During the summer of 2008, my good friends, Josh and Sarah, got married in Hawaii amongst an intimate gathering of immediate family. They renewed their vows in late December with a beautiful, romantic, slightly belated wedding reception. I was one of two Best Men to speak that night.

While common wisdom would suggest that the best way to deliver a toast is to speak extemporaneously and directly from the heart, I took the exact opposite approach and drafted a script that I intended to memorize and deliver. I was so honored that Josh had entrusted me to say something meaningful and to help set the right tone for the night. I prepared as much as I could in order to reciprocate that honor to Josh.

Being one of the Best Men at Josh’s wedding was an experience that I will always remember with great fondness. I’m so glad I was a Best Man at least once in my life, but once is frankly enough. I was a nervous wreck two weeks prior to the wedding reception. I’m a writer, not a an orator.

Special props go out to the other Best Man, Carlos Oliveira, for his support and encouragement while I was on the brink of hyperventilation during the minutes leading up to my speech. I’d also like to mention Conrado Oliveira, who started clapping and chanting “KZ” to help me through that awkward pause when I forgot my next line. This act came from a place of love, and I won’t soon forget it. Special thanks go out to Tommy for heckling me from the guest tables as I was setting up one of my jokes. It’s all love, Tommy, I know. Wiseguy. Finally, thank you to my wonderful girlfriend, Diana, whom I love deeply, and whose loving support gave me the courage to believe that I could do the speech my way, and succeed in doing so.

If you’ll please forgive me this indulgence, I have posted below the original script of my Best Man’s speech.

The Other Best Man – by KZ

Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, I am the other Best Man. We’re kind of doing the People Magazine thing where they name the sexiest man alive every year, but oddly enough, every year it’s always a different dude. It kind of cheapens the honor, don’t you think? Well, whatever, there’s two best men now, and one indecisive groom. The way Josh explained it to us, he couldn’t decide between me or Carlos, so he decided to honor us both as his Best Men. That’s a cute explanation, but if you really want to know the truth, I just think Josh has problems with commitment.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re sitting there in your chair, folding your arms and thinking to yourself, “Oi! How can you say such a terrible thing at the bloke’s wedding reception?” First of all, please drop the terrible cockney English accent because it is not working for you. But secondly, relax. I emailed this very speech to Josh this afternoon at 2 PM. I assume since he never got back to me with a reply or a complaint, that everything I’m doing up here is fully sanctioned by Josh.

Having said that, I would like to read a poem I wrote specifically for this occasion. I wasn’t sure whether I should read this poem tonight. I’ll try to keep it short, but it’s about seven…seven…seventeen pages long. But again, Josh gave me his “silent OK”, so anything goes. Four letter words and all. And…it’s in my other tux. Thank you very much Diana for reminding me on the way out of the house today. Let’s give her a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. She has ruined my entire speech.

At this point, Josh probably hates me, and he’s regretting that he ever asked me to come up here and say something nice about him.

Truth be told, Josh and I have known each other for twenty years now, and we have never been able to get rid of each other. We met at the age of seven at Five Wounds Elementary School. Then we went on to Bellarmine College Prep for high school. Then finally, for undergrad, we both ended up going to Santa Clara University. We’ve remained friends long after graduation. For twenty years, I’ve had the privilege of calling Josh my friend. And for the past four years, I’ve had the delight of getting to know Sarah, and I now consider her one of my closest friends. It makes my heart sing to know that these two have found so much happiness together. After twenty years of friendship, I am proud to witness these moments, the time in my good friend’s life when he starts a new life with his wonderful bride. Josh has gotten married before I have, by the way, and my girlfriend Diana won’t let me hear the end of it. “Oi! Josh and Sarah did it. When are you and me getting married?” Diana’s English accent is terrible. Why does she talk to me like that? She’s not even British.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about love, and what I can say about it without sounding redundant. What can you really say about love that hasn’t been said literally thousands of times before? What more can I say when so many inspired philosophers, authors, poets, and playwrights have already weighed in on the subject with far more eloquence than I’m capable of? Just as humankind has always done for centuries, we are born, we grow, we learn, and we fade away. But in between, there are some beautiful moments where, with a little luck, we find love, we get married, and we celebrate with grand parties just like this one. It’s happened billions of times before throughout the ages, and I should think that it will happen billions of times more in the future. When you begin thinking of anything on that grand a scale, you begin to wonder, “So what?” Love? It’s all been done before, so what’s all the fuss about? What a tidy little rut we find ourselves in.

