The Death Loafers story is gone due to auto-deletion (a small price to pay), but bc of my birthday, I’m going to retell it here. https://twitter.com/matthewfdesmond/status/1301242994620854272

Let me start out by saying my friend did NOT wind up dying.

So, in college, I had a much fancier friend than myself (everyone was fancier than me in college) who got back from a trip to Paris and began to feel terrible.

Then he passed out, but not before requesting the ambulance take him to Brigham And Women's Hospital, because it’s the best, and he always needed the best.

Being a good friend, I gathered some toiletries and some changes of clothes and got on the T and got myself to the hospital.

By the time I got there, he was absolutely dying. The students were all being shown his splinter hemorrhages by their attendings, which they found very exciting. He was in an assless robe, immobile.

As a friend, they asked me if he had recently traveled. “Paris,” I said, worrying desperately about my friend. My friend who then used his right hand to motion me closer.

With great difficulty and extreme force of will, he jammed his American Express card into my hand and slowly, in a whisper, managed to say “Brooks...Brothers. Pajamas.”

So, obviously, you have to do whatever Final Mission your dying friend has asked of you (his organs were starting to get real bad), so I found a Brooks Brothers, a store I had never been in before.

They had me pegged as a peasant the minute I walked in, and about three WASP-attired employees materialized to give me directions or whatever had landed me in their store.

“My friend,” I said. “My friend is in the hospital and he’s very ill and gave me his credit card and told me to come here and get him pajamas.”

They all breathed a sigh of relief. What a normal request for fancy dying people! They did not need to ask me about colors or designs, I just gave them his size & they carefully selected 3 pairs (I fainted at the price) charged his card and let me sign the receipt, and I left.

When I returned to the hospital, he was worse, and the pajamas got placed on a nearby chair in case he wanted to stroke them or something.

The doctors said “Paris?” I confirmed. Feeling like a goober, I said “he got these beautiful loafers and got a blister but it’s healed now.”

The doctors looked at each other. “Does he wear socks with loafers?” “...no.”

Friends, he was dying of blood poisoning from a “healed” blister caused by Parisian Death Loafers (which really looked great.)

So, they proceeded to save his life, and he was able to spend the next few days in the hospital wearing WASP jammies.

I learned a lot from Parisian Death Loafers Friend. Once he lent me a cashmere sweater and I put it on a wooden hanger instead of folding it and when he saw it he gave me a 15 minute lecture on proper care of fabrics.

About a year ago, we were both in NYC at the same time and got drinks together (me grabbing the check as a sign of new dominance).

I idly discussed honeymoon hotel choices for 2020 (lol) to him and he got this look of ice and just said "Claridge's" until I said ok.

I was very set on Brown's and SAID so and he just tightened his jaw muscles and said CLARIDGE'S again in a louder voice and I agreed to avoid making a scene at the Carlyle. Then we went to see a play.

After the play, @yonitrose recognized me from the online, and we hugged. Then I whispered “the man I am with is the protagonist of Parisian Death Loafers” and she tried not to act starstruck and mostly succeeded.

My only other story about Parisian Death Loafers friend is about his Rhodes Scholarship interview, but I will save that one for another time.

Thank you for listening to my story. I did not save his life, they already knew he was clearly in sepsis and were working on it.

Also he is gay but partnered, sorry to anyone who thought he might keep you in Lady Parisian Death Loafers.

I don’t know how he could possibly have read as straight to you from this story but it’s kind of hard to tell past a certain level of WASP.

He also did something I wish more people would do w friends who hate parties, which is pull me aside before we entered, tell me who he planned to leave with, to talk him up when he went to the bathroom, and give the predetermined signal to Irish exit them if it was working.

I was happy to facilitate, and I didn’t have to stand around in agony for hours begging for death, I found it very respectful. Once I hooked up with a woman I thought HATED me that I ran into while Irish Exiting a successful encounter for him. Friendship is about give and take.

In retrospect, she DID hate me but I know Parisian Death Loafers would never have let that come between him and having sex against a fridge.

See, I DO have some good college memories.

Wear socks or socklets with loafers and take better care of your blisters. Think how much less fun this story would have been if PDL had died.

(If you’re feeling like this was a one-sided friendship, he was one of a very few people at college who knew AND cared I couldn’t afford restaurants or bars and always told me discreetly in advance he was buying. You don’t forget that.)