Frankie d’Mango

I had met you twice.

The first time was at approximately 2:30 am, and Scottie, James, the bouncer from Gaslite, and some lady I didn’t know all piled into a car after singing karaoke all night, fueled by communal popcorn (this was the way-before times) and many, many PBR tall boys. I vaguely remember being like yo Scottie it’s pretty late, maybe we shouldn’t bother your buddy? And he was like NAWW! Chef had a dinner tonight. He’s up. And then I think someone climbed the wall? And then you let us in. It’s all pretty foggy but I remember sitting in your garden laughing with everyone, and then at some point it was just you, me, and Scottie. You fed us little samples of your “tasting menu” from the plastic containers I would come to know very well in the years to follow. I had never tasted flavors like that before. I have no idea what it was. The three of us laughed and sang til dawn.

There was only one more time that I’d ever met you, and it was another after-after party commandeered by Scottie. All I remember is that you were so gracious and seemed genuinely happy that we’d arrived. I’d learn soon that you’d only have finished the one-man cleanup of your gourmet six-course dinners a few minutes before we arrived. Your work was always like three full time jobs, which you almost always took on by yourself.

You had a way.

Fast forward a couple months. I’d been on a big shoot in Mammoth all week, and production had put me up in this gorgeous condo with the most insane views, and I had fires in the fireplace every night, and the last night, right after I wrapped, it snowed. My first California snow. The whole thing was so splendid. Transcendent. The notebook I brought there has permanently wavy pages from my happy tears. I was all hashtag gratitude and life was like soak it in buddy, we got some jokes for you back in Hollywood. But I soaked it in, sending Scottie all the pictures. We were all like YASS!

The next day on that beautiful drive back from the mountains, my roommate called. Frenchie’s getting deported. We’re moving out. Wanna take over the lease and find three people to move in? By next week? Wait, what?

I told Scottie what was up, and asked him to put out the word to anyone who might have a vacancy by the end of that week. Got home and just passed out.

Scottie sent me a text the next morning, as I woke up in my beautiful graffiti-desecrated Hollywood Spanish arched suite with the private balcony: “I mentioned your situation to Chef last night. He said to give him a call.”

I called you and was like uhh yo, Scottie said you knew of a place for rent, like this week? Ahh this is so weird, I’m sorry to even call…You were like nah that’s Hollywood. I’ll help you. I have an extra room in Venice where you can stay until you find a place. Come check it out. I’m here all afternoon.

I was walking across Highland on Sunset. I kind of couldn’t believe it, and I was really humiliated to have thought I was so on top of the game all week, just to now be asking someone I barely knew to rent their spare room. But I literally had no other viable options, so I swallowed my pride and drove to Venice. Feeling like a dunce and a loser and awkward and ahhh just so, so embarrassed.

That room was your office. And you had a lot of stuff in there, and a pretty specific way it was all organized. Everything in your life, the way you set it all up, was so specific. Charlie would have talked about your “systems” and lauded them. Still, you said hey man, any friend of Scottie’s is a friend of mine. You can at least have somewhere to go for as long as it takes to sign a new lease. Bring your shit here. I’ll rearrange my stuff. We’ll figure it out.

You rented me that room for months.

You were a lifesaver. And then we became best friends. Started singing (LOUDLY) every night on Broadway. I’d sneak out past your crystal meditation in the mornings, trying and probably failing not to disturb you. But you were so cool about it. You said you were surprised that you liked having a roommate, because you’d sworn you never wanted one again. You said you loved the music. You let me decorate your garden with my little solar lanterns. I started helping with the billion-candle-lighting for your dinners. Usually just the little tea lights on the path from the back door out to the garden. The rest of it was all on your timing that only you could know. Then I’d scram til you texted saying let’s listen to music as I clean up the yard. And we’d sit outside for hours and talk about the universe.

So many life-changing discussions happened in the Bull&Dragon garden in that still hour of the night. It was holy.

Even after I moved into my new place, I would bike down Lake Street, across Lincoln, past the park, past that haunted place where your ancestors lived, to your bungalow on Broadway, all the time. Like multiple days of each week. Anytime one of us finished work before dusk, we’d text SUNSET (reply: YUP) and then meet up to bike to the beach.

I remember that some days when I got sad that second summer in California I came over to your Broadway house and just wrote in my notebook while you cooked and listened to KCRW (which, in case I haven’t mentioned, you had blaring from the stereo at least 20 hours a day. It went from mildly irksome to absolutely essential in a matter of weeks). We’d become pretty quick experts in parallel play. We were like little kid best friends, where everybody just does what their soul’s saying to them and everybody honors whatever that is. And then at some point, hours later, we’d be like OH YO WHAT’S UP FRANK and you’d be like MANGO!!!! And then we’d start the jam, or the bike ride, or the Nina Simone documentary.

