South Bay Echo for April 1

Remembering my friend Neil

Hello friends… Welcome to the 28th edition of South Bay Echo, your source of local hometown news with a real estate angle.

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I am taking another break this week from local news to write about another dear friend who passed in recent weeks. In telling his story, you will know part of mine.

Me and Neil

Neil Zawicki and I first met around the turn of the century in 1999 while working for the ASU State Press as reporters. We were both wearing Hawaiian shirts for some reason and he quoted a line from Blazing Saddles in passing. I turned around from my computer in shock. I never heard anyone besides my father who knew that movie so well. I too could recite nearly every line.

Neil quickly told me he was the publisher of Jaunt Magazine, a local little adventure rag. I told him my father was a publisher and Neil’s eyes lit up. “We’ve got to have lunch,” he said. Over cheeseburgers at the student union we talked about Hunter Thompson and Jack Kerouac, our mutual heroes, and how the magazine was aimed at replicating a gonzo journalism style. At that point we couldn’t not be lifelong friends.

Jaunt headquarters were at Ron’s house, the other publisher. He lived in Tempe in a single family home near campus with a large backyard. The office was in a sort of sunroom in the back with large windows and tile floor. We didn’t get a whole lot of work done writing and selling ads on account of the constant distractions: backyard mini golf, the abundance of gin and tonics and just the nonstop laughs. Man, did we have fun, mostly because Neil was so damn funny. He hopped in my truck one time, saw a thing of Tums in the cup holder and said, "Now you're speaking my language." In the afternoons we often walked to the neighborhood pub making up stupid jingles. We were sure to make it for happy hour because they put out a giant six foot long sandwich for free. Neil always knew how to stretch his dollar.

As another distraction, Neil got the fun idea to contact Hunter Thompson in Colorado. He told me he had called numerous times to the Woody Creek Tavern where Hunter was known to hang out and eat a late breakfast. I think he called so many times finally the bartender gave out Hunter’s fax machine number so Neil would stop bothering them. By the time I came along, Neil was just beginning the fax campaign.

We began sending a faxed letter every day on Jaunt letterhead explaining about the magazine, that we were fans and wanted an “audience” with the good doctor for the pages of our publication. Neil showed off a witty style in the letters hoping that it might compel him to write us back. After a few weeks of this a fax arrived through the machine. It was our last letter sent back to us in return. We looked at it in amazement. The letter was marked up like Hunter did in his Gonzo letters. Certain words were circled. Others underlined. A note at the bottom said, “This is Hunter’s secretary. He wants you to know he appreciates the offer but it’s not possible. I’m sorry.” We were convinced it was written by Hunter himself. We analyzed the handwriting from his published letters where he had a similar habit of writing in the margins. And that was all we needed. We succeeded in reaching our hero.

Neil was about eight years older than me and by the time we were friends he had already been in and out of the Army and worked as a fisherman out of Seattle, so he had stories. I credit Neil for introducing me to sailing and generally stirring up in me an adventurous spirit. He told me Walter Cronkite had a sailboat named Assignment, so I named mine Deadline. We had so many adventures together often with some sort of folly from Neil. He was hilariously clumsy, often ill-prepared and sometimes reckless. There was the time we drove from Phoenix to LA and Neil ate too many dried apricots forcing us to stop at a gas station about every half hour to deal with the consequences. Or the time we sailed to Catalina on his boat in Dana Point only to face a series of setbacks, all of which could have been prevented with a little more careful planning. But that wasn’t Neil’s style. He was a crackerjack adventurer, as we used to say, whatever that means.

In 2003, I flew to Anchorage for a summer where Neil was living. He helped get me a job at a tour company where I drove a van ferrying tourists from Seward, Anchorage and Talkeetna. It turned out to be an epic summer filled with long nights where the sun barely set. One time in Anchorage we came home from a late night and there was a homeless woman sleeping in front of the apartment door. The entryway was in a back alley downtown. So Neil invited her in, gave her something to eat and then played the guitar until she fell asleep. We just let her sleep there on the couch all night and then she quietly left in the morning.

In those days Neil would often blow most of his paycheck at the bar in a few days and spend the rest of the week eating nothing but potatoes. I never met anyone who could function so well with so little money. I went with him once to buy a used car for $500, the most he could afford. The car had a puddle of oil underneath it and Neil said, “What’s with that?” The guy shrugged and said, “It’s a $500 car. What do you expect?” Neil bought it and drove it for the rest of the summer. One time in California, he pulled up to my parent’s house in an old pickup truck that leaked oil and squealed like a tortured goat.

He was so good at talking to girls. He had a way of disarming women and getting them to instantly open up. His game was silliness and a lot of references to mayonnaise. For a few weeks in Anchorage he had a new shtick where he approached women at the bar as a peacock. He’d walk up without saying a word, raise his hands in the air and “hisssss” like a snake. The girls would undoubtedly look confused or laugh and Neil would explain the bit. “Aren’t we just peacocks flashing our tail feathers?” he said. It could have been a cobra too, I guess. One time back in Tempe after spotting a couple of girls at a nearby table he called over the server, handed her the salt and pepper shakers and said “Take these over to those girls and say they’re from us.” I’ll be damned, it worked. It almost always worked.

I left Anchorage that year with a new girlfriend thanks again to Neil and we stayed together for eight years. Neil happened to be living in Portland when her parents moved there from Anchorage. So it just made sense that we all go live in Portland. It was around 2005 when Neil welcomed me into another group of friends, ones he had met about a year earlier. We often hung out at a bar, hotly debating various topics around a table as Neil would demand we conduct our conversation in parliamentary procedure.

Neil and I had our ups and downs. He wasn’t always the easiest person to get along with as he could be short tempered and rather selfish. But we always remained friends and I was glad to see him last October when he came to visit. We took our last adventure together sailing to Catalina. He was so depressed following a divorce. The thought of his family with a new stepdad was too much to bare. But for about an hour I had the old Neil back on the boat. We were sailing along on a good clip toward the isthmus and he starts imitating JFK talking about sailing like he was delivering a State of the Union. We just imagined what if everything Kennedy said had the same dramatic tone. It was really one of the funniest bits I’ve ever heard. I was dying. On our last night together we watched It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, another one of our mutual favorites from childhood.

Neil was one of the most talented people I have ever known: a great writer, guitar player and painter, and one of the funniest. He celebrated his friends in a way that I’ve never encountered before. He mythologized our lives, quoting from various adventures like we were the movie stars and life was the big screen. He talked so fondly about other people that it felt like you knew them yourself.

He was so creative and he drove others to be as well. We would share things we made – a story or a song we wrote or a painting from Neil. He used to say that if you write something you should be able to turn to any random page and any random line and it should be gripping or funny or interesting or whatever. There were no throw away lines. I try to remember that whenever I write. The Zawicki test, you could say.

Like so many wonderfully talented artists, he loved hard and his sorrows were deep. He wore his heart on his sleeve and he didn’t hold back. What I probably didn’t realize until recently was that Neil likely always suffered from manic depressive disorder. The same things that made him so magnetizing and fun to be around also sabotaged him.

Neil was crushed by his divorce. It destroyed him and he just couldn’t get over it no matter how much he tried with therapy, medications and a new love. Nothing was enough and he succumbed to his impulses to take his life.

Neil left behind five loving children and a woman who was ready to be his wife. I am angry and disappointed at his choice. I’m heartbroken for those who cared about him most. And I will really miss my friend. 

Thank you for reading this. I know it’s not what you signed up for but I appreciate it anyway.