Max Leavitt: May 29, 1978 - June 04, 2009

Max Leavitt was an attractive man.

He was also a Gemini, and the reason why every Gemini man I met after him got the stink eye.

(Back when I used to believe in astrology, that is.)

Max died on June 04, 2009.

You know, a few years ago, my friend Neil wrote something on an anniversary of 9/11 about how grossed out he felt by people fetishizing the terrorist attacks. I totally understood what he was saying. If I still lived in NYC, I likely wouldn't have talked about my feelings publicly at all on each anniversary because I would have been there, in Manhattan, going through a more intimate experience. It's because I moved from NYC to Los Angeles in late 2002 and felt separated from the heartbeat of the city that I felt the need to shout out my feelings. On the tenth anniversary, on September 11th, 2011, I wrote a blog here, and I think that will be the last time I do anything in a public forum other than post the Beastie Boys' "An Open Letter to NYC" from their album TO THE 5 BOROUGHS on social networking sites on an anniversary of 9/11 to express and honor my love of New York. I got it all out. 

Likewise, when people die, I get grossed out by the fetishizing of their lives and deaths. It's one thing to express sadness at the loss of a life, and to celebrate the memories we shared with those people while they were alive, but it's quite another thing to indulge in a narcissistic and psychologically disturbed cycle of obsessing about a person in a way that is actually more like a cry for attention from the living than a legitimate expression of genuine feelings that have anything to do with honoring the deceased.

Today marks three years having passed since Max died, and I had so hoped to be in New York yesterday, on June 3rd, for a fantastic event put together by former bandmates and friends of his in NYC: the 2nd Annual "Max Leavitt Tribute Show," to benefit the Nick Traina Foundation. I was not able to make it to the 212 (actually, the show was in the 718) for the tribute, so I am writing this blog from that same sense of separation that I felt as someone who experienced 9/11 anniversaries from afar, as a former New Yorker who had moved away; that is, I have not been able to be physically close to Max's other friends for a while, now, so I am writing this blog post to work through the thoughts and feelings that have me filled with the sensations of being distant, stifled, and stuck. I need to get it all out. 

I think I first met Max Leavitt at a party at my friend Jessica's apartment in Alphabet City in NYC in the 90s, hanging out on a deck where we all hung out for all of her parties. Max started talking to me about how well I wore my pants; they were skin-hugging, leather-looking polyurethane pants I had purchased from Patricia Fields (maybe...Miss Sixty brand). I wore them until they fell apart. I was also wearing my black platform knee-high boots, which I always wore, as they were heavy on my feet, gave me several inches of height, and made me feel like a warrior princess. I'm remembering that I was wearing a leopard print shirt of some sort that night, though that would generally be out of character for me. Maybe I'm making that up. We ended up leaving the party and going to SideWalk together. I'm remembering my sister being there. Maybe she wasn't. We drank Maker's Mark. Neat. We had a smoldering battle with every glance and word exchanged between us, as if we were two apex predators trying to establish alpha position within the pack. Which one of us was on top? I think we made out that night, walking around the East Village. Maybe we didn't. (I think we did.) I stood taller than Max in my boots. I guess that didn't bother me much. He was still beautiful. I remember a time that he was in my apartment on Tenth Street between First and A and came up behind me while I was doing dishes, barefoot, to kiss my neck. I remember him saying something that annoyed me while we were fooling around. I remember getting into an argument instead of continuing on with the hanky panky. 

I remember him being madly in love with our friend Jane. We did a production of ANGELS IN AMERICA together that Jane directed. He played Roy Cohn. I played Harper Pitt (and Martin Heller). We appreciated each other. I remember feeling flattered, honored, and surprised when he called me on the phone to ask if I would please be his Industry Night partner at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts upon graduation. I hadn't even been thinking about auditioning for Industry Night until that phone call. We were indeed accepted and did two scenes for agents and managers. I got in my own way. He didn't. Max once told me that I was the most talented actress he had ever met, but that I held myself back by being so overwhelmed with all of the possible ways of playing something that I never actually made any choices. He told me, "It's not that dramatic. It's just a choice. You have to stop making it such hard work for yourself." He was right.

I remember going with him to C-Squat to see a punk show. I remember sitting with him and his friend and bandmate Jason at a hookah bar in the East Village. I remember bumping into him unexpectedly on the street in NYC when I had taken my then-boyfriend James to the East Coast for his very first visit to Manhattan. (We lived in L.A. at the time. This would have been 2003 or 2004, I think.) I remember feeling so much energy between us that I felt a bit guilty and looked at James to see if he seemed bothered or jealous. Though James towered over Max in stature, I always felt Max's presence. I saw him as a pulsing ball of light and darkness. 

So many bits and pieces of memories made together in NYC, many of them hazy...

My memories of Max in Los Angeles are likewise hazy.

I think I saw him once when I was blonde, in Los Angeles, still dating James. He was with his friend Alana.

