QUOQUE VIDE

As the first episode of the IN THE REAL WORLD (ITRW) web series is queuing up soon, I wanted to take a moment to expand my remembrance of my friend, Debbe, whose passing was the impetus for the project.

If you were not alive or too young to understand, let me describe the virtual world in the mid 1990’s. Access to the world wide web was via dial up service, slow like sap in January, and cumbersome at best, so there were no lightning quick TikToks or Facetime or social media, per se. What we had was known as “chat rooms” similar to forums still found on platforms such as Reddit. Think email but in real time. One would sign up with AOL and browse available chats, looking for groups with whom one may have a common interest. After entering the chat room, one could conduct public or private discussions, kind of like messaging now.

So, Debbe and I found ourselves in one of these chats one evening and we began a private discussion as we realized that we were close in age and older than most of the others in the room. That’s where our friendship began.

For someone I never hugged, or whose face I never saw in person, I felt as though I knew her as well as any friend from school or childhood. We had great discussions of timely matters. And, oh my god, she was one of the funniest people to ever walk the earth. I would sometimes get a jaw ache from laughing so hard for so long. Debbe was also relentless. She was an entrepreneur and restauranteur in New York. She had a couple of Italian eateries that were extremely popular and award winning. Sometimes she would nearly cause me to hemorrhage when describing what the special was on any given Friday night. (I do loves me some Italian food). I’m having a Pavlovian reaction just thinking about it.

We progressed quickly from only being connected on the internet to pen pals and phone calls. I don’t remember exactly when, but a few years after we’d met, she decided that any year that I was not spending New Year’s Eve with a date, she would be my “proxy”. She would send me a beautiful, expensive bottle of something red, usually Cabernet, with a brand new glass from her restaurant, all carefully packed. Her instructions were that on New Year’s Eve, I was to open the wine, pour a glass and be ready to toast at 11 PM, since she was in the Eastern time zone, and she would simultaneously toast me at the party at her restaurant. Her reckoning was that I couldn’t possibly be alone if she and 150 of her closest friends were greeting the new year with me. That’s the woman she was; selfless and benevolent. Did I mention she was crazy funny, too?

I will never forget the moment I saw the post on her Facebook page, made by her sister, Delores, explaining that she wanted to inform Debbe’s online friends of her passing. It felt exactly like someone had slammed me in the chest with a sledge hammer. It took a moment to breathe again, and I finished the post, only then realizing that my friend of two decades had dropped dead on my birthday. Through tears, I shook my fist up to heaven. It wasn’t six months later that I lost my brother, too. Shortly after that, I felt a push or tug or draw to make this film about the friends I’d made online, whom I considered to be real friends, with whom I had developed a very real bond. I will always believe Debbe was behind that.

On Christmas Eve of 2014, after what had been a arduous, painful, heartbreaking year, I was up late as I had some work to finish (after an 18 hour day) and only then realized what day it was…and how late it was. I uncorked a bottle of wine and left my desk to stand on the porch and peruse the sky. It was chilly, not freezing, which is typical for Houston. For some reason, I suddenly felt a huge relief of some sort and began to cry. And Debbe entered my thoughts. I knew it wasn’t by accident because it wasn’t New Year’s eve.

I held up my glass to the diamond studded black velvet sky and smiled.

The first episode of ITRW will be posted on my YouTube channel in the coming days. Click on the link in the footer and subscribe, etc, so you will be notified when an episode drops. Thanks for your support. I am very appreciative. - lc

Laine CauseyAugust 26, 2022