Part 3: MD – Enigmatic
In high school I had a core group of friends who were eccentric creatives. They were intelligent, fiercely independent and anti-establishment. My first big crush was on DV and we were (and still are) good friends. He fooled around with other girls but never with me, and for a while, I was hurt, until senior year, when DV and the vast majority of my male friends came out as gay. DV told me, just a few years ago, that he never wanted to “experiment” with me because he adored me and never wanted to hurt my feelings.
DV’s best friend was MD. They played in an alt-band together and I don’t think I ever missed a show. The year of the “Out”, MD was amongst my group who also openly declared himself as gay. MD and I sometimes had a strained friendship. Perhaps a part of him may have felt jealous of my close friendship with DV. Then again, it’s also possible that he was just trying on an abrasive personality from time to time as part of teenage development. In other words, maybe he was just a prick on occasion.
Nonetheless, we were friends and well after high school we’d see each other when the gang would gather for drinks. When I moved overseas, I’d send MD Christmas cards and get news of him through DV. I didn’t know too much about what he was up to, other than he didn’t have a steady partner and he was living downtown in the gay village. Even his friendship with DV was full of spats and episodes of MD being a prick and there were times they wouldn’t communicate for a few months.
Then, one day DV called me to tell me that he had just learned that MD had died of AIDS. DV didn’t even KNOW that MD was HIV positive, let alone sick in the hospital. His friend since childhood was dead at the age of 24, and he never got to say goodbye. DV explained that just a few weeks earlier MD had decided to give away all of his possessions, and had insisted on giving DV his entire record collection, despite protests. Still, in DV’s mind, nothing really clicked that something was wrong. MD was just being, well, MD. He had always been prone to eccentricities and radical decisions.
What saddened DV the most was that MD died alone. He didn’t tell anyone that he was HIV positive. From as much as DV could gather, he wasn’t even under treatment for it. And like many of our group at the time, MD had not yet come out to his parents or siblings. So, when he got ill, he just decided to let the disease take him. True to his alt-rock convictions to the very end, he must have felt it was better to burn out than to fade away.
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