Sage Advice

Bob Pastorio was one of the coolest, most interesting people I've ever met. Well, if one can use the word met about a virtual meeting, which I can--because to me, Bob was every bit as fascinating and funny and real as though I had gotten to know him in person.

He could be cantankerous, oh he sure could. I was never on the receiving end of that trait, but I knew many people who were. Some of them could dish it out and take it, plenty of others could only dish it out. Bob was definitely one who did both, and he did it with more style than most.

I loved reading his newsgroup posts about recipes and cooking and anything else because he was not only intelligent and funny, he was one of the rare posters who knew how to write. But the communication that stands out most vividly in my mind was not a newsgroup post. Rather, it was an email I received from him in mid-September 2001.

It was a terrible, traumatic time in my life--so much so that I had no business participating in Internet exchanges of any kind, much less newsgroups. My son-in-law had died unexpectedly a few months before and I felt devastated and lost. Why I looked for support in an online forum I have no idea because now I look back and realize how utterly asinine that was. Just after 9/11, I wrote an article about bigotry that was published on a Web site, and I posted about it on the newsgroup, asking people to read it and tell me what they thought. Many responded positively but a select few for whom sinking their teeth into someone and enjoying the taste of fresh blood came after me with a vengeance. Needless to say, I felt sick at heart, my confidence was shattered, and my depression deepened.

I told you I was asinine. Actually, dumb as a doorknob is more fitting.

Anyway, Bob saw what was happening and along he came, sending me an email that kindly yet firmly admonished me for throwing myself to the trolls as I had. He made it clear that I should pay no mind to such meanness because (A) it was nothing more than junk on a screen and therefore not real, and (B) the people who wrote such things were assholes unworthy of note.

But the advice he gave me at the end of the email is what really sticks in my mind. After lecturing me about staying away from the newsgroup because it was no place for me, he provided suggestions for things I might do instead--hobbies and such--because real life offered pleasures that far outweighed any enjoyment one could ever find on the Internet. He advised me to do the things he knew I loved: reading, writing, cooking, gardening, and spending quality time with my family and friends.

And his final pearls of wisdom for me? "For God's sake PJ, go get naked and fuck."

At one of the saddest, bleakest, lowest points of my life, it was Bob Pastorio who made me smile. And when I think about that today, I smile all over again.

Goodbye Bob. I'll miss you. You may not have known what a difference you made in my life back then ... but hopefully you know it now.