this up. I was going to do this ‘strenuous man’ faux-Hemingway thing about Bill, but I can’t top wrestling a lion and losing a knife fight to a monk.
I’ve known Bill for about 8 years, ever since he (and friend Rich, as well) was a co-worker of mine at a former job. I knew this about Bill right away: that he was a giant nerd and a Steelers fan, and that led to hours and hours of nitpicky conversations about the Avengers. It was a glorious bromance, and then Bill’s wife sent him to Bel-Air to live with his high-powered lawyer uncle because he was targeted by a violent gang Bill moved to New York with his wife. Rich could barely cope. We’d mill around Bill’s empty cubicle and say “Man, isn’t Triathlon seriously underrated?” and “If you misguidedly believe that the Celestial Madonna arc is better than either the Kree-Skrull War or the Serpent Crown storyline, then I have no choice but to shun you,” and we’d pretend that Bill was there to get flustered at our statements. When the Steelers – both mine and Bill’s favorite team – disappointed me (which was often), I would call Bill to rant uncontrollably at him while he ranted uncontrollably at me. And sometimes, in the still of the night, he’d call me, weeping, and tell me that he completes me, sniffling and then hanging up when I tell him he has the Jerry Maguire quote backwards.
When he’s not doing any of that stuff, Bill is going back to school full-time and writing for a crapton of sites: BrokenFrontier, PopMatters, Film Buff Online and whitehouse.gov. He also penned an article for Comic Foundry, the short-lived yet super-awesome comics magazine. He has a blog that he never updates because he (rightly) spends that time being a father to his rad daughter Vanessa, who is named after the wife of Marvel Comics supervillain The Kingpin.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
This is awesome. I am touched and honored. My wife loves the little details in your writing.
Points for usage of “shanked.”