Honest Sweat Makes Smelly Pants

As you probably know I met John at school. I was a "new boy" in the fifth form, and John was one of the first to befriend me. It was immediately apparent that we had a lot in common, we were both of an artistic and intellectual bent, we shared musical and literary tastes and were both a bit unconventional and anti-authoritarian in our outlook. We spent a lot of time together, but after school I went off to live in London for a while. When I came back a few years later, I met up with John again and saw quite a bit of him. Wherever we met up, in bars or cafés or at parties, I was always struck by how many people knew and liked John. I didn't know about his schizophrenia, but I was aware that he was a troubled person and we did talk about his difficulties. I basically put it down to low self-esteem, probably compounded by drug problems. I remember going to the movies with John to see an Australian film called Sweetie; it's about a schizophrenic girl and the memory seems very poignant to me now. In the late eighties, though, John had a girlfriend for a while which did a lot for his self-esteem and he seemed much happier. Then in the early nineties I left again, this time for Germany. John stayed with me for a week or so in my flat in Berlin while he was overseas. At that time he seemed generally well and in good shape. That was actually the last time I saw him.
After I rang you on one of my visits to R_____, we got back in touch and exchanged a few letters. I looked forward to his letters since I was going through a bit of a rough patch myself at the time. In the last letter he sent me, he proposed moving to Berlin for a while. I thought it a bit of a desperate fantasy plan, since he didn't speak German or have the right to work here. Like John, I'm something of a writer of letters I never send, and I wrote one to John advising against this plan, but I never got round to putting it in the mail box. Soon after, I moved apartments and in the move I mislaid John's address. In consequent trips back to R_____ I tried to get in touch with John, but it was very difficult since you seem to have moved from the address I knew you to be at, and I didn't know how to contact either you or John. Just last year, I bumped into an old school friend here in Berlin and I asked after John but he didn't know what had happened to him. I am so very sad that I'll never see him again and wish to God I'd got round to replying to his last letter. Perhaps I wasn't a very good friend to him but I'm proud to have been his friend. He was someone I felt very much at ease with; he was a generous, intelligent and compassionate man with an original mind and a huge amount of creative talent, as I'm sure you know.

and oh, i do

Do you now.