There is so much I could write about this one. We for a long time were very much like brothers. Me met in 1985. He was very intrigued with me and spent an evening following, almost stalking me. The connection was instantaneous. With such a friendship there were also problems. He was an alcoholic with a certain predilection for certain illegal drugs which he bought in Vancouver for friends of his who lived elsewhere in Canada. He was a failed ballet dancer with mental health issues and a strong interest in the occult and in astrology. He also felt strongly drawn to my spirituality and thought of me as being psychic.
He stayed in my place for a while after I'd helped him get booked into detox, then disappeared mysteriously. When he returned three days later from a drunken romp he was wroth upon learning that I had gone through his envelop full of personal documents. I justified the intrusion out of my need to find the contact information for his next of kin, as I didn't have a single idea of what had happened to him. Then he went home to his father in another province and we corresponded over the next several months.
He returned in the spring of 86. By this time I had already moved to an apartment downtown. He stayed with me for a few months, until August. It was a most intense time. He was drinking with riotous abandon and creating for himself and sometimes for me quite a few problems. I was giving intense palliative care to a client under my watch, requiring twelve hours or more of my attention at work every day. During this time D claimed that he often saw me surrounded by light. He often attended Snobby Church with me. One Sunday morning while we were walking there, near Christ Church Cathedral I noticed a tiger swallowtail butterfly resting on a flower and a mother with her two young boys looking at it from a respectful distance, absolutely enthralled. I approached the butterfly, got it to perch on my forefinger then presented it for mother and children to enjoy up close till it flew away. Only when D mentioned that I had just provided this family with at least six weeks worth of dinner table conversation did it occur to me that anything unusual had happened.
Following the death of my client D went into a downward spiral of drinking and riotous living. I eventually had to ask him to leave. I believe my last word to him as he was opening the door to leave was "Irresponsible!" As relieved as I was to have my living space back I did find myself missing him. He had a cool dark intelligence clad in warm colours and our conversations went all over the world and across the spectrum. He was one of the very few people with whom I could engage in hours and hours of conversation without deteriorating into boredom or ennui or the kind of sad cynicism that almost always ends up hobbling unusually bright and sensitive souls.
He sent me a letter from the small coastal village where he had moved to and invited me to visit which I did several times. Eventually he moved back, staying in a completely inadequate room in the Downtown Eastside, Canada's poorest postal code. He had a cat and she had kittens and we were fascinating watch the tiny helpless life forms freshly emerged from a feline womb.
He went on the wagon, joined AA and moved in with me for a couple of months. I was in a bachelor apartment in the West End. Despite the lack of space we got on splendidly and it was with some sorrow that we had to part ways when I opted to move into a farm house in Richmond. It was through the agency of D's sister that I found this place.
We continued in contact and the friendship maintained for us both an enjoyable edge. We could simply be in each other's presence and say little or read privately or we could engage about politics, global affairs, spirituality, entertainment, the environment, human nature, art and literature, all laced with wit, humour and laughter and come out hours later still stoked and still inspired. D had said that he and I were the same kind. He was the lynx. I was the panther.
Our friendship did eventually come to an end. He moved to Central Canada where he began to drink again with reckless abandon. His correspondence became hostile and irrational. Twenty-two years have passed since and I still haven't heard from him.
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