by Penny Suess

Michael was a sweet guy. The kind that women really like, because he seemed to genuinely like women. And he was funny – another thing women like. So when he sometimes said maddeningly sexist shit, he did it with a grin, and you couldn’t hold it against him.

I first met Michael (he was never Mike to me) in January 1979. Dana Gurnee invited me to come to dinner on a Saturday night at the house he, Michael, and Larry Menshek were renting on Troy Drive. It would have been called a bachelor pad in the 1950s, and it still had a bit of that vibe, though Michael had jazzed it up with some colorful and creative furnishings you never would have seen then. Like the shelving unit made from a concrete pillar form, with holes cut into it. This cylinder about 18 inches in diameter and maybe six feet tall moved around the house over the years, but I think it was in the corner of the living room that night. In all its red-painted glory. There were also low, squishy foam sofas, one blue and one covered in orange knit fabric. Later, when the orange one developed a long tear, I mended it with black thread, for kind of a Frankenstein look. Michael was not amused, but he left it that way.

Dana and I had been working together at Computer Typesetting Service in Glendale the previous fall, but he’d moved on to another job after a couple of months. In those days, before everybody had a desktop computer with publishing software (not to mention Web sites), we could hop from type shop to type shop with ease. There were dozens of ad agencies and designers who needed to buy actual type, words on photographic paper, for god’s sake! And we were the peons who produced them.

If I remember, I was sleeping my Saturday away when Dana called. I was working night shift, the “lobster” shift, then. Ten p.m. to 6:30 a.m. or so. I used to get home to my Los Feliz apartment about 7 and crash till midafternoon, then have my real life till it was time to leave for work again, around 9:30. Pretty much opposite to everyone else I knew. [Why do these remembrances end up being at least as much about the rememberer as the gone guy?] This was going to be our first “date,” first time seeing each other outside of work.

Also at the house when I arrived were Larry and Barbara and Michael. Dinner was spaghetti, green salad, and bread. Instead of butter, there was lecithin spread – courtesy of Barb, I’m sure! Clowning around at the table, Michael grabbed some of the lecithin and smeared it on his head with the comment that maybe it would stimulate some hair to grow! He was always sensitive about being a little bald. Thus the hats, I guess. He had a lot of them.

So we all had a nice time around the Nevamar table, scene of so many card games later, then went our separate ways. Dana and I spent a couple of hours sitting on that orange sofa (or was it the blue one?) and talking.

Over the next three years, I spent many weekends at the Troy Drive house. Larry moved out to be with Barb, and a succession of new roomies passed through. For a while, it was Australian women from the Consulate, who filled the kitchen with Pavlovas and other treats. Bill Shepherd passed through for a summer, working for the Census. Dana always refers to his girlfriend as the smoking ballerina. Then there was Mark Yablonski/Younger, who aspired to be a Country DJ and listened to tapes of his own radio gigs in the bathtub – right next to Dana’s room.

There would be games on TV. I know nothing about either football or basketball, but I would sit and let the spectacle wash over me while the guys watched. I don’t know how many times I argued with Michael over how to pronounce “penalize.” I said “peenalize,” as is traditional, but he and the announcers invariably said “pen (like the writing instrument) -alize.” I used the word penal (penal colony) as my example of correctness; Michael said, “but what about penalty?” Nobody ever “won” that argument, and I just decided he was squeamish about the long e sound – too close to pee, or penis.

There were lots of ladies for Michael in those 70s into 80s times. Computer matches that resulted in a date or two. I would meet them in passing. All were lovely. Few were around for long. I don’t have any insight into this; it wasn’t like discussed or anything. It seemed a shame, to me. Michael was a nice guy and fun and smart and generous. What do women want, anyway? One of the age-old questions. But I guess he was pretty picky, too.

Finally, in 1982 Dana and I left for our year-long trip around the country in our camper, and when we returned, we got a place in Santa Monica together. Though of course we often saw Michael in the following years, we just weren’t “family” anymore, in that casual way.

We still play his Christmas Goop CD mixes around the holidays. All eleven of them.