What are you wearing?

What are you wearing? Whenever he called, my friend Bobby would ask that instead of saying hello.

Bobby was a brilliant man beset with demons, a charming, charismatic person who was an inspiration to a generation of high school kids in the Sunday School class he mentored, an addictive personality who damaged himself in slow suicide until he was murdered by his equally damaged lover who subsequently committed suicide. Bobby was a good friend and an inspiration to a lot of people.

Daniel was in the High School Sunday School class Bobby taught and looked up to him like an older brother, as did most of the kids in the class. When Daniel died, Bobby was prostrated with grief and took to his bed for two days, unable to function.

About a year ago he called and asked me to help him finish his dissertation for a PhD in clinical psychology. He had a last gasp extension. He would supply a ticket from Chicago to San Francisco and how much time did I need? That was shortly before lunch. I told him I could be on a plane by five that afternoon. He sent an e-ticket and I boarded at 5:05.

The whole trip was surreal. To start with, the plane had navigation system problems and the pilot made a joke about hitting it with a wrench, but we ended up back at the gate. The mechanic boarded, apparently fixed it, because we ended up in San Francisco about 10:30. Bobby wasn’t waiting for me at baggage claim as he said he would. I called and he said he’d fallen asleep, I should take a cab.

Surreal continued. The cab driver was about a week in the US and I had to spell Castro for him to enter into his GPS system. Even with the GPS, he missed a turn and took the long way around. When I arrived at the apartment, I didn’t recognize Bobby. He was emaciated. His hair (he had had GOOD hair, dark, curly) was long - past his shoulders - and straight. His eyes were sunken. But he was the same old Bobby and I was glad to see him.

I was glad to see him until he pulled out a glass tube, which I shortly learned was a crack pipe, and lit up. It broke my heart.

He was in complete denial. He said he didn’t believe in addiction. He said that crack had no effect and I should try smoking some. I declined. I hate smoking. I hated the smell that pervaded everything when I visited my parents. I tried smoking in college - maybe three cigarettes -and I hated the taste in my lungs for the next several days.

Bobby kept smoking crack. He was awake and pacing for the next three days. He had just moved and I did a lot of unpacking. I walked the dogs and made sure they were fed. He had no food in the apartment and I got sandwiches at the little bodega kitty corner from his apartment. Each morning I went to a coffee shop for coffee and a roll. That was several blocks from his apartment, and the hills were like climbing up or down ladders. It is San Francisco, after all.

We drove to the house he had just moved from and which he had put up for sale (for an ungodly high sum. It sold within 60 days) and retrieved his computer system.

I tried to help with his dissertation “Artifice and Authenticity in the Gay Male.” His Introduction was brilliant, but at over 100 pages, too long. The next five or six chapters were less than 20 pages. They too were brilliant, but the whole work was so unbalanced, I couldn’t repair it without him. And he couldn’t focus.

After three days he slept. For about 20 hours. That scared me because I wasn’t sure he was alive except by nudging him. His teenage crack dealer and her two thugs made deliveries to the house, and that scared me too. This was a life I had never experienced before. And don’t want to experience again.

I had a ticket home that I didn’t use. Instead, I bought a ticket on a redeye flight and left for the airport six hours in advance. Before I left, Bobby and I had a talk. He wasn’t delusional, for a change. He said he was surprised I lasted as long as I had. I told him how heartbreaking it was to see him in the condition he was in. He talked about checking into a hospital for detox, would Ann and I come back and watch his dogs?

I hate airports, but sitting in it for six hours was far less painful than watching Bobby destroy himself. I bought a hamburger and fries. It was overpriced, but delicious. The airport that late at night was practically deserted. I liked it.

[More surreal: The plane left on time about midnight. I drifted in an out of a doze during the flight. At about 4:30 CDT there was a kerfuffle in the row ahead of me. The flight attendant told two men standing in the aisle to sit down, and then she came back with her cohort and started screaming at one of the men. Evidently the man in the middle seat had been groping the woman on the window as she slept. Cops waited for him on the air bridge as we left.]

It took me a long time to process my trip. I couldn’t talk about it to anyone at home except Ann because I didn’t want to harm Bobby’s reputation. Bobby and Paul, his partner, had gotten the equivalent of a partnership divorce. I understood why. Money was involved. Lies and anger and name calling were involved. It was pretty typical of other divorces I have seen. And of course, Bobby’s drug use was a big part of it.

I believed I would never see Bobby again. I expected him to be dead of an overdose or an organ failure from drug use within a year.

But I never expected him to be brutally murdered. Ann and I both loved him. And we’ll continue to love him. We believe he is in a better place.

The essential Bobby was a kind, loving, brilliant, funny, charming, charismatic man. But his demons killed him in the long run. No matter how he lived, he didn’t deserve to die the way he did. No one does. I try to make sense of it and I can’t. We will miss him.

Pray for his soul.