Dave Dembinski remembers....

It's 8:22 PM on Saturday, February 26, and I'm not drunk yet. I'm  trying, don't get me wrong, but I just started.

Back in the summer of 98, I started a goofy little "poetry" e-mail zine  called The Hold. It was mainly because I was discovering that poetry  was hard and I didn't want to put in the work to get good at it, but I liked talking to poets. So, I rounded up some crap I'd written, some  stuff from my high school friends, and sent 'er off to anyone who said they wanted it. One of the ones who said they wanted it was Cait  Collins.

Cait had I guess been recently divorced and found the Internet was a perfect place to re-invent herself. She was a dedicated Bukowski fan, a  talented Beat poet, and a burgeoning webmistress, and she liked my shitty zine. She sent in some stuff, I published it. She ended up with  a regular column called "smell ME", where she continued to put up some really wonderful work. Eventually, she became a co-editor and, when my interest waned entirely, I gave her the whole kit 'an caboodle to take on. In retrospect, that was about as much of a "gift" as winning the lottery would be after Uncle Sam taxed the fuck out of you and all your asshole relatives showed up demanding money, but at the time there weren't a lot of readers and neither did we get a ton of submissions.  Cait changed all that.

Next time I looked, she'd registered a domain, picked up a regular pig's breakfast of columnists, was sorting through hundreds of  submissions a month, and seemed to be enjoying the hell out of all of it. I don't have any idea how many readers the thing has today, although I could probably look since I think she kept an account open for me on the web server. She was funny like that, even when I hadn't been by in years she still signed the intro to every issue "nightdave!", as though it was all done just for me.

Today, I found an e-mail from my uncle, who happens to be one of the other best poets I know, that said:

dave,

this was just posted at the-hold's messageboard:

collins (laurey ahrens)
Posted by marilyn shaffer on 2/26/2005, 6:49 am

This is a sad note. My Name is Marilyn Shaffer and I'm Cait Collins' sister. My sister is in Cooper Hospital in Camden N.J. as I'm writing this. As most of you know i think (?) Cait has told me that she has told some people on the hold about her breast cancer. Well as of 3 am EST, the doctors have put her [on] morphine and there is not much time left.

It's very hard to write this, but you all should know. I don't remember who she said the fellow was who did The Hold before she took it over but maybe you all do. So let him know.

I'm writing this from my home because i didn't want to wait till i get to N.J. which I'll be leaving for with the rest of our family.

Please keep Cait in your prayers. I don't know if i can access my sister's 'puter as I don't remember her pass word.

Sadly, Marilyn Shaffer


I, being a cold bastard who tries very hard to feel very little, tried  to ignore it and went about my day. Later on, I got another e-mail:


From: ron androla
Subject: Re: cait
Date: February 26, 2005 6:05:07 PM EST
To: dave dembinski

i understand she passed away this afternoon.

I'd like to say "And I lost it." But that's not what happened. I didn't "lose it" and go tearing my clothes and screaming at God, although I probably should have. It's taken me two and a half hours to start to come to terms with what's happened. Someone I never knew very well but who nevertheless cared about me has passed on. It kills me that she asked her sister to tell me, and I was barely even cognizant that she was sick. I knew, of course, but I didn't think anything of it. In my experience, people don't die from being sick. I'm only 24. Well, now people do. Now, people who I wish I'd known better, who I wish I'd treated better, who I wished I'd even called just once to talk to and say hello die from being sick, and there's not a goddamned thing I can do about it.

So now, it's 8:40 PM and I'm still not drunk, though I'm still trying. I'm only through about half a bottle of this terrible blackberry wine that's so cheap they didn't even bother with a cork, just a screw-on lid like a soda bottle, and I can still feel everything. I need to feel everything, in case she's out there somewhere looking for me. I don't want to miss it again.

Cait, darlin, this is for you.

I'll Fly Away MP3

[Back]