Marc was lost to me before I ever met him, the victim of a bad
upbringing. By the time he disappeared, he had been kicked out of his
apartment, lost countless jobs and alienated his few friends after
borrowing money and ranting loose and drunk on 3 am phone calls. This is
not something I would have predicted the first time we met in our grad
school "Life Art" class when it became immediately clear we were kindred
spirits. He laughed at my jokes and cried at my revelations, confiding
in me his life story before we had even finished our first project.
I should have recognized the pattern of this exceedingly beautiful
and generous man who immediately included me in his life, seeming to
toss aside his straight female roommate and former best friend, even as
she doted on him and did the cooking, cleaning, bill paying and whatever he demanded. He was the kind of man that could be so charming one was
grateful for his attention, and he knew it.
I might have had a sense when he drank heavily sweetened drinks
every night, turning liquid-eyed as he read to me from scripts he had
written, rambling dialogs that seemed important, if hard to follow. But
these signs were not enough to dissuade me. Marc and I were soul mates
for a time: expressive, sensitive, larger than life and misunderstood.
He was outspoken, beautiful, and emotionally intense. He made me
feel special and I made him feel seen.
If he was shallow, that illusion only ran skin-deep. Marc saw the
world through a veil of mistrust and pain, an effeminate boy who as a child had
witnessed the murder of his father in their house. It was a fact that forever hung, like a
monolith, in the back of my mind. Even on his favorite night, Christmas
Eve, when his roommate would prepare a traditional Cuban feast under his
tutelage and we'd sing carols together, Marc couldn't maintain. In the
span of a few hours, he would transform from generous host and confidant
to a ranting control freak who turned the stereo so loud that I spent
my time furtively looking out the second story window of his Mission
flat, waiting for the cops to appear.
One holiday was worse than the next and no matter how much his
friends and I discussed Marc's problems, we couldn't seem to help him.
You can't drag someone out from that kind of misery and most of the
time, they can't pull themselves up either. I tried to keep loving him,
and to be a part of his life, but he made it nearly impossible.
Once he fell out with his roommate, his support dried up and having
used up every favor from his small group of friends, he had to leave San
Francisco. Marc moved to Hollywood and after a self-reported "rocky
start," seemed to be getting it together. Last time I saw him, he lived
in a cute tiny apartment near the Kodak Theater with parquet floors and a
collection of memorabilia carefully placed on shelves that lined the
main room. He came out for coffee, talking, if too fast, about how hard life had been
and how he was making changes by listening to a couple who helped people
get rich with positive thinking. It was worrisome, but not terrible, or at least not yet rock bottom.
I
don't know how much of what he told me was the truth and I'm not sure
how long he stayed in that apartment from which he was eventually evicted. Marc's positive thinking didn't stop his mother and brother from rejecting him. With no friends, or money, or safety net, he lost whoever he had been to the streets. Last I heard he was stealing cough syrup and rubbing alcohol to get high.
No phone, no place, no people, no trace.
No comments:
Post a Comment