"Hi," she said, "We went to College together years ago - You were Marcus' friend."
Feigning ignorance, I extended my hand and introduced myself, asking her name.
She said her name was Melanie and that we had a common friend in Marcus, my best friend from high school.
In truth, I *had* recognized her. I had met her a few times through Marcus - She was one of his artsy friends from College... She seemed nice enough, but I'd never really felt comfortable around such folks - She was his friend, but not mine. Nonetheless, it was nice to talk to her, and I asked if she'd kept in touch with him. She told me that after graduating he'd been touring as a musician, until 5 years ago he'd contacted her, explained that he'd had some sort of a vision, and announced his intent to go live in the Amazonian jungle.
She'd not heard from him since.
I had no interest in re-establishing ties from long-ago, but nonetheless couldn't help but wonder what had happened to my old friend.
Marcus and I hadn't talked in many years. We'd been best of friends in high school, as well as the post-high school years, until I'd suddenly broken ties with him, without explanation.
After high school, we had joined the military together. We got out together too, more or less. After getting out, he went on to go to College, and I drifted into a subsistence lifestyle of menial jobs and petty criminality. Otherwise my time was spent at the gym and in martial arts. Our paths were slowly diverging. We'd still hang out on the weekends, and were active in the local bar scene. Folks were used to seeing us out with each other, and if not together they would always ask about the other. During the week, he was embracing campus life, and eagerly extending his social networks among the avante-gard: Artists, poets, and musicians - The kind of people who wore dark colors and smoked clove cigarettes while talking about the clever things they knew.
Marcus and I came to measure our personal successes differently: He got piercings, and I got colored belts.
His own social networks exploded, while my own stayed confined to a few folks I trained with. Outside of training, my time was spent on various illegal ways to augment my minimum wage income - The kind of medium-risk, small-return stuff that eventually results in a criminal record for 99% of the folks who participate. He would frequently point out the dead-end nature of my lifestyle.
Eventually, after a few personal catastrophes (But having dodged the criminal record), I ended up enrolling in College. It felt like I'd shown up to the party late. Marcus was well known on campus, and had a broad social network composed of folks I had little in common with - And honestly, didn't even understand. He took pains to introduce me around, but increasingly it felt like I was living in his social shadow. Being on campus gave me a new outlook and new ambitions, yet all I could see was my old-self reflected in his eyes. His presence made it hard for me to break away from my history. Our dealings became more frustrated, and more frustrating, until I eventually just ceased talking to him.
It was weird, breaking up with my best friend, and it was even weirder to do it suddenly without explanation.
Over years I've always felt guilt about this callousness, and how it must have made him feel...but looking back, a clean break was the only way forward for me - Any discussion could only have served to perpetuate the toxic dynamic that our friendship had become. If he didn't understand my silence, he wouldn't have understood my words, either. I went on to find my own way, make my own friends, and to make my own way on campus independent of my association with Marcus.
While our lives had already diverged in many ways, we were still linked by a dozen threads. We had the same employer and the same group of high-school friends. Same group of bar-scene friends. Over time, one by one, these threads broke, until few remained, and we didn't even run into each other any more.
Eventually I heard that he'd left town to pursue his music, and had done fairly well at it. Occasionally I'd Google him. His lifestyle consisted of traveling, art, music, and living under a medium-sized spotlight. Implicitly, both drugs and women would be very accessible to him. It was a lifestyle which we both would have embraced in our 20's, but which no longer appealed to the man of family and career I'd become. Nonetheless, I was glad for him.
It was a fairly enviable lifestyle, yet he'd traded it for life in the jungle?
Arriving home, I rolled up my sleeves, lit a clove cigarette, and proceeded to interrogate Google. And found nothing.
In the 2000's he'd left a fiery online trail of his various artistic and musical successes, but this trail was now stale, and low in the search rankings. Other Marcuses and other musicians had taken his place in Google's search results.
Armed with personal details that few would know or remember about him, I persisted. Google eventually rewarded my persistence by leading me to the online profile of someone I'd never heard of: Marianne Sky, living in London.
Why had this dolphin been caught in my net? Perhaps someone in the same field who had crossed paths with my friend? Perhaps an ex-girlfriend of his?
Searching for a link to my old friend, I dug deeper, hoping to learn more about Marianne.
