This blog is a testament to friendship. My best friend, Sang-Yoon Lee, died on January 2, 2010. He was forty-three years old.

I met Sang when I was twenty-four. He was about to turn thirty. I had finally graduated from college. I wanted to go to graduate school, but I was convinced I was too stupid to be accepted. I was basically a drag to be around.

I was quiet and withdrawn, always scribbling in a journal, always trying to get some girl, any girl, to love me. I didn’t think anyone could love me. I was a piece of shit.

My father had drilled that into my head when I was a child. By the time I met the Korean guy everyone had told me about, I was sure that I would never publish anything. I was going to therapy twice a week, and taking a cocktail of medications.

Sang thought I was intelligent. He talked to me. He asked me loaded questions and used the Socratic method to draw me out.

Let me ask you this, Chuck: do you think there is any literature in the world that is beyond you? I mean, is there some book that you’re sure you couldn’t figure out?

No.

Aha! Then why the fuck do you think you’re too stupid for a graduate literature program?

I didn’t know. Why did I think that about myself?

The icy hell of my childhood trauma began to melt during hours of conversation with Sang.

My Dad used to hit me because I…

Dude, he was a fucking Ass Hole. Come On, Chuck, it can’t possibly be your fucking fault when someone else hits you. He hit you. It’s his fucking fault.

I know.

He would laugh, exhaling smoke, and raise his eyebrows.

I’m not sure you do know that, Dude. I think you actually believe that you’re worthless. And that’s just Fucked Up. Oh, and that’s your Ass Hole father’s fucking fault, too, the fact that you believe that about yourself. FUCK HIM! He used to emphasize the “fuck him” by waving his hands with his fingers splayed out. I can’t describe it. Words no good. You had to see it.

I would always laugh. It was a relieved laughter. I was relieved because he never saw me as a problem or a burden, no matter how depressed or anxious I got. He was dedicated to me—he once told me—because I was a victim. I wasn’t worthless. Someone broke me, and that fucking sucked, but I had to fix myself. He gave me a hand and a nudge when I needed. He never did anything for me. I wasn’t helpless. I just had to do something.

Sometimes, he slapped me down, the way a good brother sometimes has to. He slapped me down from my self-pity, my self-doubt, my worthlessness. He slapped me down from a bad marriage.

Sang always said he admired my will to survive anything—to not lose my wonder with the world. It’s wonder that we shared. We wondered at the universe, and creativity, and movies, and art. We wondered over women and our manhood and our relationships.

We had a deep faith in the healing power of conversation and telling stories. Sang called it “hard hanging”: sitting, getting wasted, wondering, and working out your thoughts—with a friend, your best-friend, preferably—for an entire weekend or longer, ideally.

This blog is my selfish attempt to keep my conversation with Sang growing and evolving. I will try to document everything I know about Sang-Yoon Lee. It’s going to take a long time. Please feel free to read along.

Thank you for reading this far.

Charles Bivona