Film School Friend

He was as southern boy as a southern boy gets, gay as all get out, but loved women so much he still slept with them. We met in film school. He wore daisy dukes with cowboy boots and colorful glasses, drove a convertible red Mustang, chewed gum, smoked cigarettes, and blasted Britney Spears. His accent was so thick, his quips so sharp, that with your eyes closed you could mistake him for an old Texas woman. He was also an incredibly talented photographer.

I loved him as soon as I met him, and I’m sure he felt the same. Despite my own colored past, I considered myself more grounded than this flaming fucker. But sometimes, like oil and water, you don’t mix, you just float in the same space, colliding, close in company.

Everyone knew he had a drug problem. That didn’t stop me from sitting on porches and smoking with him. He was self-destructive, full of trauma from being gay, raised religious, and trapped in a Bible-thumping tiny town. That place stomped out his light. I can still picture him as a child, bright, creative, free, until fear and hate came down on him in the name of Christian love. They say there’s no hate like Christian love, and coming from Texas, I can vouch for that.

One night he called me crying. I could tell he had gone too far. I rushed to his shitty West Campus apartment for a wellness check. Drugs were smeared across his kitchen table, booze knocked over, and he was rambling about some sexcapade gone wrong. It was the middle of the night. I’m never sharp at night, but I tried to calm him. Nothing worked. He got aggressive.

While he stumbled for more drugs, I grabbed his phone and found his mom’s number, back when we could still memorize numbers. He turned on me, yelling and spitting, confusing me with his childhood abuser. My heart hurt for him, but I had to protect myself. I’d had my share of abusive men.

I went outside and sat on the stairs. He lived on the second story of a single-standing apartment. I heard him come out, and when I looked up, I saw his dirty feet on the balcony. He held the railing and looked down at me. He seemed so calm, so I started climbing back up the stairs.

When I reached the top, he wasn’t there. The door was shut and locked. The stairs were short, and I had only taken my eyes off him for a few seconds. There was no way he had gone inside without me noticing or hearing. My body temperature dropped. I banged on the door. No answer. I peered through a crack in the window and saw him facedown on the floor, vomit pooled around his mouth. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

He had never been standing at the top of those stairs.

I started pounding on the door, frantic. I called 911. The paramedics busted in and carried him out on a stretcher. It all happened so fast I barely remember if they spoke to me. I just remember being left in the quiet dark outside, wondering how the fuck that had all happened.

I knew what I saw. It wasn’t him. It was his spirit. It was a warning. I was no stranger to seeing things, just never someone I knew.

I called his mom and told her what hospital he was at. She was cold, almost annoyed. It made sense though.

The next morning, he called me screaming that I should have let him die. It shook me because I knew he was dead when I saw him at the top of those stairs. But I didn’t apologize. I had just followed my instincts. I didn’t care if his religious, shitty family shunned him more than they already had. I just cared about him.

I didn’t hear from him for years. Then one day he showed up at my house. He was clean, smelled good, still with a hint of tobacco. He brought a bottle of wine. We drank, laughed our asses off, danced, and he took photos of me. Then he disappeared again.

He was untraceable. No social media. Phone numbers never worked. He was a ghost.

Another time, years later, he appeared with a long tube in his hand, chewing gum. “Hey baby, I missed you. I got some presents for you.”

He told me a year prior he had gone back to his hometown, to a lake he loved, planning to blow his brains out. He had the barrel in his mouth when an eagle feather dropped in front of him. Distracted, he tracked the feather back to the nest. He had been a hunter since he was a boy, and instead of killing himself, he lived in the woods for a year photographing eagles.

The tube he brought me was filled with prints: a shot of me from the night we danced, one of the magical Enchanted Rock in Fredericksburg, and last and my favorite, a baby deer curled in the grass. He gave me a photo of himself, shirtless and smoking a cigarette, with the words “I’d rather be alone with God than a room full of strangers” etched into a golden plaque on the wood frame. He also gave me a published book of eagle photos dedicated to me, a framed portrait of an eagle, and one more keepsake so beautiful and so illegal I cannot name it.

“Now baby,” he said, “be careful with this. If you get caught, you will go to jail and pay a hell of a fine. These gifts are for you because you are my little angel. You saved my life and I love you forever.”

And then he was gone again. That was over ten years ago.

I don’t live in the same house now, don’t have the same number. But I still hope he finds his way back. But I’m not counting on it.