Left to my own devices

The dreams came one night after the other. They were like a replay of a horrible situation, made worse by the altered reality so common to the dream state. It was a few years ago, some time after my friend Tracy had committed suicide in December 2004. A range of emotions occurred after his passing, from guilt, to sadness, to anger, back to sadness. Finally, an inevitable calm upon the psyche's realization that the event happened, Tracy was dead, and there was nothing that could be done about it. And yet... The first night, in the dream, Tracy was a ghost. Or at least he had the stereotypical ghostly qualities: an almost transparent, soft-white luminescence that took his form. I found myself next to his house, over by the back door. I heard a soft whimpering, like the kind you hear in a horror movie before a spook suddenly bursts onto the scene. Sure, enough, here came Tracy, passing through the back door, down the steps and over to the garage. I called out to him, ...

Those who know me, or are long-time readers of this blog, know my high school story. Graduated in 1994, spent the last semester learning via home bound education because of the incessant bullying (some of it due to my sexuality), and I didn't attend the graduation ceremony because, frankly, I was done with it all, and did not feel comfortable going back to the school. That was a pretty low time in my life. Later that year (December of '94 to be exact), I turned 19 and was legally able to go to bars in Champaign. The night of my nineteenth birthday I went to Chester Street Dance Club, a local gay night club, and ended up spending many weekends there over the next few years. While time spent at C-Street contained a fair amount of the drama and tumult one would expect when a bunch of gays and lesbians get together, it's fair to say that it served as a wondrous haven and safe space where one could just be comfortable within their own skin. I cannot over-express the ...