The Furious Spinner

My friend Bill died a few days ago. He was 42 years old. I have loved him deeply, wildly, quietly since he was a beautiful boy of 19, when we met at Clarion Writers' Workshop. We instantly became best friends, this tall boy from deep inside Alabama who had huge black eyes and a laugh that could tickle even the most humorless person. Why do we fall in love with people? Sometimes someone will read a story of mine and ask why the two people in it loved one another. My answer is always the same, "Because." People just love. There isn't always an obvious reason. Bill was one of the smartest people I had ever met, the slowest talker—he could not believe how fast we all talked and walked—and he loved me. The more outrageous I was, the more he laughed. I met the two people who have loved me the best that summer in East Lansing, Michigan. I married one of them; the other I told all my secrets to.

Bill came to our wedding, along with a group of Clarion people, but when the others left, Bill stayed for our honeymoon. When we were moving to the West Coast a year later, Bill came and helped us move, then rode the train to Chicago with us. He visited us in Bandon, Oregon, a few times.

Then Bill's mother went in for sinus surgery. She was 42 years old. They nipped a bit of her brain. Afterward, she was severely brain-damaged. What do you say about a person who hasn't actually died but who is not there any more? Bill lost the only person in his nearby world who understood him. He told a friend a few years later that the worst thing that could possibly happen to him already had. His mother never recovered, and neither did Bill.

My friend Bill loved extravagance and decadence. His stories dripped with description, allusion, and illusion. Everything was overblown and overdone. Some of his favorite writers were Tanith Lee and Anne Rice, James Tiptree, and Joy Williams—because her stories were meant to rip your heart out. He loved Puccini, especially "Madame Butterfly." And the greatest loves of his life (beside his mother) were his dogs. He didn't especially like people, but he didn't dislike them. He wasn't judgmental of how people behaved. He was funny, quiet, and shy around strangers.

After his mom was "injured," life just got harder for Bill. He had two heart attacks before he was 20, his mother essentially died before he was 25, he had cancer before he was 30, and HIV and AIDS before he was 40. He got on a cocktail when he had AIDS and was just about to die, and the AIDS went into remission. Sometimes the side effects of the medicines about drove him crazy, although it seemed like he was in love and happy in the last few months. The last time I talked with him, he talked a mile a minute—an effect from the drugs, he said—about how in love he was. I liked hearing him happy, even though I was concerned about the drugs.

When I was at my sickest (knock on wood) ten years ago, most of my friends dropped away from me. I offended people left and right and down and out. I really don't know how or why. I know I was furious that I was so ill, and social interaction was difficult for me. Some people get nice and passive when they are ill. I don't. Bill was one of the people who went away. I didn't hear from him for about three years. When I finally called him, he told me he had had AIDS and almost died. We reconnected, but it wasn't the same as it had been before. We were both so damaged by the circumstances of our lives, I suppose, that it was difficult to come together with the trust and passion we had once had. Yet we still loved each other madly, wildly, quietly. We knew that about one another. We knew that would never change.

Funny, on Wednesday last week, the day Bill died, I suddenly had the urge to see "Turandot" by Puccini which will be playing in Portland in a couple of weeks. I've never been even vaguely interested in opera. But I tried to get tickets. They were sold out. The next morning I tried again and suddenly two tickets were available. After I bought the tickets, the show was sold out again. I was looking forward to going and then telling Bill I had finally seen an opera.

He had called me a couple of months earlier, but we weren't home. I never called him back—although I emailed him several times. I'm terrible at returning phone calls. I wish I had called him. I wished I had heard him say, "Hello, darlin'" one more time. Instead, I have an email from him, sent just days before he died. He signed it, "love always, Bill." Still. I wish I had called.

I found out he was dead on November 1st, All Saints' Day. Bill did not believe in God, unless he had changed his views as of late. He thought life was horrible and exquisite, opulent and disgusting, moving and terrifying. Look at his life. What other conclusion could he have come up with?

