Whitewater
I went back to Wisconsin on leave. Everyone told me Kuntz was in Whitewater, but nobody knew his address, and he wasn't in the phonebook. At least, not under "Kuntz." I found him under "Key, El Raja," the name of the most famous character in Rob's game.
Rob wasn't answering Mr. Key's doorbell (BTW, it's pronounced "cay, not key.) I rang the manager, who came out and took me to Rob's apartment door. Then, about 20 years later, I'm in Kansas at a station, and this guy I bump into strikes me as familiar. It didn't take long to figure out he used to have a tenant related to D&D. Back in roughly 85 or 86, the manager's face, mostly turned away from me, imprinted itself in less than 30-60 seconds of face-to-face time. It really is a frightfully small world.
While Neal Christensen, Rob, and I played pool in the UW-Whitewater student union, we got the call announcing Tom Champney's suicide after his game company failed. Tom had been an ardent miniatures player and Manager of the Dungeon Hobby Shop (on Broad and Main). He always made you laugh, which is why his departure hit us so hard.
Tucson
After the Navy, I moved to Tucson. My aunts, grandmother, and mother were all living there. My adventuring friend and pool partner, Kuntz, also moved to Tucson.
I worked for Pinkerton's and took classes at the U of A; Rob worked at Taco Bell. Tucson's job market was dreadful from '89 through '92.
Back then at least, Rob was liberal enough to go to the Joshua Tree, my favorite gay bar, and didn't mind getting hit on by a rather fervent, small Hispanic guy. I've never fully understood how Rob attracted people who were entirely out of his league in looks, but intelligence and a carefree attitude apparently made up for the deficit. Rob's early 80s girlfriend, Ruth, and eventually common-law wife, was at least a 7 or 8 on the vulgar "dime" (1-10) scale. So was his girlfriend in the late 90s, when he lived in Waukesha. I entirely forget her name.
We formed a new gaming group with Paul Footen, Bart Nordstrom, Franklin Van Ardoy, and others. But mostly, I still ran Rob on solo adventures, which he's always preferred. And it is true. I killed his PC in a group, whereas his wits controlled all the deadly variables quite well while soloing with hand-picked and tested henchmen. He picked up his soloing habit under Gary because playing Robilar in Greyhawk with a party of fellow PCs apparently kept his character suffering through others' continuous mistakes, which he could not abide.
Drystaff & Work
Rob wrote his Drystaff adventures novel in Tucson, and I was highly critical, telling him I found the opening scene incongruous and hard to follow. While I could often sway Rob on purely logical points, he ignored my criticisms here. And everyone who writes, at least implicitly, understands that writing is a fluid dodge of self-criticism, or you have no business trying to write a novel. And Rob has always been short on self-criticism. So there was very little surprise there.
Dropping the reader into an opening action scene has a draw that makes sense... if you can pull it off.
Boom!
I was in a Barnes & Noble bookstore in the Navy, complaining about forest or action openings that fail, blindly pulling random books off the shelf to read their beginnings critically, when one opened with the single word, "Boom!" It turned out the author was James Ward, who must've had a publisher who believed that was a good opening.You have one key sentence to begin your story: "Boom?" Oh, puhleeeze!
I don't believe Gary ever claimed he was a marvelous writer. For him, communicating highly imaginative ideas and stories seemed the central focus. He wrote as work, first.
More people would be well advised to first embrace their writing as work before art. The perfected artist is constantly asking themselves, "Does this work? What work does it do?" Rather than the stereotypical notion of art flowing from natural talent or mystical inspiration, such as a muse.
My mother always felt the highest compliment on her art came from Professor Peggy Noonan, who told her she had excellent draughtsmanship. Many would not recognize that as a high compliment in artistry, failing to understand that art is representational work first, and notional beauty and/or interesting form second.
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Rob, like many gadflies, has a reputation for being lazy. The Gygaxes especially characterized him that way. But that first year in Tucson, I often dropped by his Lowell St. apartment with beer, only to be turned away because he was busy writing. When Rob does do work, he's ardent and committed.
In '91, Rob moved to take a cashier's job in the Grand Canyon, South Rim concession. I'd been shot at from a great distance while working for Pinkertons, and I liked the idea of working in such a beautiful place, so I applied for a bussing position.
The Grand Canyon
The Canyon has 4 lodges, each catering to a different income level, with some overlap. As a cashier, Rob worked at any one of them, moving around where needed. I was hired at El Tovar, the Canyon's crown jewel. A large, hotel-sized log cabin, it couldn't retrofit an elevator, making it a 3-star establishment. Otherwise, it's a 4-star establishment for the rich.
I quickly moved from daytime bussing to night bussing to daytime waiter. And having Rob's dexterity and accuracy on the kitchen register was always a godsend because we may have been fine dining, but at a very high speed, and we had customers who required the highest level of customer service, like Don Henley, Rod Stewart, AZ Senators DeConcinni and McCain—who was an ex-Navy pilot—and so on.
