Tale of Men

ISSUE 2

Drawing of Derrik

By Saul Lyons

Derrik wanted Keith and me to get married. That’s what Keith told me. Derrik had died a few days earlier. He had been found in his bathtub in his small Los Angeles apartment. Hepatitis B killed him because he had HIV, he couldn’t beat it with interferon and it destroyed his liver in a few years time. He didn’t make it to 50.

50 was far too old to live in my mind back when I was in my twenties and wandering around the world falling in love all the time with whatever one could fall in love with. I was that kid who walked along black cliff edges over the vast pacific ocean and told the dark blue sky that faded into pale green on the horizon that I could die right now and all would be just perfect. Huge ocean waves smashed into the rocks below. And I lived on for the next moment like that again and again. I thought I would never live to be 50. Life was all too astonishing to live that long.