I've sat here for hours reading all the entries that had even a veiled reference to him and I'm still unable to type a single coherent word now that I know he has passed. Passed ten years ago, actually. But I was too wrapped up in my own bullshit with a husband that he'd tried to talk sense into my head about numerous times to even know he was sick. And now he's gone. He does not exist anywhere in this world anymore and I am struggling to process that reality.
I met him in 1986, shortly after my parents and I relocated from Charleston to Columbia. Charleston, as romantically beautiful as it is, could not win my heart over from Florida. I had run back to Sarasota/Bradenton with its white sand and turquoise waters like a girl trying to escape an arranged marriage to an older, strict mate. Anna Maria Island with her coquina-scattered beach called me back like a siren twice before I submitted, disgruntled and dour to my fate. In retrospect, there was a certain laissez faire about old Charleston I'd have found appealing if I'd bothered to notice.
So, off to the capitol city we went. A university town, Gamecock proud. My parents settled into a nice community some eight miles or so from the epicenter, while I eventually chose a shabby little duplex right here in the same mill village I've lived in for the last twenty six years. To me it seemed every weekend was one long party for the people my age. If I'd lived in a university town before I'd been too young to recall. Be it house or club, this town liked to get its party on. One club in particular became a somewhat regular haunt. I'd show up with my usual arm decoration, a beautiful boy of east Indian descent whose above average IQ apparently excluded the ability to distinguish between sincerity and full-on abuse, and pretend not to notice the riff-raff staring at us like celebrities. I must have looked like some film noir wannabe, all black fur and red lipstick. It was the 80's.
On certain nights when the planets were aligned just right, a magical creature straight out of Peter Pan would work the door at this club. His name was old-fashioned and at odds with who he seemed to be. He was a tall, slight kid with ashe-colored hair cut like a skater sling-head, and had a mischievous spark in his eyes. He was so full of energy and always in motion. In short time Peter Pan replaced the arm decoration, which was fine, his parents had issued a mandate to see only girls from India anyway. We stayed in touch, but Raju rededicated himself to studies and graduated to eventually become the administrator of a heart institute. I always throw the big fish back in favor of bottom feeders. Not that CL (Peter Pan) was a bottom feeder, but I'm getting ahead...
I loved this boy. He could out-shine the Sun and had boundless energy. He was compassionate to a point I couldn't even comprehend and was blind to socioeconomic divisions. But there were quiet moments lying side by side in the dark that I knew something serious occupied his mind. Months into our friends-turned-lovers relationship he told me his father had committed suicide just a few years earlier. Still buried under layer upon layer of protective barrier, I listened and went through the motion of nodding and understanding the pain he was walking around with. But I didn't really. I was in the business of denying pain and didn't realize until that moment that not everyone else was as well. I thought everyone let the assaults of life wash over them as if they weren't really happening. I see now that he was the beginning of the thaw, the opening up of a closed off heart.
It must have been New Years Eve at the club or some similar celebratory night. I was either there alone or with a girlfriend who was off stalking her prey, not sure which. What I do clearly remember was looking over as the band du jour filed in and seeing the most exotic creature I'd ever witnessed appear through the door. All color and sound dropped out and the only thing in focus was his face. And the rest, as they say, is history. CL tried to tell me to stay away from this guy, that he was bad news. I dismissed it as jealousy and him trying to put doubt in my mind about a rival. Our relationship was easy, without cumbersome expectations. A particularly sad event just months before had caused me to withdraw from CL while simultaneously knowing we would share a connection forever. So down the rabbit hole I went.
By the spring of 1991 I was married to that exotic creature I'd seen through the smoke and haze of the club, and was the mother of a beautiful baby girl. CL and I spoke infrequently and saw each other even less, and eventually not at all. He was trying to manage a marriage of his own down in Florida. In summary we both failed Marriage 101, disregarding lesson number one: Don't marry psycho assholes and expect anything to work out properly. C'est la vie, live and learn. What I didn't know until later was that he had moved to Colorado and finished his education with a Master's Degree and went to live in Nicaragua for several years afterward. By the time we were back in touch (sometime after 2002?) he was more concerned with the dire straits my life had fallen into and talked very little about his life. That was so him, more concerned with someone else than himself.
The last time I saw him was in 2004 just prior to my husband's first rehab. He offered help, asked if I thought an erase and rewind was desirable given the damage we'd both taken from our respective enemy combatants. I declined. This time it had nothing to do with suspecting him of jealousy, his altruism was beyond question. I had too much invested, both emotionally and financially.
"And I have a child" I said. He smiled and said that was more reason than everything else.
I never saw him again. I thought of him almost daily but was resolved to my marriage with its numerous and dreadful implications. With every new blow dealt I wanted to call him, hear the quiet calm and reassurance of his voice, but I didn't. Victories and defeats came and went and I wanted to share but didn't. Then social media came along and I wanted to look him up but didn't-mostly because I'd seen first hand how it could lead to adulterous liaisons and the total devastation of families. But yesterday Google dared me to type in his name, and I did. But I so wish I hadn't.
4:57 p.m. - 2016-09-04
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