You convinced me to go to my first political rally. 2015. Somewhere between Long Beach and Anaheim. Some sort of outdoor sports stadium. Bernie. Dude, that shit was magic. I’d never had an experience even close to that level of mind-blowing. Every single demographic I could possibly imagine was there, and then some. It was fucking nuts. It was LIT. I was like holy shit this is our next president! It was something you had inherited, the political activist gene, that proclivity; you talked all the time about your grandmother’s barrier-breaking firsts in the California Democratic Party. That badassery, that understanding of what was right, the love in action. Always in action.

That rally was incredible. I’ve never had an experience like that before or since. It was like a concert, the galvanizing of the truth and the intensity of feeling and the right thing to do and the power in numbers. Damn dude we HOWLED with that crowd. I’m pretty sure we ate carnival concessions too. Like bullshit hot dogs, and you gave me shit about Diet Pepsi…which you always did…The whole thing was something I’m not sure I’d have ever done if you’d not been my best friend and roommate—nowhere to run. On the way down the 405, I was uncomfortable and nervous and regretting agreeing to it. Kept being like oh God. This is not a group where I’m accepted or deserve to be or belong. (Cue Robin Williams as the Genie in a quick pretend game show, big hockey buzzer, WRONG!) On the way back it was like we were on fire. I was like holy shit dude, THIS is America. Let’s fucking GO.

I can’t believe Bernie outlived you.

One day maybe four years ago, I sent you the new Wood Brothers album. That weekend, we sang and danced to that shit over and over. We investigated and discovered all these deep cuts online and just played those videos over and over and over. We found everything. We always went back to that beautiful room, just the three of them, live, singing into one mic, somewhere in Portland. Brilliant. They sounded best there, we agreed. It was so much fun to get super into that band at the same time. Happiness shared multiplies. I don’t know what happens now.

Anyway so we started watching all that shit and playing it when you were in my car and everywhere all the time, beach sunset rides, everywhere. And one night you started saying shit about that one song, how you want me to play it at your funeral. And I was like shut the fuck up dude, no funerals. No funerals. It’ll be so long away that you should put that in some writing for your descendants to find when you’re old and grey. But you were adamant about it. I think I have a recording of you from a couple years later, at the other house, actually saying that. I think I remember you asked me to document that. And you started the song again. And you sang

Bet your heart was an ice cube last night
Just chilling your whiskey blood
Putting your mind way out of sight, but that’s okay
You got a smoke ring halo
That just won’t blow away

I heard today, you had to go
I guess we all get carried away
You’re just the same with a cigarette jones
But that’s okay
You got a smoke ring halo
Just won’t go away

And you deserve better
And that’s all I know
And I just hope they get it right
In that place that you’re going
It used to be covered
In a circle of gold
Don’t you let some angel throw away
Your smoke ring
Halo

We’re all gonna miss you blowing your horn
And showing us your busted heart
Blow so hard, your lips are torn,
But that’s a way
You got a smoke ring halo
Just won’t go away

You got a smoke ring halo
Just won’t blow away

You got a smoke ring halo
Just won’t blow away

The last day I saw you, we excitedly compared notes on the new Morning Becomes Eclectic DJ duo. We both said at the same time Anthony Valadez and Novena Carmel!!! So good!!! And I was like they’re sooo much better than Ann Litt! And you kind of softly defended her, but acknowledged that this lineup rocked. And then you walked away and then stopped and turned around with your bout-to-crack-a-smile seriousish face and you said omg and mango the WEATHER!!! And we both died laughing doing shitty imitations of David Lynch’s creepy confusing tremendously uncomfortable weather reports in slow motion 🤣

You are inextricable from California sunsets, forever. You schooled me on them.

One late summer day, right around this time, we were sitting on your front stoop as the light began to change. I said to you that I felt a little sad that the golden sky was ending. That I loved the California summer sunsets, so lazily lingering in flaxen hues, bathing the world in this delicious comforting cast. Shadows were godlike and day turned to night so very gently. I was going to miss that. Your response was immediate:

“Yeah but Mango! It’s about to be sunset season!”

