2016

On the night that the episode of New Girl that Prince is in re-airs days after his death—the one where Nick and Jess tell each other they love one another for the first time—my wife Shannon and I frantically hustle to put on an immersive and interactive show at a stranger’s house in the middle of DC.

Prince called me up onstage at the Pontiac Silverdome & my scary ass didn't go up there my sisters waited in line for hours so we could get good tickets

I had been told to expect about a month-long hospital stay for my autologous bone marrow transplant to treat my recurring Hodgkin’s Disease. I had also been told that my chances for 5-year survival were about 40 percent.

So we listen to Purple Rain and try to remember what it felt like to be 14 and plugging cassettes into our jam boxes to brace ourselves for a decade spent pretending to be a human being.

I'm in Deer Hollow Park, the playground where little kids don’t play anymore and, according to my mother, troublemakers go. “When Doves Cry” is on my new Walkman and I’m spooked because I’ve already played it seven times over and over and am now pressing Play for the eighth time which makes me think that I might be going crazy.

Tonight the radio knows how it feels
to be turned on and tuned in to the right
frequencies. Let's all shake our hips
to its sputter and hiss: oh no, let's go—

It was a hot summer night, and the Dutch Club was packed. The year was 2013, and I was completing a Fulbright in Dhaka, Bangladesh…

What's this strange relationship

between your sugar walls and mine,

glam slam of your legs, cream

of these holy hips? We gather here

Can we just go to a movie

and cry together? Can this be

how we finally see eye to eye?

Once upon a time I wrote a novel about Prince. This will surprise no one who knows me except perhaps the friends unfortunate enough to have read it.

It snowed. My pockets filled with wet as I navigated

the streets linking the place where I need to be

Writers remember Prince.

When you’re 13 & U wake up with a body like

that,

your head don’t know,

Don't believe I was ever happy fiddling with dolls. Or skipping around the yard, tra-la. Adults invented the myth of the carefree childhood.

We used to buy roasted chickens at the Grand Union after school and take them back to Jen’s house.