But love is no rut, not in any form. Love is the grand experiment of life that constantly surprises us by joy, one generation after the next, and always with the same old bag of tricks. The human dance wouldn’t be the same without love to guide us with all of its familiar refrains. Robert Frost once said, “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” That innate desire lives inside all of us, and it begs us to dream, challenges us to grow, and dares us to care about someone other than ourselves. Love is that immutable constant of the human spirit that invariably keeps us all human. Love is our guarantee that the human spirit, for all of its frailties, will always have something worth celebrating. Tonight, my human spirit soars with gratitude and joy because two people whom I love very much have dedicated their lives to loving each other. I can think of no better reason to celebrate.

Tonight, my friends, let’s all raise our glasses in celebration to Josh and Sarah.

Posted by KZ on 12/22/08

For as long as we’ve been dating, Diana has complained that I hardly ever write about her in my blog. “Why don’t you write about how wonderful your girlfriend is?” she asks me periodically. “You can write pages about all of your ex-girlfriends or about how you’re pining over some girl, but you never write about me.”

Over the lifespan of this blog, I’ve written a fair amount about unrequited love, and I’ve occasionally referenced an ex-girlfriend or two since I’m still friends with almost everyone I’ve dated. But you know, Diana is right. It’s about time that I paid her proper tribute. Here’s a little poem I wrote exalting the many ways that I love Diana.

Lesser-Than Sign, 3

D is for the delight of her awesome Diana-ness
I is a letter in the name “Diana”. So they tell me;
A is for her abundant, annoying attempts to pimp a shout-out on my blog
N is for the necessity to fill this poem up with nice words…almost done
A is another letter in Diana, who is awesome, and who rules!
<3 <3 <3!

I hope you like it, Diana. This one’s from the heart.

Posted by KZ on 12/03/08

One October, twenty-something years ago, I was a five-year-old boy sitting at the kitchen table staring at a pumpkin. By the end of the night, I would have a jack-o-lantern to call my own. There was no such thing as a child-friendly pumpkin carving knife in the early 1980s, so the most that I was allowed to do was draw a face on my pumpkin, and leave the actual carving up to my grandfather.

Not understanding the strategic disadvantages of drawing on a pumpkin with a ballpoint pen, I did what kids do and gave it a go with the first pen that I could find. Even as a child with a five-year-old sense of aesthetics, I was severely disappointed with my efforts. The triangle eyes were lopsided and round. The triangular nose was centered, but was equally awkward. Worst of all, though, was the mouth.

My intention was to give my jack-o-lantern a wide grin with vampire fangs. I started with the top half of the mouth and drew two prominent fangs that any vampire would be proud of. Then came the bottom half. I started on the left side of the mouth and carefully formed the bottom lip of the smile. As I was arching the pen underneath the top half of the mouth, my pen slipped at the most disastrous moment, and my pen stroke scribbled through the sharp angle that was supposed to be the first fang. I stared horrified at my disfigured jack-o-lantern and slowly came to accept the fact that Halloween had been ruined. Forever. Angrily, I stabbed the ballpoint pen back into the rogue mouth line and scribbled haphazardly with disgust, great frustration, and kindergarten angst. I threw my pen down onto the table and stormed out of the room.

My father let me cool down for about twenty minutes and then called me back into the kitchen. When I reentered the room, my brother Jonathan was still designing his own jack-o-lantern, and my grandfather was seated across from him, busily carving the pumpkin that I had so furiously abandoned. After a few halfhearted attempts to stop my grandfather, the pumpkin was carved, smiling defiantly at me with its hideous grin. I didn’t have the verbal or emotional vocabulary to express this at the time, but as I stared at that orange sphere of immortalized failure, I was overcome with a mix of feelings. I was ashamed of my terrible illustration, and I was embarrassed that my grandfather had so lovingly interpreted my ridiculous scribbling as an honest and credible attempt at self expression. That jack-o-lantern was just as much a testament to my temper and my propensity to quit as it was a testament of my grandfather’s support for his grandson: the young, budding artist who would one day embark on an earnest quest for true inspiration.

