people who died in 1983
These are some stories about people who died in 1983
On the
surface the “People who died in 1983” stories are simple. They are stories about people who died in
1983. People who died in other years
will just have to wait until the Best American Series puts out a book in their
year. Still, people have asked, “Why
1983?” That’s a little more complicated,
but if I want to make it as simple as possible I’ll just be honest and say it
came down to me having a pretty big ego.
You see
I was born in the last days of 1983. I
was one of its last creations. After a
year of heartache and deaths it seemed like 1983 could care less about the
trouble of another human. I came out a
half finished product on the 343rd day of 1983. I should have been a model of perfection, but
after a long life ‘83 was burnt out and just wanted to move on to what was
next. And twelve days later just like
all the other years, except those odd years who wait an extra day, ’83 quietly
blew itself out and gave way to new year.
So, as
much as it is about the people who died in ’83 and about the people writing
about those deaths, it is also a little about me. You could say I’m curious. I’ve wondering vaguely about reincarnation
over the years and I’ve come to the conclusion that if it exists it will take
place in the following fashion, a person dies then a few days, weeks, months
later they are brought back to life in a new birth. Not a profound thought by any means, but one
that you can’t help wonder about.
Before
I ramble on too long, let me just say there’s bound to be a lot of good writing
taking place on the topic of 1983 from a wide variety of people. I hope I haven’t ruined anything with my
confessions. I made them with the best
intentions in mind. I will now step
aside and hopefully let you enjoy all the writings that will take place.
-Mark Baumer
Georges Auric (1899 – 1983) by Jimmy Chen

First the quarter notes began looking like leeches; then the
half notes began looking like sperm. It was official: Audrey Hepburn had drove
me mad. Every time a film of hers came out, she fucked the score’s composer.
Our ‘Roman Holiday’ didn’t take place in Rome, but in my apartment in Paris.
Our affair, if you will let me call it that, lasted only four days. She etched
her fingernails into my back forever.
Richard Gilbert “Dick” Emery (19 February 1915 – 2 January 1983) by Steve Finbow

I am haunted. Haunted by Dick. He comes to me in my sleep –
denim jacket, jeans, Doc Martens, and then platform shoes, flowery dress,
feather boa, with dog collar, with tortoiseshell, wire-rimmed, and aviator
glasses, handbag, bow tie, and wig. He comes to me at night from deep in the
closet, runs his hands over my hair, my ears, pinches my nose, I open my mouth
and in he sweeps, present, presence, and he speaks Enochian. This is what he
says:
Death List For February by Shane Jones

February 4 –
Karen Carpenter listening to the doctor telling her that she’s on her death
bed. Karen Carpenter wanting to die
playing the drums. The doctor thinking
for a minute and saying he prefers a singing Karen Carpenter to a drumming one.
My arms, says Karen Carpenter, are thin as drumsticks. Karen Carpenter imagining attacking the
doctor with her arms.
Bill Fury dead in '83 by Terrence Doyle

I was born exactly two years after Bill Fury, an actor whom
I've never heard of, died of heart failure at the age of 42. January 28, 1983—Bill Fury is watering
plants, or eating a sandwich, or making freshly squeezed orange juice or
lemonade. Something with citrus, surely. He takes a sip, chokes down a seed or
two, and smiles.
All the Sounds of Earth by Andy Riverbed

Listen or watch Andy Riverbed read this story
At the age of twelve,
Maxie Anderson wrote a letter to the president of Frito Lay. It read as
follows:
April
20, 1946
UNKNOWN MAN by Willie Smith

