Recollections and Tribute

Chris Gibson was found dead in a creek last night in Cayucos (July 27, 2005) from causes yet to be determined. The news was referred to me by email two or three hours ago.

I first met Chris Gibson at Barnes & Noble, not long after I started work there in the summer of 1996 as a bookseller. I got to know him a lot better after I moved to the café. I didn't think he liked me very much at first, perhaps he thought I was part of the "management elite." It was odd, really, before I knew his last name I was taking Piglet home to dogsit while Chris tried to figure out what to do with his life. He was eternally figuring things out. In the time I knew him, he hatched twenty plans or more that were going to give him the freedom to do what he wanted. I last saw him in front of Uptown Espresso smoking a cigarette at one of the tables. We smiled and waved. He wasn't there when I got up to leave.

"Gibby." That's what Leah called him. Leah was the most easygoing café worker of all time, in my opinion. She got married to a wonderful guy and moved to San Diego. Chris would chime back with his unforgettable, somewhat toothless grin, "Yes, snooky?" He fixed up an old bike for her in exchange for the leftover food we stuck in clean paper bags each evening next to the trash dump behind the store. Otherwise, he lived on chocolate bars and cigarettes. He always asked for a Venti decaf for the price of a refill. He never missed an opportunity to press his luck. He could eat chocolate all day, but for some reason, the caffeine in the coffee tampered with his system. I gave him all I could. His demeanor was infectious. His stories were worth every penny of the twenties he "borrowed" from me. I took it as a personal slight the day I heard he was no longer welcome in the store. (It was a long and greatly exaggerated story.) He played a major role in the daily workings of Barnes & Noble as far as I was concerned. As annoying as he sometimes was, he broke up the monotony of people wanting drinks they couldn't pronounce, or books they couldn't remember, with his recycled jokes and philosophical disquisitions. He sometimes educated us, if he was in the mood to do so. He was smarmy and bright, a contradiction that towered over the customers, appearing and disappearing at will. I think he knew far more about things than he ever let on.

When I was at the height (or depth) of my psychotic break, Chris sat down with me in front of the Wells Fargo Bank on Marsh Street around midnight one troubling night and wrote the passage pictured above in my tiny Moleskin Journal. I was "seeing signs" everywhere—more than I could handle—and I asked him what gematria meant. He explained it to me very slowly, very carefully, and wrote his phone number at the top of the page, telling me to call if I felt like talking. The pipes have something to do with how Bach secretly signed many of his works. He absent-mindedly sketched out the picture of the pipes from memory as we talked. It is a sample of the kinds of things he carried around in his head. I never called, though time after time there was no one in the world I wanted more to talk with than Chris Gibson. In his calm, baritone voice, he assured me that in the end, everything was going to work out. His words helped me get through some extremely dark times. A few days after the Wells Fargo incident, we stood in the rain and watched the Mardi Gras Parade together, collecting necklaces and hoping for flashes of white titties. Half way through, he decided to go in. I think it was just too wet for him. I bought coffee for me and a decaf Venti for him. At the time I thought I was Mary Magdalene or Jesus Christ. Obviously, I had not yet worked out all the details. Chris treated me with appropriate respect, but added, "Look Amie, if you're the next Jesus, won't a lot of people want to kill you?" I looked him in the eyes and said, "Isn't that why you're here, to protect me?" He laughed and said, "C'mon Mary, let's get some more coffee." I blessed him that afternoon with a hot, full-priced cinnamon scone.

He also knew that I was hellbent on meeting Steve Martin at the time, and maybe just a little bit even as I write this. He told me about the time he saw Steve in front of the Old Country Deli, back when they were filming My Blue Heaven. He said he was wearing a fancy sweater, and that his silver hair shone in the sunlight. He also said he suspected the guy was an asshole, and that if I had to meet someone, I'd be better off meeting Jack La Lane. Jack La Lane, by the way, is a famous body builder, now in his nineties, who lives just down the road in Morro Bay. Chris had a way of putting his own spin on things.

On Jameson's last day at work—he's now attending The New England Conservatory of Music—Chris walked up to him with a small stack of books in his outstretched arms. "These," he emphatically pointed out, "are absolutely necessary for any budding intellectual's library." Jameson didn't quite know what to say or do. After a pause, he said, "I really don't have the money to buy a lot of books right now." "Just walk out the store with them," he prompted. "Nobody will notice." Several more times during the night he came up to him with more and more books. Wittgenstein, History, Music... Jameson stacked the books one pile at a time in the back room. By the end of his shift, the tower of absolutely necessary reading was over four feet tall. "Just take them," he repeated. "Nobody will notice." When Chris saw the hesitation on Jameson's part, he said more sternly, "These books will change your life. Just do it."

For the record, Jameson did not take the books. I imagine, however, that he now wishes he had taken the time to write down the titles.

Today, my mind is filled with memories of Chris Gibson. I don't see signs quite like I used to. Looking at the pages from my Moleskin, however, I can't help but notice that his fours look a lot like the alchemical symbol for Jupiter and tin... I don't think we all realize just yet how much we are going to miss him.

posted by Amie Barnett | Thursday, July 28, 2005