Of course, I was five at the time, and I didn’t have the capacity to express all of that effusive sentimentality. I was just a kid staring at the most sarcastic jack-o-lantern in the world, trying my best not to punch a hole through that stupid, taunting face. I guess I’m old enough to say this now, so I might as well say it. When I look back on that day as an adult, I remember those moments with good humor, and with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Thanks, Grandpa. Happy Halloween.

Posted by KZ on 10/30/08

And I truly am.

Posted by KZ on 07/31/04

It was almost love. Goddamn, it was almost love.

Posted by KZ on 06/12/04

My grandfather almost died this week. Well, his odds were supposedly fifty-fifty, which is damn near close enough to “almost” if you ask me. He formed a hernia as a young man, and it finally caught up to him at the age of eighty-six. On Wednesday, my grandfather began vomiting at his nursing home and was eventually sent to the UC San Francisco hospital. When we heard the news, my father and I drove up that night after dinner.

My father’s sister had already been waiting at the hospital for an hour when we got there, and she told us that there was talk of surgery. If the hernia had caused intestinal tissue to die, then my grandfather would definitely need an operation. The problem with sedating a man that old is, at my grandfather’s age, if you’re put under anesthetic, there’s an estimated fifty percent chance that you won’t wake up. So the big question of the night was whether an operation was necessary. While the doctors deliberated, we were kept waiting for an excruciating eight hours before we heard the decision.

While we waited, the three of us visited my grandfather in shifts. The bureaucratic idiots at the hospital had an obnoxious rule that no more than one person was allowed to visit a patient at any given time. I can see in theory how that policy might make sense, but it wasn’t as if San Francisco had just been struck by a WMD and the emergency room was packed with bleeding patients. There was more than enough room to accommodate three concerned family members of a man who very well could have been dead within the next twenty-four hours.

Anyway, I did have a chance to visit my grandfather, but I had to be alone and without a translator. I don’t speak a word of Mandarin, and my grandfather can’t do much better in English. So during my visit, we stared at each other as I stood above his bed and he looked up drearily beneath the scores of tubes that ran across his body. It breaks my heart that I’ll never be able to tell him all the things that I wish he knew.

At some point, I sat down and plotted out a speech to tell him. You know, it would have been one of those poignant monologues that movie characters deliver in quiet hospital rooms to unconscious loved ones. But when I opened my mouth to speak, the words wouldn’t come out. I’m more of a writer than a speaker, you know. In the end, I decided not to confuse the poor man with my incomprehensible babbling. After a few more minutes of sitting by his bed, I stood to leave and told my grandfather that I love him. I’ve never told him that before. Really, the only relative I’ve ever said that to is my mother; and even then, that only happens on very special occasions. But as I looked down at my grandfather in one of his most vulnerable states, some instinctual impulse swelled my heart, and I grew fully aware of the love that I have for this man, whom I’ve never spoken to for longer than two minutes.

The rest of my time at the hospital was spent sitting in the uncomfortable wooden chairs in the emergency room waiting area. I attempted to read, sleep, and watch television multiple times throughout the night, all with minimal success. By 4am, the doctors decided to hold off on operating for the night. We thanked them for their speedy decision and drove home.

My grandfather underwent surgery the next day. Nobody in the family had any prior warning because the doctors determined that an immediate operation was needed. Gladly, he was conscious again within the same day, and I spent a few hours on Friday visiting my grandfather at intensive care. The old man had a fifty percent chance of dying, and he pulled through. I’m glad my grandfather is still around, even if it’s only for a little while longer.

It may be asking too much to expect to never lose a relative or a friend. Most of us would prefer to take the presence of loved ones for granted and to deal with loss only as soon as it comes. But it is only in the prospect of loss that you may fully realize how much you love somebody. Celebrate every moment spent together, and try to imagine on occasion what your life would be like without that particular somebody. Love them while they’re still here as much as you’ll love them when they’re gone, and maybe it might not hurt so much if you really do lose them. That is, at least, how I would choose to live my life. So here’s to those whom we wish were still a part of our lives. And here’s to those loves ones whom we haven’t yet lost.

