My first boyfriend- well, I can only say there’s one helluva story there, a Category 5 disaster of a relationship that lasted for about 18 months in the late 1980s and ended very very very very very very very not good- is dead. He was a non-achieving brilliant bastard that I came to absolutely hate and yet missed him everyday for a decade and who sent me back into the closet for about 8 years (well, sorta kinda- I was celibate for a long time after we stopped dating and just didn’t discuss my orientation except with close friends or people I cared to discuss it with) but to whom I owe some debts I can never repay. It was the most passionate lovemaking of my life and we never had sex. There’s a long story there.
Anyway, I just learned that he died May 14 of this year. I had not seen him in 12 years. It was a shock to me.
One reason it was a shock was because I thought he was already dead! For at least 8 years! I heard this from two mutual acquaintances, neither of whom had reason to lie to me (they were closer to me than to him and neither was still in contact with either of us) and the stories were even identical: he moved back to Michigan (where he grew up) and died of one of his two terminal illnesses ca. 1997. I’d already grieved to the extent that I did (which wasn’t a lot or a little) and resolved that he was dead.
Then I heard from another mutual acquaintance that I ran into after not having seen in more than a decade “Oh, your buddy looked bad last time I saw him… must have been about a year and half, two years ago” and I thought “Surely you’re mistaken”. Out of curiosity, figuring that if he was in ill health he probably would have to have relied on Social Security, I looked him up on the Social Security Death Index (available several places online- it gives the name, social, death date and birthdate of anybody who has ever had SS drawn on their account) and found out he died three months ago. He’s not only been alive all this damned time, he’s been in Alabama (at least that’s where he died- a small town in the south where his mother inherited property).
Frigging weird. I’m not emotionally torn up over it or anything, it’s just freaky. And keeping with the relationship.
He did once make me a solemn vow, one I told him to forget about because I didn’t want anything when he was dead, and he even told me this the last time I talked to him after our horrid break up, that he was leaving me his “Third Reich” collection. (He wasn’t a neonazi, just a passionate WW2 enthusiast, and the collection included things like photographs of Hitler [from private collections], an SS dagger, a suicide capsule made of an expended cartridge, an iron cross, etc…) I just assumed that he hadn’t, but I wonder out of curiosity if he did? Well, if he did and somehow they track me down and I inherit it I’ll sell it and give the money to a charity (Society for the Prevention of Brilliant Bipolar Assholes or something), but…
Anyway, just my weird moment du jour.
(The picture’s about a year and a half old but still pretty much accurate.)