(31/32) “Carmine ended up moving down to Florida to start a new life. Both of us dated a lot of other people, so there’d be long periods where we didn’t talk. But we never lost touch. We even talked on the phone a few times last year. It was always about regular stuff. I never started crying, or said: ‘I still love you,’ or anything like that. We were getting too old for that movie shit. But we’d talk about things that happened. Sometimes we’d remember things differently, and we’d start arguing over who was right. But we’d always be laughing. Until one day he just stopped calling. I thought maybe I’d made him mad. Because the last time we spoke, I’d been joking about the time he got crabs in Vegas. But then weeks went by and I hadn’t heard from him. So I started to think that maybe he was in jail or something. But one morning I typed his name on the Internet and found out that he passed away. His family was bringing him home to be buried in Newark. I wanted to go to the visitation, but I thought it would be kinda weird if I showed up. I’d be the fly in a bucket of buttermilk. So instead I lit a candle in my apartment and cried the whole afternoon. I still dream about him almost every night. And I still sleep with a teddy bear that he gave me. He was the only one who ever knew me. It wasn’t always good, especially toward the end. But when I was with him I felt like I had a place. When I came home at night, there was somebody who actually wanted me to be there. And you can’t just let go of something like that. Especially when you’d never felt it before. And you’ve never felt it since. Carmine was the only one who ever loved Stephanie.” The Tanqueray Trust: https://bit.ly/2ZUjifW
