When anyone met Schwa he would say, “Hi, I’m Lorenzo Esteban Mulano delgado del Mundo del Toro del Pinche Fucking Fuego, de la Paz de la Esparanza….” He had as many names as Daenarys Targaryen.
When I met Schwa, I was 25 years old. He was 37. My roommates and I had just come home from a Cake concert and were coming down from the LSD we’d taken. It was 1996. Exactly 20 years ago! Our friend Michael showed up around 2am with Schwa in tow. They had met at a dance club that night. Schwa was dressed in drag and I was trying to put wigs on him, but he wasn’t into that idea.
I was so immediately taken by him and when he left I wondered if I’d ever see him again. The very next day, however, he showed up at our house with a camera. He wanted to take pictures of our house. We were painting murals all over the walls because our landlord was going to demolish it and therefore allowed our painting.
From then on, Schwa would quite often show up at our house unannounced and usually after the bars closed because he knew we’d be awake and up to our usual antics, which included painting, smoking pot, playing music and Jenga and video taping it all.
I don’t remember when, but at some point I started to consider him one of my closest friends. We would talk on the phone for hours and he always had interesting stories to tell. He was a high school English teacher and he kept his cross dressing a secret from a lot of people including his family.
He was troubled and drank a lot, but he always gave the best advice and knew me better than almost all of my friends. Every year I threw him a big birthday party, with a theme related to his age. We celebrated the number 4, when he turned 44. Everyone had to bring him 4 things. And I made him a 4 tiered cake.
For his 45th, I had a Schwa'k Hop, and we all dressed like it was 1959, the year he was born. I had a DJ who only spun 45 records, and we drank Colt 45s. I made a bunch of coasters that looked like little 45 records. When I moved to Seattle at the beginning of 2007, he and I had a long talk and shed some tears. We were really going to miss each other.
He did come to visit a couple of times. Another one of his closest friends lived in Seattle too. He and his family once took an Alaskan cruise that departed from Seattle so I got to see him then. In 2009, I was offered a job back in Denver that would pay very well. I thought I would never move back to Denver, but my mother was sick and this was a great job opportunity. Plus, I’d be reunited with my favorite human being next to my mother, Schwa.
My mom and Schwa were my two closest confidants. They both knew me so well but in different ways. I was so happy to be able to start throwing birthday parties for Schwa again too. I was bummed to have missed his 50th. But on his 52nd, I threw him a “52 Card Pick Up” themed party, and everyone dressed up in card related costumes. It was a fantastic celebration, but it was the last party I’d ever throw for him.
Over the next year, his drinking got out of control. His girlfriend of 8 years couldn’t stand him any more. She kept telling me that she hated him and couldn’t even stand to look at him. But she knew that breaking up with him might kill him. He didn’t handle breakups well at all. I saw him struggle through a couple of them over the years, and he would get extremely depressed.
Now he was in his 50s. His cross dressing days were over. He struggled with his identity. He hated the idea of being an old man, especially on his own without his girlfriend. I tried as best I could to show him that he would be ok without her, and that he’d always have me and other friends who loved him. He was also an incredible song writer and musician, and that would never change. But he was heading down a dark tunnel and no one could pull him out.
11 days after his 53rd birthday, he shot himself in the head. For the 6 months prior to that, he had pushed away every one of his closest friends. It was obvious he was preparing for the end. 4 months before he died, in his true dramatic style, his plan was to go to Hawaii and take a helicopter ride over the volcano and jump into it. But he couldn’t do it, I heard because there was a little boy in the helicopter too.
He pushed me away and wouldn’t answer my phone calls. But I kept leaving messages telling him I loved him and missed him, to no avail. He was done with me, because I was trying to help him get away from his girlfriend who kept declaring to me that she couldn’t stand him. I felt bad for her, because she knew that breaking up with him meant he would kill himself. And that turned out to be exactly what happened. After she told him for the umpteenth time they were only going to be friends, he shot himself in her driveway.
Schwa was a force of nature, and his death left a giant hole in my life. He was my number 2 confidant after my mother. He was one of the main reasons I moved back to Denver. He and I had dreams of making costumes together and doing photo shoots. He and I could have accomplished so much together.
My mother passed away 9 months later. Needless to say, my self rebuilding project has been immense. I’m still not done.
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