I don't know how to talk about this. I haven't known how to talk about this since it happened. So, I'll start with the most relevant quote: "I lost my best friend."
I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch that particular GO S1 scene ever again. Because I did. I lost my best friend of 22 years, my spouse, my Mate, unexpectedly last year, 18th November 2025, three days before my birthday. Thoracic aortic aneurysm. We were all four of us here in the same room when he was suddenly just...gone.
Snap your fingers. That's how long it took.
Two weeks later I had to cradle our two-year-old cat as she went, too. She didn't want to be here without him.
We're all fucking traumatized. Just because it's been almost six months hasn't changed that in the slightest.
There are more details on his old tumblr page (drougnor.tumblr.com) as long as Tumblr didn't delete it. It has a funding thingy on it that's still active because we were left with pretty much nothing, but that's...I'm trying to resurrect the writing and the jewellry-making from the ashes to keep us afloat, but then I think about the container full of ashes on the shelf and get side-tracked into dwelling on what-ifs that don't help a damned thing.
Why all the questions about these so-called 'air fryers' anyway? Who in their right mind would want to 'fry' 'air' ? Isn't fried chicken enough? Now you gotta go and 'fry' 'air' like it's some sort of LA diet fad? Granted, given the quality of the air in LA in the 80's, frying THAT batch wouldn't have taken very much . . .
So a while ago your followers were talking about trying to find a better job for your mate, but you said it would be better for him to explain what he did. It was about this point that real life consumed me for a time, and when I came back I couldn't see if that conversation had gone anywhere. Did the mate ever make a post about what he does/what kind of job he wants?
That is a very good question; I don’t remember if he ever did that or not.
@drougnor! This means you, bae. Make with the talking words!
drougnor answered your question:I’ve officially been on a mac computer for a year,...
But did you hear? Windows is getting BASH!!
On a serious note: that's pretty cool, assuming they don't hamstring it. It does open up certain opportunities that used to be a touch easier on apple. But that speaks mostly to people who have a lot more knowledge in general.
Anon asks: “Anyway - if you need a topic to cheer you up, I'd love to hear more about the whole magical weekend. How did it come about, that you only had 3 days to pack up a full apartment? Did your mate propose spontaneously? Or was he determined to follow a previous plan No Matter What?”
OH FUCK, THAT WEEKEND.
So, a long fucking time ago when dinosaurs ruled the earth and some of us dumbasses were still using Dial-up internet, I reconnected with a man I’d met a few years previous in Maine and New York. He even spent an (innocent!) weekend with me in my apartment in NY because there was iCON at SUNY Stonybrook and geekery to be had. We started talking and even though I’d already given up on the idea of dating, well…interest kindled, and I had to point out to my dear dumbass that no, we would never actually get to date if he didn’t remember to ASK ME. So he did, and we continued on our long-distance, Kentucky to Maine internet chatting, except now with thoughts of visiting each other for reasons other than just “Hey, you area not an ax-murdering bag of dicks.”
Then came June of 2003. He was fretting because the building he and friends had rented had been sold out from under them, and they had until the end of the month to vacate. He had arranged to live with another friend…
…and then that friend proceeded to drop off the face of the earth.
We knew time was short, and I (keeping in mind that he of course was not an ax-murdering bag of dicks) told him that if all else failed, I’d come rescue his ass and he could live with me. It would be a sharper relationship jump than we’d planned on, but eh. Needs must and he wasn’t allowed to be homeless.
The third weekend of June, I fell off of a horse because of someone else’s fucking incompetence and severely injured my back. I didn’t break anything, and nothing was bleeding, but when you can only walk around hunched over like a set of perpendicular lines, SHIT AIN’T RIGHT. The local hospital (Murdermount, yo) only did an X-ray, checked my piss for blood, gave me the weakest shit scrip you can give someone for muscle relaxants (that did nothing) and sent me home.
That same day, just after I hurt my back, a black and white kitten, about 5 weeks old, came out from under a neighbor’s porch, informed me that I was HERS, and refused to let go. Well. I can take hints. I took the kitten home with me when I limped my way home.
I couldn’t work all week because I couldn’t drive. Two days before the rescue had to happen, I could actually stand up straight again. We were still on for Operation: Please Rescue My Homeless Ass. The drive was going to be painful, but I knew I could do it.
(A thing worth mentioning: at the time, I actually did have a decent job and my health was not in the crapper. The early warning signs were in place, but I was nowhere near disabled.)