Suddenly I found Marcus: Looking back at me, from my computer screen, and dressed up like a female. Marianne Sky *WAS* my old friend. Of all of the things I expected, this was not even on the radar. WTF? Was this a mischievous prank? Some avant-guard publicity stunt?
Further Googling showed someone who had re-invented themselves, in another country, under another name. Actually, multiple alter-egos. They clearly identified as female, and passably so. Although looking at the pictures online, it was difficult to not see Marcus. It's a face I know well.
My reaction was that of stunned confusion. There had never been any hint of this, and it's a struggle to understand how this developed. In high school we were drawn together by a mutual love for the same kind of music, the same sense of adventure, and the same sense of mischief. Like many in high school, we felt we were unique in our sense of alienation. We were fast friends, and a larger group of friends formed around us. We graduated together, joined the military together, we went to bars together. Our taste in women was different, along ethnic lines, which made us the ideal wingmen for each other. We were both serial monogamists and would often go out together with our girlfriends.
The progression of Marcus the high school chum to Marcus the fellow soldier, to Marcus the avante-garde student, to Marcus the musician, and then to Marcus the former friend was natural one. These are lines that are easily drawn, and are dots that connect themselves. It's a narrative that makes sense to all who knew him and who knew us. This latest chapter, however, puts the story in a different section of the library, and is a challenge to reconcile.
It is not that I object to this transition. It is what it is. Growing up, we didn't (knowingly) know any transgendered folks.... it was just pretty underground. But we were no strangers to gay people. One of our high school crew eventually came out, to no one's surprise (Except perhaps his own). Being active in the bar scene, we'd inevitably made a few gay friends.... They were just part of our sprawling social networks - there was nothing otherwise consequential about these associations. They were just part of a larger landscape. His own attitudes to such matters were much like my own: A tolerance born of indifference. Occasionally we'd query such folks about their lifestyles, but our curiosity wouldn't last longer than it took to finish our beer - Our attentions were elsewhere. ("Hey, did you see the rack on that chick? Don't we know her?").
If anything, others would be less surprised if *I* had taken such a path. At the time I had a reputation for outrageous behavior such as drunkenly grabbing the asses of my buddies, or threatening adversaries with sodomy. (Thankfully no-one ever called my bluff, as I wasn't bluffing, and the outcome would have been messy). These were merely behavioral excesses, but could be interpreted as indications of latent homosexuality, if someone chose to.
In Marcus' case, there were no such indications. He was, by any yardstick, a normal North American heterosexual male. Smart, witty, free spirited, but responsible. Cared a lot what people thought about him. A proud person who did well at whatever he applied himself to. His successes, combined with lingering self doubt, had left him with a touch of arrogance. Did sports, played games (board and video), shopped for music, and enjoyed his intoxicants. In other words, like 95% of us at the time. He had never expressed any interest in dudes, or dissatisfaction with being one himself. It wasn't that these conversations were off limits - They just weren't on the radar. Granted we haven't talked in years, but I knew him well, and it's hard for me to come up with a narrative that ends with him turning into a female.
Was the story about him going to the Amazon jungle a deliberate misdirection, in order that he could discard an old identity and adopt a new one? Did he actually go to the Amazon, and did something transformative happen to him there? Curiously, Marcus's online trail ends about 5 years ago, but Marianne's only appeared online two years ago. Meaning there are 3 lost years in between.
Looking at Marianne's pictures, I see no suggestion of a medical transformation. It's merely a guy who has painstakingly changed his hair and clothes so as to appear female. Marianne is a passable female, but Marcus had a deep voice which cannot be covered up with foundation. My wife tells me that most on this path eventually go undergo a medical transformation, and that this shaves a few decades off of life expectancy. It makes me sad for Marcus.
To the best of my knowledge, I'm the only one of the old crew that knows about this. He always kept everyone up to date on his adventures and successes, and his silence regarding this new life-stage is uncharacteristic, though understandable.
Has it not occurred to our other friends that he's been out of touch for 5 years? Perhaps they just assume he's still living the life of a musician on the road, and aren't seeking reminders that they aren't.
I wonder if any of the old crew know about this but aren't talking? Is it my place to let them know? Probably not.
Perhaps he needed to make a clean break in order to become who he felt he needed to.
I don't need his words, because I understand his silence.
* This is a work of fiction/cheap therapy. Many details in this have been fudged to avoid any resemblance to reality.