I shot headshots in 2007 in Los Angeles. I saw Max later that night at Bar Lubitsch. He talked to my then-boyfriend Perry about lifting weights and boxing. I remember feeling that familiar sensation, like we were sparring for the alpha position, even if we just exchanged a glance in silence. I once again wondered if my boyfriend would be bothered.

I argued with Max on the phone about substance use and abuse, and I got really angry after I shared those 2007 headshot session proofs with him because he told me that he didn't think Los Angeles was going to appreciate what I had to offer. I think I deleted him from my Facebook...before deleting my account altogether several more times after that like a lunatic. I remember that Max didn't feel he had been appreciated by Los Angeles. 

We made amends in July 2008, when I went to see him in his play MALA, which he had written, directed, and acted in. I remember crying, hugging him, telling him how incredibly talented I thought he was, and lamenting the fact that we had fallen out of touch. That time, I remember feeling more distant from him. I remember not feeling as if we were connected by that pulsing energy between our centers, anymore.

It made me sad.

Eerily, Max's next play was titled DEAD, THEREFORE I AM, in which Max was again the actor, director, and writer. That show went up in April 2009. I didn't see it. I should have.

In early June 2009, I received a phone call from my friend Jasmin, who broke the news to me that Max had died. I took it very hard. While on the phone with Jasmin, I remember feeling a sense of shock. It was later, when my neighbor Lindsay came up to my apartment to check on me after receiving a text message from me, explaining that I had just learned that an old friend had died, that I collapsed in her arms and sobbed in the hallway.

I felt angry, sad, and guilty.

I felt those same emotions when I attended a memorial held for Max in Los Angeles, at the Village Idiot.

I wondered why I hadn't spent more time with Max. I wondered why I had ever gotten angry at him, and why I had expressed such bad behavior at times that I had annihilated my bridges to people. I wondered why he had been such an arrogant fucking prick on occasion. I wondered why he hadn't ever gotten famous, why I wasn't yet famous, why we had never dated, why we had never had sex. I wondered why he hadn't asked me to act in his plays or sing with his bands. I wondered why I hadn't written my own plays or started my own bands. I wondered and wondered and wondered. I wore tight jeans, red stilettos, and a long-sleeved, button-up men's shirt tied up to show my stomach at the memorial because Max would have appreciated that sassy throwback to the first night we hung out.

And I drank some Maker's Mark. Neat.

Oh, Max...

I mean, seriously, just LOOK at Max's different facets in these old videos. He was humble and arrogant, easy to love and hate. He was soothing and annoying. He was an artist, an intellectual, an asshole, an angel, a devil, a playmate, an idiot. I wanted to hug him and punch him in the fucking face in equal parts most of the time.

Here's Hurry-Up Offense:

Here's Low End View:

I remember seeing both bands live.

...

A year later, in May 2010, I was hiking Runyan and stumbled upon this:

I paused atop the Canyon, wondering if anyone else up there knew how special this was.

I took a picture and still felt like it was all a hoax, that Max couldn't be dead. But he was.

...

This is an incredibly imperfect blog post. I'm almost embarrassed to post it, as it doesn't capture my feelings for Max as well as some of my other writing has captured my feelings and thoughts about various events and people over the years. But I'm putting it out there, anyway. As with most of my blog posts, I'll likely obsessively make a multitude of tiny changes to this post to improve it in the coming days. I'm currently looking for the video I think my parents have of our production of ANGELS IN AMERICA so I can post some footage of his acting. I remember him telling me, after the HBO version of ANGELS came out, that I was a better Harper Pitt than Mary Louise Parker. I remember telling him that he was a better Roy Cohn than Al Pacino. And that probably sounds fucking insane to you, but I knew that we both meant it. We had something strange between us, and to this day, I'm still not sure exactly what that was, but I know that it was real, complicated, and that we could have grown beyond it to become great friends in our 30s if only he had stuck around long enough for us to get to know each other. I still haven't been able to take his cell phone number out of the Contacts on my iPhone. I'm not sure I ever will. I like to happen upon it sometimes while looking for something else, so I can pause for a moment to reflect on how special he was.

The past two years have held such intense growth for me, as I moved back to Wisconsin in July 2010 to help my parents with some personal family matters. I got back to the root of the root, as E.E. Cummings might say. A particularly Max-worthy period of growth happened for me in April 2012, when I went on a Committed Impulse retreat with Josh Pais and 18 other artists in Tulum, Mexico. I thought of Max once or twice on the retreat.

I can say that, on this day, June 4th, 2012, the third anniversary of his death, I'm in a better position than ever to become the best artist, human, and woman that I can be, which I feel, deep down, is all Max ever wanted for and from me. His life and death both had an impact on how I developed as a person, and I will always feel blessed to have had the chance to know him. I just wish we could see each other again, right now. I want to kiss his face...

If you'd like to learn more about him, you can read his Death Notice or visit his Guest Book.

Ugh. Writing the words "death notice" just made me feel so gutted.

We miss you, Max.

PS, I am considering covering a few of his songs in the coming months, as my own personal tribute to him. If I do, I'll come back here to post them as updates. Thank you for reading.