Here's to you Petey.

When I was a sophomore, I took a creative writing class. It was one of those moments where I needed to finish out my core classes, and that involved me taking 10 hours of electives. It was a three-hour course that met once a week for two hours and forty-five minutes. I had always been a good writer and got rave reviews from my professors, so I figured it would be an easy class to make an A in.


But then a tall man, resembling William Shatner, walked through the door carrying a coffee and a manilla folder of papers. He wore black, and he was big-boned with the stereotypical writer's attire (dark pants, colorless shirt, black glasses). He had grey hair and eyes that constantly observed the world around him. He was the toughest SOB that I had ever encountered. He required us to write for at least an hour a day, and we had to maintain a portfolio to be turned in at the end of the semester. The portfolio was the one thing that I thought would be the death of me. I had all of my "free writes" in there - the daily ramblings in a creative manner spanning an hour of my day that I usually wrote listening to music (Christopher preferred Mozart but I preferred a mixture of various songs and artists to capture the mood). I had things that motivated me, inspired me and even touched me in that portfolio.


As I said before, I spent the entire semester groaning, complaining and mumbling under my breath about that "stupid portfolio". But by the time that the class was finished, I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. I still have it around here somewhere. But the portfolio isn't the most important thing that I learned in that class. My professor, Peter Christopher, taught me a lot about myself and about life. He had a saying: "Go for the jugular!" It meant that if it wasn't painful to write about or it wasn't in some way riske, then you shouldn't write about it. He would be the kind of person that said that any story with a happy ending isn't finished yet. We talked about death, and we admitted to each other that the thought of death scared the shit out of us. He taught me to write a story with concrete life facts in it. He believed that if you told the truth, it was possible to raise the story into a myth. But above all, he loved a story that told the truth. He loved characters that truly lived.


I could end it on a happy note and tell you that I came out of the class with a B and all was fine with the world. The stars lined up, and the world didn't end. But that would be the same kind of story where no one dies and everyone lives happily ever after. And it would be a horrible thing for Peter Christopher to have to endure, wherever he is.


He died of liver cancer yesterday morning. He had only been undergoing chemotherapy since last week.He was 52. The world lost a great writer. However, to all of the writers out there, he had a message:


Go for the jugular.


Tell the truth.


Raise it to myth.


Live.