ROBERT E DUNN
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talk

It is what is inside a person that is hard to know.

Lance, a brilliant high school senior and my good friend, had requested I bring him his homework. It was the first school day he had ever missed. I was ready to deliver.

That took me to his bungalow in the Richmond District of San Francisco, to a modest family home – much like my own. I had been invited many times before. It was a sunny afternoon.

When I entered his bedroom, which was behind the garage, or basement, as we called it then, I saw a music stand. It glistened and felt warm.

I had given up piano to play sports, only to be amazed that I didn't really know this boy. We had the same classes for the last three and a half years.

​I asked, “What instrument do you play?”

“Violin.”

​In addition to being a straight-A student, he played violin!

I gushed with praise.

He said, “If only you knew what my life is like.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Maybe someday I will tell you.”

What is he talking about?

Before he turned away, I witnessed something cross his face, overcast, yet I said nothing.

This lamb-like ally with gentle determination graduated with the Greek and Latin prizes and went on to Yale University.

Twenty-four years later, my mother read his obituary, published here and in Paris, France.

I wrote to Lance’s mother and explained that I could not attend his funeral in San Francisco. I gushed again, saying what a wonderful human being Lance was. She thanked me for the letter but did not elaborate.

In 2020, I found his brother, Mike, an MD in Daly City, which is on the edge of the city. I gushed again and started a slow, undemanding probe by asking why Lance was living in Paris.

Mike told me Lance had died from AIDS.

I was not shocked, because I remembered the conversation Lance and I had when we were 17.

I should have been a better friend. I should have sat him down and pressed him on what was wrong. If I had, these are the words I would have murmured:

“Lance, you are my friend and always will be. Do nothing. Put your hand in mine and know I love you the same as before. I have a neighbor down the street. His name is Kevin. One day, when I was walking home up the hill, Kevin walked by my side, and he said, ‘If anyone ever bothers you, tell me.’ Lance, I have a protector, and now you have one, too – me.”

But, on a sunny high school afternoon, that talk never happened.


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