Or Not to Be
It was a seemingly random Tuesday in February. I sat bored in my work chair, reviewing some staffing policy for work when my phone lit up. A text from my friend Ethan read: “Hey there, give me a call when you get the chance.” When he answered my call, the first thing I asked was whether I should be scared. “Yeah,” he said. Then, with a recognizably meticulous pause, he added, “Dev’s passed away.” They knew right away that it was an overdose, and it had been made clear it had been intentional.
I wish I could tell you this was surprising to me. Shocking, yes. Surprising, no.
Dev Searcey strutted into my life nearly a decade earlier. She was the short, chic, sassy BFF to Ethan, a pal I’d made sometime in the Tumblr era. The first time I met her was when Ethan brought her to my 2018 New Year’s party. She spent the evening nursing a drag queen who’d drank too much, before ultimately succumbing to her own overindulgence on a clubroom sectional, passed out beside Ethan. They looked like a renaissance painting.
Anytime I described Dev, I’m sure I used the words crazy and unpredictable—not in a bad way, in a familiar way. She was crazy and unpredictable like I am crazy and unpredictable. In fact, there were many ways in which we were alike. Besides the fact that we spent most of our adult lives creating almost identical career paths in HR, both of us were proud and loyal Leos, known for coloring outside the lines and making sure to tell you about it. We’d created personalities which extended beyond the persons we were. She was meticulously eccentric like me, she was devoted to those she loved like me, she was an esteemed storyteller like me, and most of all, she was also in on the joke of it all. I often refer to myself as a head writer. One of the only other people to whom I’d bestow that title is Dev Searcey.
That’s why, when I first heard about her suicide, there were two thoughts that sat with me for the first couple of weeks. For one, I was concerned about Ethan. He has a wonderful, angelic husband, but Dev was his person. It was triggering to watch someone experience that kind of loss, and my primary concern was knowing he’d be alright. That was pretty easy to do because the other thought was harder to admit: I felt some kind of trust that Dev had made the right decision for her. It was too familiar a concept not to. I couldn’t help but understand the logic. It came from that archetype, the head writer. I knew the urge to cancel the whole series all too well. There have been two distinct times in my life I’ve been suicidal—the first being when I was nine years old—and both times, I knew the gravity of what I was choosing. I don’t look back and feel as if I was any less logical than I am now.
In fact, my stance on such a willing exit has only become more accepting as time has gone on. What I used to consider selfish, I now consider none of my business. It’s not that I think anyone should take their own life, but I’ve grown to be almost disturbingly supportive of anyone who truly feels like it’s the right thing for them. It’s hard for me not to, if I don’t want to be hypocritical. I have been in that shadowy space. Nothing about it feels irrational in the moment. There is a clarity you will never comprehend unless you’ve been there.
In the years after I recovered from my childhood breakdown, I often thought about how much pain I could have dodged had I been brave enough to pull the plug before adolescence. On the other hand, admittedly, I’m just like most other people when I acknowledge that now, I’m glad I hadn’t. Especially the second time around. I think of everything I would have missed since my mid-twenties and can’t imagine my life ever being complete without everything I’ve experienced, for better or worse, over the last decade. I guess the easiest way to sum all of this up is to say that what I used to feel superior about surviving, I now feel more lucky to have survived. Maybe that makes sense, maybe it doesn’t.
It was only about a month after Dev died that I found myself feeling everything other than acceptance about what she had done. It was as if I’d backslid on the muddy mountain of grief, into the anger and sadness of it all. And now, over a month after that, I think it’s because the fact that Dev wasn’t coming back had finally bled into all the other absences I carry. For as many people as I’ve been lucky enough to have written into my show, I’ve seen so many departures. I used to monitor the weekly-updated Comings and Goings section of the Days of our Lives message boards as a teenager, and sometimes I can’t help but feel like I’m still doing the same thing with my own life. It’s still hard, but a lot easier, when the goings are by my own choosing. When they’re spontaneous, like Dev’s sudden disappearance, this always seems to happen. I think because it makes me wonder if I’ll control my own exit one day. It brings up a lot of questions for me, like why some people get to make the choice and some don’t. And is one really better than the other? And what’s the point of going on when you know others who won’t?
