He was still sixteen when I saw him singing and playing his guitar on the sidewalk. The lyrics were Christian, it was his own material and he was good. We inevitably ended up talking to each other and became friends. I was still living next door to the Radical Lesbian Feminist in the house full of creative eccentrics. I had recently turned twenty-four.
He lived with his single mother, an alcoholic, and sister in the suburbs. He was precociously independent, Christian and gay. He soon was frequently staying with me and we became quite inseparable in an enmeshed fraternal sense. We also were fervent about our Christian discipleship, but still both damaged and highly sensitive and absolutely frustrated that it was so difficult to penetrate thick-headed church people with the essential reality of the Gospels.
As we were soon practically living together and my place was tiny we found a spacious apartment in a house. Not a wise move. He was already moving in a bad direction and soon became addicted to drugs while subsidizing his habit as a street prostitute. He became disruptive and impossible to live with and I ended up kicking him and his friends out of the apartment. He became a transvestite hooker and soon was living as a woman. We lost all contact with each other.
Six years later we encountered each other in a café and visited a few times. He had taken up tarot cards and gave me a couple of readings. Nothing special but still very intriguing. He also had a huge interest in Chinese astrology which he taught me. Then he suddenly turned unpleasant and disappeared again.
He played in a couple of rock bands and seemed apparently determined to stay clean. We ran into each other yet again four years later. He wanted to apologize and ask forgiveness for the grief he had caused me. I accepted and also considered that he was doing this as part of his twelve step program. I still took the apology seriously but I also considered the source. The last time we talked to each other, aside from a few chance encounters over the next six years or so, I told him in a coffee shop that my mother was dying. As he left he said "Have a nice death." I felt like killing him.
I still often came across him in the area. He was almost always with the same friends and they appeared to be a kind of support group. I imagined that he was suffering but I had no idea from what. Neither would he tell me anything except for a civil hello.
I learned of his death a few months after the fact from a mutual acquaintance. AIDS. I wasn't surprised and rather kicked myself for not figuring it out sooner. I only wished at the time that I could have seen him just one day before his passing, if only to tell him goodbye with these four sweet little words: "Have a nice death!"
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