One of the very next nights we hung out at the Broadway house at dusk that year, the sky suddenly got fucking DANK. It was extraordinary. Deep intense magenta and gold with blue gray streaks pebbling on the borders and this golden orange copper rose red insanity ahead. I ran down out of your front gate to take a picture, and caught the sky and its reflection in a car mirror out front. I was STOKED and ran back to show it to you. You were like YASSS and I was like ok I’m gonna make you a tiny canvas print of this for your wall (you’d generously let me help you decorate a couple of your blank walls) and you were like NOICE and when it arrived from the printer I was so disappointed and ashamed at how underwhelming and…not like the real thing it was. Just sucked. Just so close in remembering feeling to getting the Paris sunset from Centre Georges Pompidou print enlargement back and after having hyped it up to Charlie, having to show him the weak print. Both sucked. Both of you dead best friends were insanely gracious and kind. I think I asked you to trash it, and then maybe I got so sorry that I did trash it? I don’t remember. I do remember that I felt safe with you. I felt safe to attempt to shine. I felt safe to fall on my ass, which I did, most of the time. I felt safe to create and strive, to try. I knew you knew I could make something beautiful. That’s why I wanted to show you those things, and why I felt wrong and sad when I didn’t quite land the triple lutz. All those times. Still the constant was that I felt seen. You did see me. I saw you too. I know you knew that.

Your handwriting, spelling, and grammar all kinda sucked. But it was almost as if your message had to be filtered through those cracked lenses so that it wasn’t God or the sun directly into our eyes. The world was not quite yet ready for you, but you’d been helping it prepare. I was fucking ready. You’d say something profound, and I’d be like PLEASE WRITE THAT DOWN! And you’d ask where? And then we’d laugh and say in unison: THE JEFF CURTIS PAPER! Here’s one.

I went down to San Pedro to see Scottie last weekend. I kept feeling like you were gonna be there, like you were about to come around the corner cracking up shouting MANGO!

We traded stories, origin stories, stories from before I knew you, Scottie’s side of the infamous cross-country road trip you always talked about. I wanted you to be there challenging his details and laughing about the insanity of that whole journey with the trailer on those mountain passes.

I cried so hard when Scottie out of nowhere mentioned how you told him about the times I cooked for you, and how much you enjoyed it. I mean, you were nice to my face, but I was actively panicked. Who the hell cooks for a chef? This clown right here. Panicked. Apologized hundreds of times. But I remember that first dinner I made you, when you went back for seconds and then THIRDS and I might have cried a little then too. Your approval meant everything. Literally, dude, and you knew that. There was no higher praise I could have received. Scottie kept talking about how your favorite thing of mine was something I made for you guys one morning, some breakfast item, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Thanks for letting me do that when you did. It was empowering. I was like, I’m not a fancy qualified cooking person but I really like these flavors a lot and I like making stuff with them; do you like them? And you weren’t a ham sandwich about it and you didn’t lie, and it was very validating.

The last time I saw you, it had been a long time. I can still remember sitting in my car in Santa Monica talking to you that morning, and being like ok nifty thanks for the invite! I’m scared of the desert tho! And obviously it wasn’t just the desert but everybody had been reconnecting with you, and Rosco had sent me that hilarious video of him hosting and you narrating as you reduced your sauce in your new kitchen, explaining your process of braising beef. And we had not spoken in so long since that last time I had been so broken and Jon had just died and then you just said the wrong words at the wrong time, and it’s nobody’s fault, because everything was insane, and our policy forever had always been complete honesty, and that was something I was grateful for but could not handle at that moment in my horror and grief, in the terrifying context of 2020, and we parted ways and did not speak for a long time.

But this time I had already begun a new conversation by way of birthday greetings in May; bygones being bygones by my declaration. That’s enough time without your best friend, right? We both tacitly agreed and had kept in touch since that day. I had just wrapped my big 2021 project, and you hit me up again reminding me that I was welcome in Mojave any time, and that you had a four-day weekend starting that day, and you were like Mango it’s cool, there’s a dog here and we should sing, take off in the next couple hours and it’ll only take ninety minutes. Stop at the last grocery store and get ingredients for taco time or meat dump pasta. (I got both🤪)

I always loved that you used my vernacular for that particularly exquisite dish. Holy Moses, those flavors. Meat dump pasta it was. Happiest face emoji.

I was so glad that I had made the drive as soon as I arrived, and that whole afternoon, and the next day as I was leaving. And when I got back to LA. And now.

I guess maybe more now. A lot more now.

You should have gotten more time, maybe more than all of us. You were supposed to be here for so much longer. You were the future of food. You were the poetic and scientific link between and among myriad seemingly diametrically opposed things. But you knew. You had a vision no one else could see. It propelled you. You were showing the whole world the way.