I found myself revisiting past losses. Of course, there were those which were purely out of anyone’s control. Like my dear friend Bobbi Capps, who had every reason and will to live but was robbed by an aggressive cancer. Or my Uncle Andrew, who had built one of the strongest, most respectable lives anyone could wish for, but was weathered to fragility by a slow and cruel form of dementia. Then, there were those I’ll never fully understand. It’s no secret that my cousin Wedo’s death affected me, arguably more than anything else in my life ever has or will again. Part of that is because while the story has always been that he fell asleep at the wheel, we’d had more than one conversation about his own flirtations with ending his life before his fateful kiss with the front-end of a semi. And what about those voluntary losses that happen at the speed of drooping molasses? Like my dad, who’s watched for decades as the white-picket life he used to enjoy becomes further and further away as he drifts into the dark space of chronic drug addiction. Or my ex-husband, who’s made no more than a couple shallow attempts to shake his own addictions for the sake of saving relationships I know he genuinely cares about. It’s all so bewildering to me—not only who gets to stay and who doesn’t, but who gets the desire and who doesn’t. The fact is, sometimes you just can’t reignite someone’s pilot light if it’s gone out.
How lucky I was, shortly after Dev’s death and all the confusion that flooded into me thereafter, to run into Peter Staley on California Street. My friends Jake and Logan were walking home with me after dinner at Savina’s one Wednesday evening when I spotted the short and skinny man walking from the Convention Center toward his hotel. He caught my eye and I stopped walking. “Are you Peter Staley?” I found my mouth spouting out. Logan, Jake, and Peter were all as surprised as I was to hear it. We all paused, and then Peter said, “Yes, I am.”
“Can I meet you?” I said, completely on auto-pilot, and was overjoyed when he said of course I could. I gushed a million miles a minute about everything he’s done for gay men. Peter Staley was, after all, the most prominent face of ACT UP, whose mission led thousands of people to fight over the years for more accessible HIV/AIDS treatment and care. He has also been a strong and loud advocate for those in the gay community who have fought addiction. And he also wrote the book Never Silent, of which I bought an autographed copy in 2021 because I figured I’d never have the chance to meet him in person. He listened to my fangirl praise with genuine eyes and offered me a hug at the end. He asked if I was in town for the AIDS conference for which he was here to speak, and I told him no, I just knew who he was. I was proud to say it because I know I’m in the minority of gay millennial men who have the wherewithal to owe our very existence as we know it to him. Later, I posted about meeting him and he reposted my story, adding, “He was so sweet. He was the best of us.”
And just like that… I was back. I can’t explain it any further, really. It was the refuel I didn’t know I needed. The reminder that sometimes the purpose of anything isn’t clear. Questions are what make the world go round; answers are few and far between. I don’t take them for granted.
The truth is, Dev’s death shook me most because we were so much alike, I think it made me question whether our final destination might be the same. After all, why shouldn’t it be? I’m no better than she was, and I don’t deserve to be here anymore than she did. I had no idea when the dark inclinations to end it all were sneaking up on me before, so how can I know whether they will again? I’m only human, and like Dev, whose dark humor was also a somewhat honest peek at her understanding of this world’s dark absurdism, I have felt so many times like nothing really matters. It was not only the loss of my iconic friend but a potential roadmap for my own demise. (I told you I’m a Leo, did you really not think it wasn’t going to come all the way back to me?)
The other truth is, thankfully, Peter Staley’s walk-on cameo also shook me because we are so alike. Peter is my hero because he’s dedicated his life to not only his own survival, but the survival of his kind. His pilot light is an intergenerational torch. His desire to live goes far beyond himself. I’m lucky, not superior, to feel the same way. The greatest thing I would have missed out on over the past ten years, had I given in to the alluring promise of what my mom used to call the permanent solution, is what I playfully call my mom era. It has been the greatest joy of my adult life to shift my concern away from me and point the light at those whom I can support and enjoy, in knowing they’ll likely and hopefully be here long after I’m gone, no matter the exit storyline. Seeing Peter—an ironically tiny man—reminded me that, while it’s easy to dive deep into the pits of despair, there is another option. We can wake up each day and decide not only to stay, but what it all means. Nothing we choose to give meaning is meaningless.