June 27th:
That Friday, I woke up and I felt great. Like I hadn’t been injured at all. I did not trust this magical bout of fortune, but I wasn’t gonna turn it down, either. I speedily packed up that morning, then I looked at the cats. Destiny was several years old, hated fucking traveling, and had proved that he could hang out on his own for a few days outside and he’d be fine and chill.
The five week old kitten…not so much.
The drive from Kentucky to Queens took 16 hours. Two of those hours were spent stuck in traffic FUCK YOU, NEW JERSEY. The kitten (Rona) slept on my lap for the entire drive.
By the time I get into Queens and park, I am about to explode. I bolt up the steps. Amireal2u’s mother opened the door for me. I thrust a kitten at her, screeched, “BATHROOM” like a constipated dinosaur, and bolted for the room in question.
(Meanwhile, the Mom stared at the kitten. The kitten stared back. “Mew?” said Rona. “Mew,” said the Mom, thus both establishing that yes, this was insane. Then she handed the kitten off to ami, who repeated the Mew? Mew conversation verbatim.)
We ate dinner like normal Jewish people (I love being adopted by my family food nom nom nom). Ami and I went upstairs with the legit intent of going to sleep and then leaving in the morning.
June 28th:
“Can you sleep?”
“No. Can you?”
“Fuuuuck. No.”
“Wanna just go?” <—that was ami instigating things, btw.
“Sure, what the hell. We know how to sleep in cars, anyway.”
We traded back and forth on driving once or twice, and by 9am we were in Augusta, ME—which was making that trip in the shortest amount of time you can make it and not be going 90 mph the entire way. We called up Future-Mate and said, “Guess where we are?” in bright, chirpy, punchdrunk voices.
“Uhhhhh, New York?”
“Nope. We are in MAINE.”
“FUCK HOW DID YOU GET HERE SO FAST!?!”
“We are awesomely swift, efficient creatures. We’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Holy SHIT.”
It should ALSO be noted that at this juncture, ami had never met this man. She handled “Let’s go meet Jer’s strange maybe-boyfriend!” like a pro. She also teased him mercilessly before they ever met, which set good patterns.
Get to Bangor. Go into Brewer. Find the apartment house. Meet the barefoot mate in the yard.
STARE for at least thirty seconds in complete consternation. We’d met before but I really do need a moment when greeting people I haven’t seen in a while, so it probably looked like a BSOD moment.
“You did not come all this way to not give me a hug, right?”
“Hug!” BSOD moment ends. “Yes, I can do hugs.”
He snuck a kiss, too. Sly bastard.
I knew pretty much right then that I was so, so screwed. Dating would be nice but was pretty much unnecessary. Being held by the mate was like finally finding the perfect complimentary element to an equation that had been driving me batshit insane for years. It was like stability and familiarity and warmth and relief and some very quiet joy.
Then ami got to officially meet the future-mate, once we actually stopped with the hugging. She had a grand shovel speech planned, but I can’t recall when she got to implement it.
So, for everyone keeping track: At this point, it’s about 11am on a Saturday. I woke up at 7am Friday. I have napped in the back of a car for like 3 hours. I have literally driven halfway across the country.
The mate knew in advance that he was going to have to pay to have a tow hitch put on my car. I don’t think any of us expected UHaul to be assdicks about it, but live and learn.
Then: “I need to go let my parents know that I’m moving out of state. Do you guys mind if we drive up there and I introduce you?”
*blink blink*
“We can go swimming, too!”
Swimming! Yes. Swimming. This is acceptable bribery for yet more driving.
So, we drive 3 hours north. I meet the mate’s parents, who were, at the time, very nice people who hugged me and left me mentally going “BWUH!?” for at least five minutes because help, unpredicted body contact. We get shown where we will get to sleep that night (thank fuck). The kitten settles in to pester the elder female queen kitty who was not impressed with the houseguest(s).
We do not immediately go to the lake. The proto-mate has no swim trunks. Or shorts. WE DRIVE ANOTHER HALF-HOUR NORTH to go to Houlton (look for it on a map!) to visit the only Walmart in a very vast region. …I also had to buy a swimsuit. I was not warmed about swimming potential. I’d just expected to drive a lot. (Wait, no, we all had to secure the +2 suits of swimming.)
We go to the lake, and there is indeed, bribery swimming. Mostly what I remember about the lake was that it was not a frigid pool of ice water, which is what this lake does for most of the year, summer included.
