PHOTO ESSAY COMMEMORATING THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF SPILLING A BEER ON ROD SMITH.

How to make friends. Does anybody know? You hang out in the vicinity of others and trust to luck. You kick a pebble. The wind harries you thereafter; you suffer a windborne harry. Lesser hoodlums than you have achieved swifter triumphs in the quest for common fellowship. Vim, you have, and vigor; vim, you have, and vinegar. Someone invents beer. This helps. You walk toward a table where new acquaintances await your contribution to the daily topics—(1) Does everything suck or have we overlooked a key detail? (2) Just who the hell do people think they are? and (3) [censored]—that people bat-about in the ruckus of taverns. Only, you’re not in charge. The earth, in its subtle tectonic shifts, is in charge. The slope of the ill-paved concrete floor, is in charge. The rickety nature of the table, lacking some sort of basic buttress, is in charge. Internally, you blame these forces the moment your glass topples, heaving an impressive pond of house amber onto the seated figure of the fellow you know the least, Rod Smith. He’s cool; he lets it slide. The two of you get to be friends. The circle widens. He keeps talking about “Sonny” and “Bird”. (You say Sonny who? Sonny Criss, Sonny Stitt, Sonny Sharrock? because this aggravates him—there is Sonny and no greater Sonny!) He puts books into your hands and the hands of others. In time, he puts your books into the hands of others. He reads his nutty poems. He invites others to read their nutty poems. In time, you come to wildly believe in this nuttiness. You throw a pitcher of “American adjunct lager” onto a fellow sporting a suburban haircut in a billiards tavern, as Johnny Cash sings “Folsom Prison Blues” though a jukebox. The fellow topples off his barstool. You will not be friends with him! One night, Rod Smith drives you home, up hills, through a tough layer of ice and snow, while you’re shivering with the early stages of the flu. This is a car ride for which you will always be grateful. In time, you imitate Mike Tyson. (“Thnookid!”, you say.) In time, you imitate Theofanis Gekas (“MREAGH!” you say, after the missed penalty versus Costa Rica.) You now converse like “Up the Swans!” and “Roy Brown is the greatest jump musician” and “I think it’s gonna be Rory’s year on the links” and “I’d sure like to see Doug Lang and Tom Raworth give a reading.” You’re up on the roof of your building drinking a Heather Fuller Brewing Co. Ale out of mason jars with Rod Smith, A Righteous Fellow, but today let’s just say he’s one of the greatest poets the world will ever have the privilege to read, to hear, to appreciate. Do you know about this? He has a new book, TOUCHÉ, that you could order, dig, etc., fuff. Do you know about this? “Doot dew” goes the world. “Doot dew.”