HENRY

A good friend of mine died a little over a year ago and I miss him. From the night we met, we were off and running, kindred spirits always delighted to be talking. He was a genuine intellectual, interested in philosophy and theory, and he could always be counted on for an eccentric opinion very different from what the rest of us were saying.
     He and his partner quickly came to feel like family. (They were the only gay couple I'd known about whom I'd think, hmm, I could go to bed with either one of them. I told them and they loved it, but as I quickly pointed out, there were no takers.) They had a beautiful unpretentious house, were great cooks and always hospitable. You just wanted to be in their company.
     When I first met him, my friend was writing short stories, none of them published, and the only thing I remember about them was a great line, "Take off your stupid pants." He moved on to plays and things began to happen - he worked hard and became prolific, submitted plays and won prizes, saw his plays produced and got great reviews. He became the writer he was meant to be.
     Over many years, I watched this happen, saw him go from a tentative, intimidated man without much confidence in his work, to a person who trusted his own vision and wanted to put his work out into the world. It is the great good thing about knowing someone over a long period of time; you have his voyage in your head. You've been his witness, he's been yours, and that reciprocity is in part how we come to know ourselves. And if you're lucky the process only grows deeper.
     I sometimes think how accidental all my relations are - the people I know, the ones I love, just happen to live in the same time I do. We are circles in a Venn diagram, intersecting, overlapping, the pool from which we draw. But there's nothing accidental about whom we gravitate to - our elective affinities. We recognize, sometimes in an instant, our kindred souls, the ones we want to walk through our time together. 
     Sometimes, I'll see something or find myself pondering life's ever-growing questions and think, "I want to talk to him about it, he'll understand exactly what I think." It surprises me for a moment that he's no longer here. But I don't feel sad; the fact that he was here, and that I know he would understand, make me less alone. Absent friends - they're not exactly absent. In fact, of course, they're never gone.