Dayno first died that afternoon in October
of 1983, at age twenty-nine, down in the belly of a container ship. He grew
dizzy, extremities chilled, felt his heart pounding around “like a sack of wet
cement inside a Maytag,” as he put it when I visited him two days later at
University Hospital, after the triple bypass and the diagnosis.
Alexander Fu Sheng Died in 1983
"Where is the body?"
"I told you already, I don't know. I was at home with my wife!" interjected the visibly irritated Alexander Fu Sheng, or "Alex," as Jenny, with whom he had in fact been (at home), called him during their infrequent and often disappointingly succinct sexual interactions.
He pictured his young, Canto-pop-star wife waiting for him by their artificial fireplace, slowly sipping a raspberry martini. She's not the one in that picture up there, by the way: that's some lady who was in a 1970's martial-arts film with Alex.
The man who was asking the questions was leaning over him. The other man was sitting in the corner, at a sturdy wooden desk, rifling through some files. Alex wasn't handcuffed. These smug mother-fuckers had no idea what he could do to them.
"Listen Fu Sheng, there are pictures from yesterday morning of you at the scene of the crime. Besides, your fingerprints are all over the murder weapon."
Alex knew they couldn't prove anything. He hadn't broken a single law since coming to the States. That was the life he'd left behind. They didn't have shit on him, and we both knew it.
Oh, I'm sorry. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jerry. I'm a benign tumor that Alex found behind his left ear about seven months ago. This story becomes more about me a little later. Don't worry, I'll get to that part eventually. Anyway:
"I've never been arrested before. You don't even have my prints on file," responded Alex, coolly.
"Hey Larry, he's pretty sharp." Said the man at the desk. Smoke from the neglected cigarette pinched between the second knuckles of his index and middle fingers curled in thin wisps toward the small vent near the ceiling above his desk. "Remember when you moved here, Al? Remember all that boring paperwork? Remember when they took your prints then?"
"Shut up, Morris! They don't take fingerprints when people immigrate here," shot Larry.
"I think you mean 'emigrate,' don't you?"
"I'm not sure. I always forget which means coming and which means going."
"It doesn't help that the migrant is always technically both. You know, because he's got to leave one country to go to another. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah. Hey Alex, how's your English?"
"Pretty good, why?" Alex didn't know what these idiots were jabbering on about. His English was superb. He knew that Larry was right the first time. He clearly said "immigrate here." There was nothing to debate. These guys were idiots, any half-brain could figure that out.
"Well, Morris and I were just wondering, when you came here, did you immigrate or did you emigrate?"
"Both."
"Tryin' to be a smart guy, you chink piece of shit?" Larry's closed fist swiped at where Alex's face should have been, but the martial-artist and film star, was waiting for just this sort of thing to happen. Alex ducked the blow and shifted forward in his chair, simultaneously grabbing the pistol from Larry's shoulder holster and stomping on the bridge of his right foot, shattering bone. Morris stood up quickly fumbling for his gun, but Alex elbowed him in the face, knocking him out cold. He jumped and gripped an exposed pipe, from which he hung momentarily before fluidly kicking the cover from the vent and disappearing into the police-station's climate control ducts.
Once outside, Alex sprinted toward the alley behind the station and dove into a dumpster just as a throng of uniformed police officers burst from the building's doors and ran toward the street. They piled into their squad-cars and screeched off into the night. Alex waited a few minutes before slowly climbing from his odorous hideaway. He cautiously made his way toward a nightclub a few blocks away. When he arrived, he muttered something to the doorman who went inside and promptly returned with a set of car keys. Alex thanked him and darted behind the building where a cherry red Porsche 911 Targa was parked. He opened the driver-side door and found himself face to face with his evil twin brother, James Fu Sheng.
Alex and James had once been competing heirs to their father Winslow Fu Sheng's underworld empire in Hong Kong. After accidentally blinding an innocent karaoke singer during a botched armed robbery of a discotheque, Alex vowed to turn his life around, pursuing his childhood dream of becoming a C-list martial-arts film star.
Here he found himself, face to face with the life he had managed to avoid for nearly fifteen years.
"Heard you beat up some cops tonight," said James, casually.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Waiting for you, dummy."
"Here in LA, not in my car."
"Oh, you know, the usual: crime, drug trafficking, the illegal procuring of priceless ethnically-relevant artifacts, murder. So, how have you been?"
"Good, good. Hey listen, would you mind driving? I have a headache."
"No that's fine."
The two got out of the car, switched places, and James started the engine. Alex threw the loaded pistol into his brother's lap, and the two shared a good belly laugh. As James drove the high-performance european sports car down a winding ocean road toward Alex's modestly-sized (but nevertheless quite expensive) home, Alex drifted into a peaceful slumber, thinking all the while about how simultaneously bizarre and enjoyable his legal mishap and fraternal reunion had been.
I did not fall asleep, for I was suspicious of James and his unannounced return. I had concocted a relatively plausible scenario in which James had come to LA for some criminal reason, been photographed somewhere, killed someone, and the local police had mistaken him for his brother. After several months of existence attached to Alex's nervous system, I had been growing restless and longed more than anything to be set free. I generally occupied my time analyzing Alex's life and picturing his attractive wife naked. Tonight, however, my thoughts were on James and the potential legal trouble, about which Alex didn't seem very concerned. The one thing I couldn't piece together was how James had gotten into Alex's locked Porsche. I supposed that it might have been left unlocked and he had locked it from the inside. Perhaps he had picked the lock. Or, perhaps he had posed as Alex and retrieved the keys from the nightclub doorman, left the door open and returned them, and then locked the doors from the inside.
Suddenly, James lost control of the vehicle and it careened toward a brick wall. I'm not quite sure what happened to Alex or James, but in the jolt of the crash, I was separated from Alex and I floated into the ether, free at last from my tumorous prison. I now roam the universe performing simple magic tricks for the children of stars.
silence in the key of gloria swanson by kenneth mulvey
false refugee mia crumbled ghetto packs suitcase to ak-47
tune in vagabond panties leaking spunk upon ossified ancestors but with
the few things she keeps, a plastic idol,
Joan Miro. Artist by Sean Ruane

Months
later he crept from the birthing duct of a gang-banged muse, fully formed, suit
and tie, cold sore, burning and corkscrewing shut the eyes of convention with
the mad idiot sunlight of his own ape-shit grin. His first act was to hold out
a thumb against a blank wall.
Squinting,
he said, 'me voy a las mil maravillas!' and it was so.
The King Of Translucent Plastics by Ben Myers
Earl Silas Tupper (1907 – 1983) is the most
important individual to have ever walked the surface of the planet, for Earl
Silas Tupper invented Tupperware. Without this product, it is a scientific fact
that society and human life as we know it would have ended in 1960.