I keep seeing snapshots of the life the three of us had together in my mind's eye. Walking on a beach in Mexico. Sleeping in a trailer in Mexico that was electrified—if we touched any metal part of it, we got shocked. We lay in our separate beds, laughing, wondering if we'd get electrocuted in our sleep. Sitting in the house we rented in Bandon, talking about books and movies. Driving winding road after winding road around Oregon, talking and laughing. Sitting on his lap. Hearing his voice on the phone, "Hello, darlin'." His beautiful Southern drawl saying my name. "Darlin'." Who wouldn't want to be his darlin'?

Today, Mario and I drove to Seattle. Mario wanted to take me away from my sadness. So I went. I slept most of the time, tears streaming down my cheeks, memories of Bill filling my dreams. I dreamed about him last night. He was with a beautiful blond man, visiting me, and he was swimming. I was glad to see him. We all looked happy and healthy. Now in the car, my chest ached from the grief. I thought of all the people on the planet who had survived horrible grief, and I thought how amazing people are that they continue their lives in spite of their losses. Bill's boyfriend found him dead. I asked Mario if he could imagine finding me dead, and he said, "Let's not imagine that."

We don't know yet why Bill died. It was probably a heart attack caused by the medication he was taking to save his life. I don't know why it matters, but it does. I want to know why he died. Last week I was speaking about Bill to another friend, and I thought he seemed indestructible: he'd had heart attacks, cancer, and AIDS and he was still alive and kickin' up a storm. It never occurred to me he could die.

We stopped by the Burke Museum when we first got to Seattle. I wanted to see the "Reverent Remembrance: Honoring the Dead" exhibit. I stood at the entrance to the exhibit, staring at the altar to the dead, tears rolling down my face again. The description said that our ancestors understood the cycle of life and death. They didn't welcome death—but they welcomed the dead. Slowly I went around the exhibit, observing how different cultures honored their dead. I wondered how I could honor Bill's death. Be extravagant? Decadent? I didn't know. I just wanted him to be alive.

As we stepped out of the museum, the setting sun touched the golden leaves of the deciduous trees—birch, aspen? Behind them, totem poles caught the light, too. I remembered what one of Bill's friends had told me about the funeral on Saturday. She had talked to him about his funeral plans a while ago. He said he understood the funeral was for the living, and what he wanted didn't really matter. She said the ceremony was at this little chapel at the end of a dead end dirt road, on a bit of a hill. It was white with a white steeple, surrounded by the most beautiful deciduous trees, their leaves gold, orange, and red. It sounded so lovely, and I wept as she talked, wishing none of it was true.

Mario and I drove away from the museum. I saw a few people gathered on a corner looking toward the setting sun. I followed their gaze and saw a giant rose-colored pillar rising from the place where the sun had just set.

"Pull off, Mario," I said. "You've got to see this."

Mario found a side road, and we sat in the car, staring at this amazing sight. The sun pillar was pink, red, rosy—and extravagant in its height, breadth, color—and length of life. I had always heard sun pillars didn't last very long, yet this one stayed and stayed, illuminating the rest of the sky with its brilliance. Then suddenly, without warning, it was gone: as if someone had shut off the light. Mario and I continued on our way to dinner at Cafe Flora.

We drove home in the dark. The half moon seemed too big for the sky. On the radio, they played part of "Rocky Horror Show," one of Bill's favorite movies, and then Anne Rice read from one of her vampire books.

We drove on.

I kept hearing Bill's voice in my ear, "Hello, darlin'."

I wished I could really hear him again, at least one more time. To say good-bye. I was tired of people I know getting sick, of dying. I don't have the stomach for it. What happened to people getting old and dying of old age? Wouldn't that be nice? But we don't have control over such things. I suppose all I can do is listen for Bill's voice, calling me, "Hello, darlin'."

And I can answer, "Hello, darlin'" and hope he hears me.
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