Posted by KZ on 05/28/04

It seemed like a phase at first, but now it’s just ridiculous. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’ve been significantly depressed for a long stretch of time, but I’m not sure I remember the last time I felt happiness for longer than a stretch of a few hours. Maybe the big secret to happiness lies in the fact that the feeling is so very fleeting.

Posted by KZ on 05/21/04

Did I say or do something incredibly stupid and offensive? Because up until today, I thought things were actually going well. Now it’s almost as if I don’t even exist. It’s silly, I know. Some real high school shit I’ve got going on here.

You can’t fault me for not having tried, at least. I finally did it. I stopped being a pussy and asked somebody out. But hell, if rejection feels this bad every time somebody blows you off, maybe I had the right idea before I started being brave. No, I don’t really mean that deep down, but please allow me my moment of self-pity. Thanks. And why yes, I would like a beer.

Posted by KZ on 05/18/04

“I can’t believe I’m talking about this with you,” she said to me. We had just met, after all, and already she was sharing thoughts with me that you’d normally save for good friends. It’s funny how open you can be with a total stranger once you learn that you two share a common loss. There’s an immediate, binding, indefinable connection; and despite whatever differences that may yet divide you, a mutual understanding unexpectedly links the two of you.

Heartbreak always heals in time, but it’s the lingering loss of love that tends to stay with you. The sadness may have faded long ago, and yet you can’t seem to forget the feeling of her fingers intertwined with yours. You may know in your heart that you no longer need her, and yet some nights as you lay down to sleep, you can almost feel her by your side, the way it used to be. Although it’s been ages since you’ve stopped questioning whether you could ever be happy without her, you sometimes catch yourself laughing at the inside jokes that only ever made sense between the two of you.

I do believe that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. The loss of love is an experience that nearly everybody endures at least once in his life. It is in realizing that fact, in remembering that it’s all been felt and dealt with before, that we can learn to appreciate just how much we all have in common. “The human experience” is an all-encompassing term, and for good reason. We’re not so different from each other, which just may be one of the most fulfilling discoveries in life.

Posted by KZ on 01/17/04

Well, I did it again. I spent another late night chilling with friends when what I should have been doing was finishing my law school applications. I’m already two weeks past my personal deadline, after all. But hell, you know what? I honestly believe that there was no better way to spend my time tonight.

Sometimes living for the present isn’t as simple as only thinking about today or about what’s coming within the next few weeks. Sometimes living for the present compels you to confront the “far,” uncertain future and all of the hard times that it has in store for you. At this particular instance in my life, during a time that most would still consider to be my “early years,” I choose to think about death. It’s the one wrong turn that we all see coming from miles away, and yet it never fails to break your heart when somebody in your life finally rounds that corner. Freaking mortality.

Anyway, the thought of death doesn’t occur to me because I’m particularly sad at the moment. Nor, for that matter, does it cross my mind because I’m actively trying to suck the joy out of my own life. No. I contemplate death because it reminds me that now, at this stage in my life, I have as much as I could ever want.

Maybe my friends have noticed something. Maybe they’ve sensed me smiling at them from my silent corner while they carry on. As fun and as vital as we all are when we get together, I can’t help but think that one day, we’ll all be gone. And though my heart stings slightly from the thought of losing any of those guys, I know that there’s little good in mourning prematurely. So my heart swells, and I’m filled with warmth and an irrepressible joy for having ever found friends that make me laugh as hard and who make me feel as loved. Mind you, I’m writing all this without having tasted a single drop of alcohol tonight. I tend to be a weepy drunk, as you might imagine.

I guess all I’m saying is, joy doesn’t have to be an ephemeral thing. It is a condition that you must constantly insist upon in order to have it–even if that means occasionally bumming yourself out with thoughts on the inevitability of loss and suffering. Joy isn’t so bad once you get the hang of it.

Posted by KZ on 01/10/04