A friend died last weekend of an accidental drug overdose.
I feel very little.
I had mourned losing him a long time ago.
He was the first person I had sex with in my dungeon. And we had really good sex.
Long before we played together he told me about his previous issues with meth. I talked to a mutual friend and was told that his recovery seemed real.
We had good sex. A couple weeks later things got odd. Nothing I could put my finger on.
My shrink picked up on it though. (She treats my kinks as sideshows and realizes that the kinky have the same underlying issues as the vanilla.) She told me that while I could still maintain friendship that I couldn't handle his issues and my own at the same time. She said that I needed some emotional distance.
A couple weeks later he told me that the change that I didn't quite notice was when he started drinking alcohol before breakfast.
I took him to the Queen Anne neighborhood for an A.A. Meeting. While it turned out that the meeting had been rescheduled it gave us time to talk.
A following weekend was when things went bad. We had made plans to get together over the long weekend. He didn't show. The next day he called apologetic having had a meth relapse. We planned to get together to talk later that day. He didn't show. He called apologetic. We planned to get together to talk later. He didn't show.
I never fully trusted him after that weekend.
We got together for gym workouts. After one workout we had sweaty good sex in my bedroom.
We planned to get together for more sweaty good sex. He came over to tell me that his A.A. sponsor had told him that he wasn't ready. I would never see him naked again.
He seemed to spiral down through a series of less complicated jobs. His beautiful technical mind seemed to atrophy. Conversation got more simplistic. He got less patient. He became less reliable.
Most of the people that I know in the BDSM community wouldn't play with him anymore as either a top or a bottom. Occasionally he tried to use us as references for BDSM play, and that would be embarrassing.
A couple months ago he asked me for BDSM play. I didn't trust him, but I didn't want to tell him no. I suggested that being seen in responsible public play that we could start work on rehabilitating his reputation in the BDSM community. Public play offers a measure of protection for both the top and the bottom.
A couple weeks later I heard through the grapevine that he had relapsed again.
A week ago I heard through the grapevine that he had died.
I will miss him, but people in the community saw this coming for a while.
