Goodbye Malibu Ken
I've been thinking a lot lately about a high school friend, Jim. I suppose it has something to do with all the mail I've been getting from Classmates, but not entirely. We would have been friends for 19 years last September, and he still manages to creep into my thoughts at least once a month.

He came crashing into my young life in Grade 10. I met him in Study Period, in a room that smelled of chalk and the ghosts of the thousands of students who had goofed off before us.

Jim was a big note-writer, and during those 75 minute periods, we created intricate narratives surrounding our own versions of Malibu Ken and Barbie. Jim and our friend Ingrid were both fond of southern vacations and pooky shell necklaces. Tans, freckles and sun-tinted hair; they stood out at my Southern Ontario school like two pieces of pepper in a pot of alfredo sauce.

Jim also had a huge penchant for phone conversations. I have never had longer calls than with Jim. He talked about everything; school, gossip and clothes, weaving stories and hilarious tales that made me gasp for breath amid peals of laughter.

A year and a half later saw a change in his personality I was never able to understand. Where he had previously been open and loving, he became introverted and less willing to reveal what was going on in his life.

It all came to a head when he called Ingrid and me out of Geography class to inform us he was dropping out of school and moving to Toronto. The next day. We were stunned. Even moreso when he told us a large part of his decision was based on the fact he felt we couldn't accept his homosexuality.

As we watched him walk down the empty hallway, I felt as I were being punished for a crime I hadn't committed. I had always shown him I accepted him just as he was, even if I didn't say the words.

Through the years, I tried to find him using various methods. I even went so far as to go to the main Toronto Library and look him up through the voter's listings. Short of spending money I didn't have on a private investigator, I had reached a dead end.

The sting of the apparent ease with which he cut off all ties still hurts.

Five years ago, when my sister was in our old high school town visiting friends, she popped in to see me afterward. "Did you know Jim came home?" she asked. When I said I didn't know what on earth was going on with him, she took a deep breath and told me the rest: Jim had come home to die. His reckless lifestyle, his desperate and unnecessary search for someone to love him just as he was, had resulted in his contracting HIV, then AIDS.

To this day, I live with sorrow. I live with anger. Both are multi-faceted. Jim never gave me the opportunity to tell him how much I loved him. Even as he matured and (I hope) grew comfortable with his sexual orientation, he neglected the people who were some of the first to accept and support him. He turned his back on us, and I will never have the chance to hug him, to look into his beautiful brown eyes and let him see his wonderful person reflected in my eyes. I'm angry that his being carelessly promiscuous caused his death.

Jim, as much as you believed you were running to something when you left us that afternoon so many years ago, I'm just as convinced you were running from something as well.

Sadly, I will never truly know.

My friend, wherever you are right now, I hope you found what you were looking for.

xo

Posted at 9:04 p.m.