We go to the parents’ house. We sleep…I think. I assume there was sleeping; I can’t remember anything except basement and the horrified giggling of the so-punch-drunk-that-reality-is-bending.
June 29th:
Get back up the next day. Drive the three hours back to Bangor. Now it’s time to get the Uhaul from the shop annnnd spend the entire afternoon packing up the contents of what is only supposed to be a one room apartment.
It wouldn’t have been that bad—the mate had pre-packed, after all—but that FUCKING CHAIR slowed us down. I’m still trying to figure out how we ran out of room in the UHaul trailer and still had to put a television in the car. How. I do not even.
Then we go to Olive Garden (NOMS, VITAL NOMS) to wait for another Maine-based friend of ours so we can say hi. Said friend is late because said friend didn’t want to be late and therefore was flying down the interstate doing 90mph when the cops made him pull over. He is a dear, but sometimes cause and effect…don’t.
By the time we figure out that we really should LEAVE, it’s midnight. We climb into the car. There is an immediate adventure wherein ami learns that reversing with a trailer is the world’s biggest pain in the ass. Twenty minutes later, we get on the ACTUAL freeway, and begin the return to Queens.
You guys do see the problem, right?
The only things I remember from the drive back was ami almost puking at the roadside from exhaustion and driving and exhaustion, and this fucking awesome diner somewhere in south Connecticut. The food was blessed by the universe to be awesome, the waitress was nice, and we felt recharged and ready to tackle New York traffic.
We’ve never found that diner again. Some days I am convinced that it was a very effective mirage.
We get to Queens. Everyone pretty much falls down in a pile on the carpet on the third floor after basic bags are unpacked. …I don’t remember anything else from that day. IT IS GONE.
June 30th:
The next day, there was showering and cleanup and food. The mate had apparently picked up on that element of complimentary being, because he dropped to one knee and proposed marriage.
You’re fucking right I said yes.
We gave ourselves a few days to recover from the actual insane weekend rush of fetching the mate. Then we drove back to Kentucky. Amireal2u came with us because…*thinks* …reasons. Oh, yeah, spending summer with me/us because I had to take the mate back to Maine in August for family stuffs, so I could drop her off in NY.
July 4th:
Driving back to Kentucky was terrible because it was MOTHERFUCKING JULY.
My car was not pleased about pulling a trailer, even a small one, over the many mountains that exist between New York and Kentucky. We couldn’t run the air conditioner. We had to leave the heater running AT FULL BLAST so that the car would dump heat (on us) and not overheat the engine.
MY FEET STILL REMEMBER THE BURNING FIRE OF HEAT ON THEM WHEN IT ALREADY WAS 100 FUCKING DEGREES.
We get back to my place. It’s the 4th of July and none of us care. Fireworks are meaningless and freedom is not having to bake in a car-oven.
Then my parents call. I am not prepared for this phone call. I have not told them about proto-mate, who is now fiance-mate, because I don’t tell them anything unless circumstances forced it.
I get through the trauma of telling my parents I’m engaged and NO, they did not get a FUCKING SAY IN THE PROCESS, they were not the ones marrying the man.
My mother calls the owner of the house, my uncle, and informs him that there is now a crowd in the house. I am then informed that I have been evicted.
Yes, folks, that’s right, my own family member evicted me from my place of residence WITHOUT WARNING.
He was on the shit list with the rest of the family ALL SUMMER LONG, especially when family figured out where we forced to live *after* that little eviction. (Re: Meth lab in stone-throwing distance.)
We have 3 days to find another place to live.
Didn’t we just do this?
July 6th:
Okay.
My parents came up (Our baby is marrying a dick-bag ax murderer, we must stop this or else give our glaring approval!). Residence is acquired. It is a 12x60” singlewide trailer in a rental cluster, but the inside is nice and does not make me want to check for bodies buried under the bed. Fine. I can work with this…except I have no furniture. All the furniture I was using at the other place belonged to the house.
Fuuuuuuuck.
Guess what we had to do next.
July 7th:
My father got the van and drove himself, myself, fiance-mate, and ami ALL THE FUCKING GODS DAMN WAY TO FLORIDA. Because that’s where my furniture was still packed away.
To this fucking day I STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY IT DID NOT OCCUR TO MY ASSBRAINED PARENTS THAT THE FURNITURE WAS SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE FINDING NEW PLACES TO LIVE KIND OF NEED. WHAT THE HELL. They could have saved us an entire fucking trip.