This is the first month of all the rest of the months forever that you won’t be here. I’m still in shock. I know you’ll forgive my writing. You always know what I mean. I guess I have to take your old advice and trust that you know it still.

If heaven exists, Charlie’s been waiting to meet you. He’ll know how to find you (gingers, as you always said, are a special breed). By now you’ve probably started playing in the band with Hendrix and Coltrane and all your favorite people from forever. I bet Charles deduced that perhaps you’d enjoy drumming, and the lessons have already happened, and you’re now an expert. I bet that’s how it goes up there.

Say hi to everybody for me. Give my brother a big hug. I’ll give your brother one too. I’ll love that reunion day, all of us, one day, some day. I love that day already. You’ll be cooking for God, but he’ll understand. I’m sure you already are. You always were.

They only made one of you, dude, which is some bullshit. Because now there’s none of you. I’ve been crying for four weeks listening back to our last recordings. You said so many beautiful things on those tapes. About song, about purpose and faith and how much you admire your little brother. And your dad. And all your proud Uncle Aaron stories you told so happily, emphatically, gratefully, that first afternoon. You were different that day. Maybe it was just that we were in the desert, Mango’s certified forever scary place, but I don’t think it was all in my head. There was something else. Another rumbling. I thought it was good. I thought you were lowkey thrilled about reconnecting with Hillary. I was thrilled for you. You’d just seen Scottie and Rosco, too. You had the new partnership with the tribe. Fucking saving the planet, doing God’s work, as you do. I thought it was finally turning your way. Finally! It was your turn now. Did I get that all wrong? Really? Frank what the hell happened?

Your dad doesn’t get it, I guess. He’s on your side when you aren’t here to tell him we’re all on the same side. And I also know that sometimes it’s helpful to have some enemy in the early days, some target for anger, because at least that’s something we understand. I get it. I’ve done it. I’ll be that if he needs. But just between you and me, I still love your dad, and I always will. He made you.

Your entire process, vocation, creation, from pasture and garden to plating and playlist was a meditation and a benediction. You blessed us with the end product by blessing the entire process. You had hands on the entire thing. You took all of that on. Nothing existed before you began. “From scratch” had an entirely new meaning in your kitchen. It was insane. It was maddening. It was impossible. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful. It was only you.

You made California feel like home, when everything was in flux and I was still fresh out the east coast in a dusty CR-V, a little disoriented. You created a safe place for me to land, somewhere to find my bearings. And then forever after. Our friendship was home.

You weren’t weird about Charlie. You always invoked him, and it felt like we were all together, just a little bit, sometimes. A lot of times. Anytime he came up, you wanted to hear the story. You heard me. You felt him. We all got to be together on so many of those long sunset porch nights that morphed into impromptu bike excursions, into karaoke and late-night snacks and tarot card readings and The Alchemist and Tiny Beautiful Things and Walden and Letters to a Young Poet and The End of the Tour and Mrs. Maisel and Barry and The Defiant Ones and Dead Poets Society and No Reservations and Wood Bros. and Lone Bellow and Alabama Shakes and Toots and the Maytals and falling on the floor laughing dancing singing Bla-Bla-Bla. And “Mango, go to dance. You’re so much clearer when you’re dancing.” And Tennessee Whiskey lessons on the Fender app, passing the busted-up, sand-filled hummingbird back and forth. And putting your brother on speakerphone so many nights, just to shoot the shit. It stung, and it comforted me. You showed me that it was not either my brother or yours; it was both of them. You’d always quote Charlie completely randomly and completely on time—“WHAT ELSE?!”

Seth showed up as I brought Moon back from LAX for March 17 and he popped up from the backyard table and said HI! I’M FRANK JUNIOR! I stood at the back door and was like what? Oh WHAT?! Then we all bust out laughing. It was inclusive. You included me. You let me share. It changed everything. Home changes everything.

Il est devenu ange, avant que la reste, et moi, la ville, le monde. Qui sait quoi d’autre? Maintenant, jamais. Rien. Il est disparu de mon œil; à Dieu je dis: va te faire foutre.

Je suis tellement confuse, et fâchée, et triste. Où es-tu, mon meilleur ami?

I will always be grateful for your friendship that felt like family, real family, chosen family. You singlehandedly made California feel like my home. Our 2014 alt-rock acoustic duo Frankie d’Mango had no hits, but it changed my life. You changed my life, dude, and what little comfort I can find right now comes from knowing that you knew that. I have more stories to tell. The world needs to know you. I will tell them. I will celebrate you. I can’t believe you are gone. I can’t believe you are gone.

I love you, Frank.

Love,
Mango