When I first met K. I would have been nineteen and I think he was already twenty-eight. Later he claimed to have never remembered meeting me then. At that time with his partner he sold Persian carpets in a loft on Robson Street, long before it was degraded to a mega-mall full of chain stores. He must have made a deep impression on me because a year later, back in Vancouver from six months in Toronto, I decided to contact him. I found his rug store, re-introduced myself and we passed a couple of hours chatting over a pot of tea seated on one of his carpets. I cannot remember all of what we discussed but there was a sense that we needed to continue this conversation, and indeed we did end up continuing the same conversation for the next thirteen years.
He was quite promiscuous but accepted that there would be nothing sexual between us and we were easily able to move to a mutually acceptable level of friendship. We didn't see each other all the time, more sporadically. During this time I was twenty years old and living in that communal house full of intolerant fundamentalists. Seeing K for me was like taking a break and breathing fresh air. He was also a Buddhist.
I would say he was very kind, gentle, complex, generous and very, very reserved. He had an air of passivity but maintained an iron grip of control over everything in his sphere. Possible owing to his Buddhist practice I found him to be one of the calmest and most rational persons I had ever known.
The following year he was managing the carpet department of Eaton's. It was summer, I was unemployed and enjoying it so often, while "looking for work" I would stop in to visit. He got me in touch with a friend of his who ran a construction company, giving me ten days of back-breaking work. Another time we coincided in a fancy café that used to be on the edge of what is now called Yaletown. He had two young friends with him who quickly befriended me. We later went to his apartment for coffee and drinks.
He disappeared for a few years when he moved to New York City, where in one of the steam baths he caught AIDS. We re-encountered in 1983. He and his boyfriend became good and close friends. He lived in different interesting places, usually warehouses converted to studios and was in the habit of adopting artists who worked their craft in these places. I phoned him one day to wish him a Merry Christmas, since it was Christmas Day. He said he hardly noticed that it was Christmas but then held me captive on the phone for the next two hours. I did not expect him to admit that he was feeling perhaps a little lonely and needy?
When the Community of the Transfiguration was just in its beginnings, I encountered him again, now quite frail from his AIDS condition. We spent a lot of time together and we became auxiliary members of his AIDS society, till we were drummed out for being a little too Christian for their liking.
He moved away to one of the Gulf Islands. Soon after a mutual acquaintance informed me of his death. It was like grieving the loss of a close brother. Especially given that just a couple of months before he invited us to his home for dinner. That was also the day of my brother's wedding. Not being close to my brother, and given that we didn't like each other, I skipped the wedding to have dinner with K, knowing also that I wouldn't be seeing him again. My brother never accepted my excuse, perhaps especially because K had been to me ten times the brother that he ever was. Such is family, eh?
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