By this point, it wasn’t punch drunk bunnies and delight. It was quiet, seething hatred.
We get to Florida. Open the side door for the van. The mate sticks his head out.
The mate gets back in the van and tries to seal himself inside out of sheer horror. Maine boy had never been further south than Long Island. Maine boy was not prepared for Florida in July. Few truly are.
The plan: Go to bed, rest, sleep. Maybe food. Get up and just chill tomorrow because fuck no.
July 8th:
So I decide in my brilliance that I wanted to take everyone to Gainesville that day. Gainesville is an hour west of my parents. The vehicle we took to Gainesville decided that its brakes had to catch fire right then and there.
Guess who had to walk 2 miles to the closest public phone? Hint: Three angry motherfuckers. The mate had given up on not being hot. Ami was probably trying to figure out if killing people would fall under insanity defense due to heat stroke. I was just fucking mad that now the food was too far away. (Priorities)
I don’t remember how my Dad came out to meet us, but when he got behind the wheel of BRAKES ON FIRE van…they worked normally. Perfection. No smoke or flame.
Son of a bitch, I fucking hated that man in that moment.
We go back to the house. SCREW EVERYTHING. We’re going to go back to Kentucky tomorrow and unpack for a second fucking time.
I did introduce the mate to a gigantic-ass banana spider before we left, though. He was really not impressed.
July 9th:
We get back to Kentucky. There is collapsing and sleeping at the place I’ve been evicted from because fuck your couch, that’s why.
July 10th:
We speedily unpack yet another fucking trailer. Excellent! We have a bed! Furniture! My television! Game systems! All the comforts of home! (Oh and also plates.)
At this point we also had no job. Getting one of those again was entertaining.
July 12th:
My back said Fuck you, you fucking fuck and reminded me that it was hurt by making me drop to the floor. Owie. Which is how I discovered that I have permanent nerve damage.
So.
The capper. Because of course a fucking log of batshit insanity needs a cap.
You guys remember that whole east coast blackout of 2003, right?
I took the mate up to the Maine family gathering stuff in August. We finished a week of fucking misery in a tent (OMG I WAS READY TO BURN IT DOWN AND SLEEP IN A GOPHER HOLE) and decided that was enough, nice to see people, but I am going the fuck back to NY where there are civilized things like air conditioner and no screaming loons.
We get into Queens on Wednesday, August 13th. Omg FOOD AIR CONDITIONING BEDS I LOVE YOU PLEASE NEVER MAKE ME LEAVE AGAIN I hope we threw that tent into a bonfire but I don’t remember.
Over dinner, we made plans to go into the city the next day. I kind of wanted to see the Met again before returning to the cultureless vacuum that is the ass-end of the Appalachians, unless by culture you mean bootlegging, spitting, and rampant misogyny.
Thursday afternoon, August 14th, 4:10pm: The mate and I look up in unconcern as the power goes out. Eh. It happens.
Downstairs, ami begins SHRIEKING LIKE AN AIR RAID SIREN. We were baffled and wanted to know wtf was going on.
She had to remind us weird people of something: New York does not get power outages. The last one happened in the 70s.
There is a dutiful checking of watches—nope, no EMP damage, so we aren’t going to die of radiation poisoning any time soon. Good, good. We reassure ami, that no, things are totally fine. This is probably just…weirdness. (It’s us.)
The Mom comes home and informs us that it’s not just Queens. THE ENTIRE EASTERN SEABOARD IS WITHOUT POWER.
The mate side-eyes me. “This is your fault. YOU BROUGHT ME HERE. THE CITY KNOWS. IT KNOWS I DO NOT LIKE IT HERE!”
“At least we weren’t coming back from the museum at the time,” I point out cheerfully. “We would have been without power in a train car in a tunnel that was utterly underwater.”
*blink blink* “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—”
The next two days were fun, though. NYC’s response to no power was to turn everything into the biggest block party in existence. Grills on street corners. People sharing out water bottles. People checking on old folks trapped on 80th and 90th floors of buildings. Eating all of the really good food because it had thawed and it had to go (into our bellies).
The mate keeps saying that if we ever go back to Queens and threaten to visit a museum again, something worse will happen.
Soooo if I ever say we’re going to NY to hit the museum circuit, and then the zombie apocalypse starts, it’s all his fault.
And that, ladies, germs, agendered and otherwise-gendered beings, is how I got engaged.
