A 19 Year Old Mystery Solved

Last night I get a message from this guy David who lived next door to me for a semester in college.

I'm gonna make a long story short.

David had a roommate named Gary whom I had a giant crush on. Gary and I spent a lot of time together talking and hanging out. He would sing songs and tell me stories about his family. The holidays. His mom. His dad. Soup his mom made. Sports. Gary loved sports. I loved Gary.

Then Gary died. David found him. Suicide? The rumor was that it was auto erotic asphyxiation but his family was orthodox and the police didn't want to tell a grieving orthodox Jewish mother that her son died jerking off so they went with suicide (go figure) but truly no one will ever know - but if you knew Gary - you knew he didn't kill himself. Here's another interesting fact... while talking to David this morning he told me that when going through Gary's stuff after the death he found a pair of women's panties in with Gary's belongings and thought that maybe Gary might have been getting some action... Now Gary and I spoke of everything and we both swore we were virgins at the time... I believe him... I know I was... but I'm wondering if Gary didn't have a side that he was just unable to share with his other orthodox friends. A side that involved ropes around necks and women's panties? He was found naked with the belt to his bathrobe around his neck. Also, odd that we would be so drawn to each other. Maybe we saw something in each other way back then that we didn't really know about or understand at the time.

So I get this call from David last night. It had been about 17 years since I spoke to him. I saw him on a daytime talk show once in the early 90's. He had crashed celebrity wedding and milked it for all it was worth. Talk shows, Howard Stern... he cashed in on his 15 minutes and that was the last time we spoke. David tells me that he found a post on line about someone who found a letter in a bottle on a beach 18 years ago (19 years ago at this point I guess) and those pictures above you are of the letter that I put in the bottle. This person framed them (acid free mats I'm assuming) and put them on his/her wall. So I googled it and found these pictures on a Dave Matthews Band web-site.

How crazy is that? I wrote that letter when I was 18 or 19 years old. It's all about Gary and what happened and memories of him if I remember correctly. Then I put it in a bottle and threw it off the rocks near a small sea side town.

A 19 year old mystery solved on this day, March 13th 2007.