I remember Lee Lipsenthal

I remem­ber Lee Lipsenthal insist­ing that I sample the crab in black bean sauce at Lin’s China Garden on Bayard Street, the unholy mess pro­duced by that meal not­with­stand­ing, because it was in fact the greatest dish ever devised by humans. I remem­ber him being correct.

I remem­ber hav­ing self­same meal with Lee, Ron G., and Steven K. shortly after that first time, and Steven’s stand­ard lit­any of com­plaints about his life as we all (except Lee) smoked post-dinner cigs and rolled our eyes. I remem­ber when the for­tune cook­ies came and Steven’s did­n’t have a for­tune in it, Lee’s high-pitched bray of a laugh, how it was even louder than my own. I remem­ber Steven insist­ing on get­ting anoth­er for­tune cook­ie, check­ing to make sure it had a for­tune in it. I remem­ber Lee’s laugh being even louder and high­er when the for­tune inside turned out to be blank. 

I remem­ber Lee say­ing “She does­n’t look like ‘Meryl Streep through a fog fil­ter,’ you idi­ot. What are you, fuck­ing high?”

I remem­ber trolling around the Village with Lee and Ron search­ing for a Japanese vinyl press­ing of Talking Heads’ Fear of Music, which press­ing Lee was con­vinced was going to provide a more sat­is­fy­ing son­ic exper­i­ence than the domest­ic ver­sion on Sire. It was a hot, sunny, beau­ti­ful sum­mer day. I remem­ber Lee very ser­i­ously inton­ing, “They say, anim­al no wolly. Rive on nuts and bellies.”

I remem­ber Lee’s German Shepherd who was named Junior Barnes, and how we some­times called him “Djuna Barnes.”

I remem­ber Lee driv­ing us out to Callahan’s in Fort Lee one even­ing to test my pro­pos­i­tion that the joint had the best french fries in the Western world. I remem­ber dur­ing a lull in the con­ver­sa­tion he just said “Steven” in a letter-perfect imper­son­a­tion of the lac­on­ic, vaguely con­temp­tu­ous tone of Steven’s fath­er. I remem­ber, after fin­ish­ing laugh­ing, think­ing that Lee was maybe the fun­ni­est per­son I had ever met, but that I would also have trouble con­vey­ing why this was the case to civilians.

I remem­ber Lee refer­ring to the Art Theater on 8^th Street as “the Art Bears Theater.”

I remem­ber Lee describ­ing the music playl­ist he had planned for his wait­ing room when he began his own private prac­tice. He had devised this great segue from Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks” into Public Image Ltd.‘s “Swan Lake.”

I remem­ber when Lee failed patient care, and a few of us drew some cor­res­pond­ences between that res­ult and the afore­men­tioned playl­ist idea.

I remem­ber hav­ing din­ner with Lee and Ron at the Brew and Burger (Burger and Brew?) in West Orange before driv­ing out to the city to see Pere Ubu at Irving Plaza and being kind of abashed, strangely, after recog­niz­ing three mem­bers of the Bay City Rollers din­ing in a nearby booth.

I remem­ber Lee unabashedly and joy­ously dan­cing with him­self to a Clash tune on the P.A. at Irving Plaza before Ubu came on. (I think it was “Train In Vain.” The Ubu show was part of the band’s Art of Walking tour.)

I remem­ber Lee telling me and Ron that his then-girlfriend Kathy had, pretty much right after meet­ing us, said “I can­’t marry you if these are your friends.”

I remem­ber Lee call­ing me a few years later, out of the blue, and explain­ing, “Kathy was say­ing that she was wor­ried about your per­son­al life.” Kathy had mar­ried him any­way, as it had happened.

Lee died yes­ter­day. Below is the YouTube trail­er for his forth­com­ing book, Enjoy Every Sandwich.