‘You know what Grumpy? Life just sucks sometimes!’ you would say with your exotic American accent. We would laugh about it but if I knew know what I knew then perhaps I wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss those ominous words.
I met James in my final year of high-school. He was an exchange student from Virginia. On a scorching day in 1995, I made a bee-line for the stranger in our Theatre Arts class with only the knowledge of how sucky it is to be the new kid guiding me. Luckily he wasn’t psycho but a true gentleman, with dark hair, dark eyes and a ready smile. When we had class together last period we would walk and talk to the bus-stop where my boyfriend would be waiting. Now that I look back on it, the exchange in company was tangible – like having a beautifully cooked roast replaced with a Happy Meal. But when you are a teenager, who can account for your taste? Brand loyalties last long.
James was a lovely young man and he would often bemoan the lack of a lady in his life. This is when I did what I do best and interfered. I decided that I would set him up with my sister, in a ‘Hey! Let’s all go out to Pizza Hut in a group’ way. However, it was pretty clear what my intent was. James certainly didn’t mind as my sis was hot and she didn’t mind because he seemed nice. The person who did mind was an asshole who decided that he would cement his airy fairy designs on my sister the very night of the outing. So the group date did not come to pass. I feel like a dickhead and James a bit of a loser though through no fault of his own. The idiot who snaffled up my sister ended up screwing with her head for 6 months and ‘turned out’ to be gay.
That year we were in a play together and he was doing the lighting for my individual production until he wussed out on the night due to nerves. He hung out with the freaks and I hung out with the geeks and at lunch our paths would often cross.
At the end of the year we all geared up for graduation and the rest of our lives, while James geared up to go home. He wrote in my year book “Thank you for being so nice!” and in those days before email I told him I would write. But I didn’t. My head was too full of summer and love and university. It was a 5 fickle months before I wrote to him and probably not a coincidence that I was single and sad. I didn’t have any designs, I just had nostalgia and more room in my head.
I agonised over the address he wrote, being unfamiliar with the US format and his messy writing – would it get to him okay? I didn’t hear back from him at all with a shrug and a sigh and on with life I went. Then one day a phone call -
‘Hey, you remember James?’
‘Yeah – I wrote to him a while back but he never answered me!’
‘He killed himself. 3 months after he got home.’
I think he shot himself - bloody Americans and their lax gun controls I recall thinking, as if that would stop somebody from killing themselves if they really wanted to. His parents found him. His poor parents. And the letter. The letter sent after his death. I cringed. How awful to get a letter in the mail for a son who was no longer there to receive it. But now I think maybe how nice it might have been; to get a letter that showed what a pleasant young man they had raised, who was liked and remembered a whole hemisphere away.
Sometimes I wonder though. In the days before email and facebook and sms how ‘confirmed’ was the horrible tragedy? Maybe, it was just a rumour gone wrong. Is he 15 years gone, or is he enjoying his own summers full of love and family and good times?
Are you still here James McClary?