Shai (in brown), at my 21st Birthday Party, 2007.Shai, you know what? I don’t know if you’re up there in heaven. You might be up in the orbiting VALIS. Chances are you’re stone dead. Even then, I'm not sure. Honest to God, I don’t. When your service concluded on Sunday, I half expected you to creep out from behind a headstone, shout “Ha! Fooled you!” and go into fits of laughter, as only you could. You never half laughed. It was all or nothing with you.
When I told friends and family about you, they didn’t believe you were even real. I mean, what kind Jew is smart enough to convince a neo-Nazi to date him? “I confirmed all her suspicions,” he said once. “We ran out of money and I said, ‘It’s OK, I’ll just give the bank teller my Jew Number and he’ll give me all the cash I want.” I think being so absurd was your specialty. Like Phil Dick said, "the only appropriate response to reality is to go insane." You took that to heart, I think.
You were the only bloke who made me feel like a complete fucking moron sometimes. I wish I told you this more often, but when I start a list of great thinkers; Hitchens, Dawkins, Feynman – I’d whisper “Marom” somewhere towards the top. You had a towering intellect, a boundless imagination. Who else wrote a complete theory on reality in their spare time? No one that I know. No one that anyone knows.
Even then, you never ever talked down to anyone. When I was struggling in maths (which you called “math”) you took time out of your day to help me, going to the State Library with me. I didn’t know this then, but I do know now – you were struggling with Crohn’s disease. My God, if I only knew.
When I’d heard you’d moved to Brisbane – Russell Island, or “Dole Island” – it was another one of your social experiments. Thinking about stuff never quite cut it for you. You had to experience, observe, explore. The more complicated, the better. I thought it my duty to cut across the highway, two or so hours to get there, just to have an hour-long conversation. I would have done it again in a heartbeat.
Now you’re gone. Even though in your own quantum entangled reality, you might not be. You could be both, neither, all at the same time. You’ve outsmarted me, even in death. You son of a bitch. I could not have felt more honoured to be your friend Shai. Rest easy.
In Memoriam - Shai Yassi Marom (October 11, 1986 - December 9, 2017)
