grandmother. erin failen. technoblade. keith.
When I was young, my parents had a friend call Steve they were so close with we called him Uncle Steve. As my two uncles related by blood lived farther away, I became closer to Uncle Steve than either of them. Sometimes he would visit us in the suburbs, sometimes we would visit him in the city. When we moved houses, Steve would still drive out even farther to visit. He would tell me stories of what my dad was like as a teen, and I would listen to my mom and him talk and talk. He was known for being a good matchmaker and had set up a couple with a son my brother’s age who eventually also become good family friends. Steve was gay but not out in my younger years. We came of queerness in very different cultures, so pretty soon after I told my parents I was Pretty Sure I’m Not Straight, I told Uncle Steve the same thing. He was my link to the historical male homosexual community, which I’ve always felt connected to even thought I’m mainly not a gay man. Although I sometimes struggled to communicate my identity using more obscure/modern queer terms to him, he was my queer mentor who taught me where we came from. We attended our first prides together.
At least, that’s what could have happened. The truth is, Steve died sometimes before I was old enough to remember him outside of photographs. The only genuine memory I have relating to him is when I was trying to figure out how many uncles I had and which ones I was related to and how. The story came to me in bits in pieces over the years, as Steve’s sexuality became less a guess and more of a fact, but here’s how I understand it: Sometime around 2010, there was a day when Steve didn’t get out of bed. He was supposed to go on a date with his then-boyfriend, who he must have been pretty serious with because when Steve didn’t show, the boyfriend went to his home. He must have been getting worried, no answers when he called him on phone or in the apartment. He found Steve dead in his bed. He called the wife of the couple I mentioned earlier, and allegedly she kept the voice message for many years to come. A string of incomphresenible, pained gibberish. Steve had suffered from epilepsy and died of a seizure in his sleep.