Goth Dan's countenance was the color of an aspirin you would find while cleaning out your grandmothers bathroom cabinet a week after her funeral. He had powdery, ashen cheekbones. He was attired always in black armor showcasing his chalky limbs and pill-flavorless skin. He despised sunlight. He had beautiful long hair. He was highly indifferent to his own hygiene. He loved to smoke clove cigarettes and play dungeons and dragons or magic the gathering for days on end. His father had disowned him. It is doubtful that he had ever met his mother. Goth Dan who was really into vampires. Who was discharged from the Navy for going crazy on a Nuclear submarine. Goth Dan who was fairly good with computers.Goth Dan who (God love him) never fucking worked.
Goth Dan would sporadically crash with each of us from time to time. He lived with Hale for three years, one day just showing up and spending the night on the futon and then staying inside Hale's guest bedroom for a week not saying anything, playing renaissance warlord games on the computer.
We joked that Goth Dan would fit right at home living in a crawl space, paying thirty bucks a month for rent, boasting that all he needed was a roll of toilet paper, his ten sided dice and his deck of magic cards.
Goth Dan who had "clinical" depression and who could talk about Hegel and Nietzsche with second year grad school competency.
Goth Dan who almost all got us all killed drinking "liquid "cocaine" on New Years eve 2000. The
elixir of Jagger, goldshlager and rupplemintz alchemized was consumed in goblets, each of us imbibing more than our anatomies could stomach, each of us hurtling, passing out, waking up the next morning in a battlefield of abandoned liqueur bottles and carpet stains the size of small islands in the pacific.
Goth Dan who stood up in a very straight, erect, in a stalk like fashion and who would always give you a long overbearing hug every time he would see you. After he would refrain from his gratuitous embrace you would wonder to yourself why your girlfriend never hugged you that tight anymore.
I occasionally would see Goth Dan walking back from Sav-a-lot with two packages of hot dogs, some bread and soda, boasting that this was all he needed to live off of for weeks at a time.
Goth Dan who stayed with Hale for a few weeks last summer before hitching down to Kentucky to meet in person a girl who he met online while playing a fantasy game.
Goth Dan who none of us have heard from since.
The song below, Sisters of Mercy 1959, reminds me of Goth Dan. One morning after a party (my folks were out of town, whole house was a forbidden cumulus of cigarettes smoke) I stumbled upon Goth Dan listening to this song over and over again like a Gothic carousel stationed in Anne Rice's Back yard. The haunting arpeggio of the piano keys waltzing with the lead singers brusque baritone splashed out of the speakers gently, like holy water nipping the side of your cheek bone at mass and realizing you have something to confess.
The ballad is beautiful and poignant and is about a time that is lost that can never be revived.
When I stumbled across this song last night on Youtube I thought about Goth Dan. I wonder if he ever made it down to Kentucky. If he still spends months when he refuses to see the sunlight. If he ever hooked up and married that girl he met while playing role playing games on line.
One thing I am certain of is that next time I see Goth Dan again he will look at me very silently and then give me a long hug, squeezing tighter then most heterosexual males squeeze when they give an embrace, conveying to me with his chalky limbs how thankful he is simply to have someone right next to him at this particular stolen moment of time even as the wind blows wild once again.
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