=What does it matter? I am already dead anyway.=

The first time I met him, we were at the same fast food joint nearby school. He was tall, so I noticed him. Back then, he seemed younger, in the same way that I seemed younger, kind of unformed, still with loose edges. We made small talk. There was something in his eyes I recognized, something like a gleam that I knew. It turned out we were both fiction writing majors. Both at the same level in the curriculum. Both a little older than the average student (though still young enough to pass for their age).

We talked about our class work and how similar it was, gogol, the nose, writing. We talked about him, computers, burning man, a life well lived. We talked about me, shy, learning how to live, my love of food, coffee, stories.

I saw him every so often for a year or so in which we exchanged weighted hellos. I wondered if I wasn't with Eric might something have happened. Nothing did.

I befriended a young woman who knew him and though she never fully divulged, she gave me enough of a composite to understand that though he seemed different and unusual, his proclivities for some things were beyond my taste.

As she and I grew closer, I saw him more and more. By this time he'd finished his bachelor's and was working on his master's as well as teaching computer applications on campus; he was heavily involved in the fiction department. I took some time away from the department to do my general studies and loathed the department from afar with it's weird cliques (of which, of course, he took part).

I remember once we spent some time in his office, the three of us, and it was slightly awkward. He showed me the first video I ever saw on the internet and I remember being astounded at such a feat. The previous night Jon Stewart appeared on some talking head show on CNN and got into a shouting match, the next day we watched it in his office. The books on his shelves were part books I'd read (sci-fi, fantasy, some classics) and a lot I hadn't.

When things soured between my friend and he, he began to ignore me somewhat, which was okay, I supposed, since I seemed guilty from knowing so many things about someone I had only really spoken to once. He also seemed harder now, his edges cooked by drugs and alcohol and misplaced trust. The innocence he had was gone. That gleam was shielded.

Maybe I had grown harder too.

I heard his name bandied about. I clicked on his myspace profile. I saw him around campus.

Story goes: he was up late writing and had an accident. Died around 1:15 a.m. Trying to finish a novel. His thesis. He was 34. His name was Frank.