Lost Art

I have no idea why we were friends, but we were. Art was as much my opposite as he could be. He was, what we called in those days, a burn out. He smoked, liked music which wouldn't be allowed in my house and talked about rough things. By the time I met him, all the teachers already knew his name, while nearly none knew mine. He had uncontrolled red hair, which he tried to comb up into cow licks like Wolverine. He even once tried to get us to call him Logan. This could have been a connection for us, but I never had the disposable income to be a regular comic reader. So, I even thought the Wolverine fascination was a bit weird.

What we did have was D&D. I have a gaming group I was always looking to grow and he had played, but didn't have a gaming group he currently played with. So, in spite of my discomfort, probably as a result of his persistence, I invited him to the group. It was an odd mix. He didn't become the piranha in the fish tank, as you might suspect, instead he got harassed and taunted and otherwise, became one of us. When we burned characters because we were so fed up with a poorly run campaign, it was his lighter we used. He was one of the ten of us which squeezed into my tan escort to travel the icy, winter streets to go watch Hook.

I remember the conversation I had with him when he learned his girlfriend was pregnant. It was strange to hear him so panicked and strange to talk to him because I hadn't in a while. As often happens in a gaming group, he had gotten a girlfriend who wasn't a gamer and so it meant he didn't play very often. The high school labels fell away and he wanted advice. What advice could I possible give him? Perhaps he just wanted sympathy. I didn't really know for sure, but it was clear we were not just guys who played D&D.

There was a major gap in our friendship after that point as he was forced into an adult life, while I was looking at mine from a long distance. He married his girlfriend and had a daughter, while I selected Western Michigan University and imagined the life of a novelist. I visited his apartment once and only once after his marriage. It was the bookend.

While in school I learned from people still around that his daughter had died from SIDS and he and his wife divorced. I felt for him, but didn't know what reaching out would accomplish. When I would talk to people from home I often asked about Art, but rarely had anyone seen or heard from him. Tim told me, a few years later, that he was working at Ford. A rumor started that he was a Satanist, but I don't know what to make of that.

Do you have people that you search on Facebook on a regular basis hoping that they have made an account? Perhaps I am the only one, but I have a couple of them. Art is one of them. So far, if he has an account, I've never found it.