DIED 1982
THE SECOND TIME A man I’d loved died, there was slightly more of a decent interval, two years and not two months. This one was a pickup-driving, guitar-playing, beef-eating hang glider my friend Dana loaned me for a while when she went back to her main boyfriend. (I do believe Dana is the only person I’ve ever known who was able to make her opposition to monogamy a positive thing for all concerned.)
Our aviator was a curly-headed, compact fellow with eyes as dark and sharp as a woodland creature’s. He seemed to think women were some kind of animal as well, burros perhaps, good for carrying the equipment, and he couldn’t get enough of sexist cracks and vegetarian jokes. I know this doesn’t sound attractive, but the silly ongoing badinage was fun, as if we were on The Honeymooners. Aren’t you ever going to shave your armpits? Hell, no, I’m not gonna shave my armpits. How about your legs? At least shave your legs. Me! What about you? You’re the hairy ape around here!
Also, Dana had alerted me to other points of interest. Among these was the flotation tank he had built in the garage of his cubbyhole of a house on Nueces Street in Austin, also featuring a waterbed, a secret garden of skunkweed, and a black Labrador retriever named Lilly whom he loved with all his heart. When you meet a man who loves dogs but doesn’t think much of people, you just know you can slip in between the two categories and find something rare.
With all his hobbies and his crabbiness and his fussy ways, his penny-pinching and his remote-control planes and his gentle heart, the Humanoid would have made a great old man. But he was coming back from a hang-gliding trip in New Mexico when a drunk driver going over one hundred miles per hour on the wrong side of a highway made sure he never got the chance.