(1/7) “Sometimes I’ll visit mediums. And almost always, the...

(1/7) “Sometimes I’ll visit mediums. And almost always, the first thing they say is: ‘There’s a man here with long, gray hair.’ And I’ll smile. Because his hair was the first thing I noticed about him. I was in my twenties. I’d just moved to Austin, and I’d gotten a gig helping decorate a new Italian restaurant called Romeo’s. Like all Italian restaurants, they wanted a seaside mural on the wall. A friend of mine suggested a local artist named Mickey, so I reached out and invited him to see the space. From the moment Mickey walked in, I was intrigued. He wore faded, ripped 501 jeans. He had the most beautiful blue eyes. And there was that long, flowing gray hair. His portfolio was an absolute mess, just a bunch of loose pictures. But I could tell it was real art. The kind that belonged in a gallery, or a museum. Certainly not on the walls of a cheesy Italian restaurant. We ended up grabbing coffee at a nearby café. I could certainly tell he was gay. And I thought he was very handsome. But neither of us were looking for a relationship at the time. Mickey told me that his partner had recently passed away, and he didn’t plan on falling in love again. So we began a beautiful friendship. I started going over to his apartment three or four times a week. We’d go swimming at Barton Springs. We’d smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. He became the ‘gay dad’ that I never had. I opened up to him about everything. I even told him about my depression, and it didn’t cause him to pull away. Mickey told me that he’d been there before. And he promised me that one day things would get better. But it was a hard thing for me to believe. My depression only seemed to get worse as time went by. Until one night I tried to take my own life in the bathtub. After about an hour I realized I wasn’t going to die. So I called Mickey, and he rushed over to my apartment. We drove in silence all the way to the hospital. I had a towel wrapped around my wrist because I was too ashamed for him to see the wound. But as soon as we reached the hospital, the nurse uncovered my arm. And Mickey passed out on the floor.”