On January 12, 2009 I woke up in a panic. It was a Tuesday. I missed Christopher, unbelievably so. I felt like I had been on a drug, perhaps heroin, for two years and was suddenly cut off cold turkey by my drug dealer. I was going through withdrawal. I felt disposable, unwanted, a throwaway. I missed everything about him. Everything! I missed our long soaks in the bath. Our walks with Dugan to the coffee shop and the little monster jumping up on the table trying to drink our Mint Condition coffees. I missed watching hours and hours of The O. C. television program on DVD in bed. I had gotten him the entire gift set. I wanted to hold his hand under the table and in the car again. I wanted to make love to him again. I missed holding him in bed at night.

My heart felt so fragile, so delicate, like an old piece of lace, once white, and made of the threads spun from the very cotton picked from the plants in the fields of my grandfather’s farm by the old, unsteady hands of a distant relative; the lace now yellowed with tattered ends and loosened knots, having been hidden away in the bottom of an old dresser in years of darkness. Once exposed to the sunlight, it crumbled into dust—into the very dust from the ground from which it was grown.

I had been going to bed every night at 7 p.m. taking two or three sleeping pills to put me out, sometimes taking Benadryl, too, and praying God would trade my life with someone else’s who wanted to live but was dying of cancer or AIDS, or someone who needed a heart transplant, but not sure my heart would do anyone any better than it was doing for me. That morning, I felt like the weight of the world was on my chest. I could not take in a full breath of air. I thought to myself, I cannot live one more day—I cannot face another morning. Not tomorrow or the day after or the day after that, or the next, much less next month, or next year. Dugan was barking in his crate in the office, located in the front of the house. He is like an alarm clock. Seven-thirty every morning he is ready to get up if I do not let him sleep with me in the bed. The last few nights I had put him in his crate with his rubber toy stuffed with peanut butter. I haphazardly got dressed, putting on an old pair of jeans and a white T-shirt before going to get him. As soon as I opened the crate, Dugan ran for the back door. I led him to his enclosed area behind the studio and then fixed his food. He had to be confined even in the backyard. Dugan had a bad habit of dragging the grill and outdoor furniture across the patio and yard, then humping the cushions. Anything and everything was a toy to him, whether it was nailed down or not.

An hour later, I drove to the gas station a few blocks from the house to fill up the Jag. Upon returning, I parked it in the studio and lowered the top. I went back into the house and wrote Nicole a letter. In it I asked her to be there for Christopher and to fulfill my wishes with the house and the bank accounts. I reminded her I did not want a memorial service and to call Wil, a long-time friend and owner of the home Christopher and I had stayed in during our trip to the West Coast, to pick up my ashes the next time he was on his way to Laguna Beach. He knew where to spread them. I also included that I had boarded Dugan at the vet’s and that Christopher could pick him up. I had already given Nicole my security codes to my bank accounts, and told her what I wanted to be done at the time she had agreed to be the executor of my will, so I paper-clipped the original will to the letter. I had given her a copy many months ago. Then I wrote her a second letter that I was going to put out in the mail box. In it, I wrote her what I had done, or, rather, was about to do, and for her not to go to the house upon receipt. Rather, she was to call the police and inform them my body could be found in the studio. Then I wrote a note to Mace, another lifelong friend, to thank all my friends for loving me like a family, and that I was sorry and thanked him for all his love over the years. Then I wrote a short note to Christopher, expressing that he had nothing to do with my decision and that he should never blame himself—that I wished him the best in life. I was just sorry I could not have spent more time with him, but the pain of the loss of his love was too gut-wrenching and I could not face what was left of my future without him. That I was a coward and I was sorry for everything, that even if I had never met him the outcome would have most likely been the same.