Off Topic: One Year Later

Many of you know that last year I lost a dear friend. I hate to admit that I am actually a little angry at her for having died; she was overweight and did not take care of her health. She never exercised (I should talk) and refused to take responsibility for her own good heath (aging, I should talk..)

But we were instant pals from the moment we met when we were in college. She attended Smith while I was at UMass and since there was a five-college exchange program, we shared a film course at Amherst. She was a flamboyantly pretty black woman in the middle of lilly-white Northampton and sometimes before class we would hit Thorne’s Market make-up counter to paint her lids with combinations of fuchsia and purple guaranteed to shock the bourgeois. It was a 35 year friendship that grew stronger when I moved to Los Angeles, where she was a native.

Of course, one of her loves was perfume. She loved the feminine ones: 24 Faubourg was a favorite as was Anais Anais. One of her later loves was Luten’s Al A Nuit, which I was happy to gift her. She rather comically over-applied sometimes. Once at Agent Provocateur she doused herself with so much I had to leave the area. Too much was never enough for Lynn.

She was sometimes vexing, but never dull. I miss her.

Photo is from her obit. It was taken in college. She hated being photographed.