My Benjamin Hartman Story

“I need intravenous Beefsteak,” I texted my forever-Beefsteak date Ben Hartman, who others called Benjie or Bean or sometimes Boozey, and who I called Kryptonite or sometimes Sushi Ben. “See you there at 6:30,” he texted back. Since meeting in 2014, we each accommodated the other when it came to Beefsteak — a fast-casual restaurant near George Washington University that served paleo-friendly fare before paleo was cool and offered outdoor seating long before covid-19. My gcalendar archive shows that we made seven Beefsteak dates in advance, though that’s a fraction of our total as most stemmed fro m middle-of-the-day inquiries as to the other’s availability hours later. Just a partial archive of our texts shows we discussed Beefsteak 40 times. We rarely visited Beefsteak with someone else because that would be unfaithful.May 16, 2017: one of the few times I visited Beefsteak without Kryptonite. “I'm eating at Beefsteak by myself,” I texted him before delving into this bowl of chicken sausage, steamed vegetables, and toasted seaweed. “I miss you. I'll pour out some sriracha for my homeboy.” At Beefsteak, we discussed women, movies, writing, philosophy, and cancer. In 2012, Kryptonite developed adenoid cystic carcinoma — a rare cancer that usually starts in salivary glands. That was before I met him. The only Kryptonite I knew was healthy enough for his nickname to mean something. He inherited it while on an outdoor adventure exclusively fo...
Source: cancerslayerblog - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: death life lessons Source Type: blogs