The main dining room has a massive plate-glass window overlooking the canyon's rim. (During atmospheric "inversions," clouds would cover the top of the canyon, making it seem like you could just ride out over the rim on them.)
Senator McCain
Senators would arrive with an entourage; we'd seat them in the Canyon Room, lined with windows that also showcased Arizona's greatest natural wonder, for 60 guests.
I got to chat with Senator McCain for about 5 minutes. We talked Navy since he was a Navy vet and understood what it meant when I said I was one of the first Aegis Operations Specialists because he flew fighter jets under our control. And as an ex-Navy Senator, he was very knowledgeable about the Aegis system. All in all, although a Republican, a very nice fellow. And remember, he cast the decisive "no" vote to save Obamacare in July 2017—granted, after voting against it in 2009 and 10. Maybe his change in health changed his mind?
Kitchen Song
One day I noticed how infectious the little tunes my friend Tanya and I would hum in the kitchen were, as we tried to see if the other knew the title. For a couple of weeks, we got away with infecting our fellow staff with every catchy tune we could think of before they figured us out. Then we had infection wars!
Give it a try. Any hive of busy bees will do.
"Dinner is Served."
A good waiter can lift all the dishes for a 6-person table on one tray, lofted over their head. I watched from the bus station as our 3rd best night waiter slipped with a 6-top tray above him, rotated around gracefully, ran into a chair back, and stumbled to his table, and by forcefully trying to keep the tray up, he flipped it entirely upside down, landing it in the center of his 6-top table, splashing every glass of fluid and much food outward, all over his guests.
The table was central to the main dining room and immediately silenced around 210 guests, many in shock, and the moment hung there heavily until, suddenly, the night waiter straightened his back and announced, "Dinner has been served," bowing slightly as he gestured at the mess.
After another pulse or two of shock, laughter erupted throughout the dining room. It was rather ballsy. Even the food-covered guests were smiling silly smiles. Of course, they were comped for their meal, their cleaners, and their entire room bill and given numerous Canyon gift certificates.
Rob Gets Married
Somewhere along the way, Rob (Kuntz) married the bar manager of all the bars in all the lodges, plus our employee bar. However, she was a severe alcoholic and about a generation older than Rob, so I always thought it was a doomed marriage, and it was.
By the time I made day waiter, I'd finagled the largest room in our employee rooming houses. Most nights you could wander from party to party in all the rooms. We'd also have weekend employee bonfire parties a mile from the rim, at the base of a wooded hill covered in deer bones because that's where they came to die.
A couple of times a week, a gaggle of 20-something Euro tourists would stay in our room, which was against company rules. Every other group or so would include a good-looking gay guy. I'm just surprised I was never caught in the community shower!
There were also many gay employees, and I dated a few of them. I never received so much as a mean look from fellow Canyon staff, although I was very openly gay. It was the least prejudiced place I've ever lived.
Besides taking in the Canyon and sex, drinking was the main thing.
My Mother Passes
My Drinking Reached Unruly Limits
One afternoon I was absolutely hung over when a nice table of older ladies asked me what the house dressing was. I answered fluidly, "It's a reamy armesan with crapped peckercorns," then gasped, covering my mouth with my order book. The women all looked at each other over their menus, amused, when one crisply replied, "No, I don't think I'll have that one." Then they all laughed, and I offered them the creamy parmesan-with-cracked-peppercorns house dressing.
I knew I had to do something about my drinking. I was having a breakdown. So I left the Grand Canyon; they were very understanding, and they also told me I was about to be promoted to night waiter—a 50k job in 1992 dollars, worth 120,078.40 in today's dollars. But I was having a nervous breakdown and couldn't function, so I understandably walked away from it. I couldn't even think about it. I was fully overwhelmed by that point.
When I left the Canyon, my buddy John Cassidy and Kuntz also left with me. Kuntz moved on to the Greater Milwaukee Area, and I tarried for 3 months before I did so too.
The Heroin Shooting Gallery
John (still a Facebook friend) was taken from the scene by personal misfortune, leaving me in Tucson so depressed that nobody would hire me. My money was running out. I was in a daze where I could barely function; I took a room in what turned out to be a heroin shooting gallery at night, for students of the U of A. And the roaches were so thick in such a small area that I had to spend 25% of my money to poison them and myself, which may have affected me. It was a very crazy, hazy time.
I avoided trying heroin, knowing it would easily seduce a mind like mine, but I was able to remain numb among non-judgmental people until finally going back to Wisconsin.
So not everything has been spectacular in this life. But I suspect we all have our ups and downs. Mine are just a bit more extreme than most due to the unmedicated mood swings before I was properly diagnosed.
Castle Greyhawk
I should add that throughout Tucson and the Canyon, I was actively trying to get Gary and Rob to do Castle Greyhawk, but there were too many hurdles. Remember, for a while after I left the Navy, Gary was even more invested in his newest game system than in D&D.
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