I'm not even sure why I'm writing this -- catharsis? closure? selfishness? -- but the other day I mentioned to Damian that not that long ago a guy whom I had briefly dated decades ago popped into my head, so I set out to find him online. That I could only remember his America Online screen name(!) made this more challenging than it might seem. But once I, AIM: @leankennyc, figured it out, I looked at his social-media posts and was happy to see he appeared to be doing well -- then opted not to send him a message, because I realized there really wasn't anything to say.
We had only dated at the most a couple of months, and I wasn't really proud of the way I had handled things. We had some laughs yet I didn't think we were a match, but I didn't know how to be direct about it. This, naturally, made things confusing for him. The relationship culminated in his showing up at my Midtown office one day with a small box of my things that had accumulated at his nearby Hell's Kitchen apartment, and we never spoke again.
Damian told me he got it -- and that he too sleuthed out a former love interest many years ago only to discover the guy he dated had since died. He, of course, was shaken, although he said he recalled that the guy had some health issues at the time of their dalliance, so perhaps it wasn't as shocking as it might have been.
As Damian was fleshing out his story, my Nancy Drew instincts kicked in, so I decided to look for my "ex" again. His name had once again slipped my mind -- his AOL handle was a play on his actual name, which had a way of throwing my memory off -- but then suddenly it came to me ... only this time my search turned up a Legacy.com page: My guy had also since died.
My head started spinning -- I'm still reeling, to be honest -- as I tried to relay to Damian what I had just discovered, almost sheepish that it would sound like I was trying to one-up his surprising story.
As I said, I'm not sure why I'm sharing this. There's no moral to this story -- I don't regret not having sent him a message a few years ago, as I'm not convinced he would have liked to have heard from me. (No one had exactly wronged anyone, it was just one of those things.)
But I guess it's always unsettling -- even as we get older -- to realize how fleeting life truly is. (And also: Am I the only one who constantly experiences these weird coincidences?)*
Steve Lucas -- dba AIM: @lucasteve -- was a Broadway singer and actor about four years younger than I am, so would have been just 51 when he died in September 2022.
That his obituary noted that he "went to the Lord" after battling brain cancer (heartbreaking) and that he "sang at First United Methodist Church for several years" in DeLand, Fla., rather than the fact that he studied at the New England Conservatory, lived and worked for years in Manhattan, and had credits in productions of "The Phantom of the Opera" (U.S. and Stuttgart's "Das Phantom der Oper") and "Miss Saigon" (U.K.), hints to me that his family might not have fully embraced his theatrical way of life.
But whatever the case, I will forever remember him as a strapping, talented, 6-3 ginger who was kind and patient with me when I was adjusting to single life in New York City, while still nursing a long-term broken heart I'd brought with me from D.C.
RIP, handsome.
*Speaking of coincidences: While backtracking I came to realize I'd thought of Steve when the impending closing of “Phantom” was announced in September 2022 -- the same month he died.
Kristin Hölck and Steve Lucas in "Das Phantom der Oper" in Stuttgart, Germany
Show postcard
