Roman Meshon, 1971-2007

On Monday, September 17, late in the afternoon, Japan time, my friend of 14 years died in a surfing accident. Roman was 36, recently re-married, and, after a series of adventures and misadventures, was running a rather successful English school in a rural part of Kochi, Japan.

I caught up with him near the beginning of my last trip back, during Yosakoi, a local festival. He told me he had volunteered to follow these beautiful dancers around and pick up the various pins and tchotchkes that fell out of their hair while they danced; it was classic Roman, one part generosity, one part lecherous con, and the girls loved him for it. We'd meant to get together again later in the trip, but, alas, he had to go get married in Hawaii. What are you gonna do?

Roman came to Kochi in July, 1994. He was already amazing at Japanese (he'd actually studied at Kansai GaiDai, the same school Yoko got her B.A. in English from), and it just kept getting better. Although his first year didn't work out that well, he came back the next year and got a job working for a local education office in Noichi. It was in Noichi that he discovered his two lifelong passions: the accordion and Chindon. Roman was so in love with Chindon that he often talked his friends (including me) into dressing up in clown costumes and drag and parading around in Chindon competitions across Shikoku, and he was quite often upset when our innovative performances lost out to more traditional (yet doubtlessly less talented) troupes. He was so infamous for tricking people into doing Chindon that his sales pitch ("We're having a party, it'll be great, everyone will be there, you'll love it!") became a sort of question/response chorus whenever any of the rest of us threw a party.

In 1998, Roman, along with our buddy Michael Kahn, organized a trip across the American Southwest for a bunch of farmers from Kagami Town (where Ro was living at the time) and Kagami Village (where Michael Kahn still lives), and he asked me to help chaperone ("It'll be great (true), everyone will be there (mostly farmers' wives in their 60s), you'll love it (true)!"). He was right; we had a blast, even when one old fellow (a farmer and former agronomist who had studied in Cuba for a couple of years in the late 60s) decided he didn't like the tour guide and decided to hike home... in the middle of Monument Valley... in August. It was on that same trip that I got to meet Steve and Nancy Meshon, Roman's parents, two lovely people.

I spoke to Steve this morning, when I found out, and he's taking the news about as well as anyone can take the news of the death of one's son.

It's too close. This has been hugely therapeutic, but it's still too close.

We miss you already, Roman. I'm listening to Polkacide as I write this, Ro, as I know you'd want me to, and then I'll play the Gogol Bordello you quoted in your last email to me, two weeks ago. And then I'll miss you some more.