I'm continuing my experiences with Rod, one of my friends from high school. With today's post, things come to an end, but I'm certain he will be mentioned in future posts.
The summer after I graduated, I went to the International Theatre Arts Conference in Muncie, IN again. Rod went as well. I don't know why he went. He was in college at the time and this was a conference for high school students. There was another student who went two years earlier who was also at Eastern and he actually performed during the conference. Rod and I did not drive up together like we had two years prior. He had called to see if I needed a ride to Albuquerque, but I had already made arrangements to take the bus up and stay with a relative the night before so I didn't have to sleep in the car. He said he would be staying with friends up there.
During the three-day bus ride and the time during the conference, we didn't spend much time together. He acted like he barely tolerated my presence during the trip. I thought it was odd, but it didn't seem to matter that much to me if we were friends at that point.
About a month later, my father and I drove Mom to Lubbock, TX, where she was going to be flying the next day to some conference. We went in my car. We checked her into her motel room and were hanging out there for a little bit before we left. The next thing we know, Rod walks through the door. He said he had seen what appeared to be my car outside and came over to see if I was actually there. Mom said his hair looked really good. He sort of used to have a dorky hair style back in high school that looked like he was never able to get all the shampoo out.
I went to the same college Rod did after I graduated from high school. I found out that while he was one of the top students at Artesia High School when he graduated, he didn't extend the same level of effort in college. One of the other students, whom I refer to as "Toilethead" (wait for that post in a few months), made the comment that Rod would eventually withdraw from virtually all of his classes.
For my sophomore year in college, Rod did not return. He moved to New York City to try to become part of the Off-Off Broadway theatre scene. He had managed to get in with a gay theatre group and was doing a lot of volunteering with them, mosting doing stuff backstage.
During my spring break that year, my parents paid for me to go to New York City on a trip planned by one of the Theatre professors at Eastern New Mexico University. I got to see him there. He worked at a pet food store for a living. He got to accompany us to a couple of productions because one of the people on the trip got sick the first day there.
A few weeks later, he told my theatre professor that the production he was working on had one of its actors get sick, so he was called upon to take his place. I don't know how that turned out.
Keep in mind that Rod was 20 at this time, and was about to turn 21, at which point, he would inherit $100,000. He didn't know what he was going to do with the money.
The next thing I had heard about him is that he had moved to Santa Fe, NM and had set up a video store that specialized in foreign and art films. There was a market for that, but I don't think he was able to make it last.
I didn't have any contact with Rod until 1997. He was living in Albuquerque at the time. He was working at a Hasting's Music and Video store there. I was able to track him down and call him at work. We made arrangements to meet the next day for lunch. He was living with his brother Rand and I came by the house to pick him up.
The first thing I noticed is that he was wearing braces. Rod had worn braces in junior high school and had them removed. However, he never wore his retainer, so his teeth went right straight back to being crooked. In college, I was watching "Friday the 13th, Part 2" with some friends from the theatre department. During the scene in which you see Jason's face without the mask, one person commented that he had teeth like Rod. I hoped he had learned his lesson from the first time around.
He told me that the previous year, he had worked at the Hollywood Video in Albuquerque, but got fired after he got into an intense argument with the manager. Not long after that, a rather newsworthy event took place there in which three employees were murdered and the grandparents of one of the employees was killed in the mountains. Rod told me that when he worked there, he used to drive one of the employees home. After he was fired, his grandparents had to come and pick him up to drive him home. He also said that another one of the employees killed had to take over his shift after he left. He was aware that under different circumstances, he could have been killed with them and felt very guilty that others died because he wasn't there. Rod added that when the investigation began, he was the first person the police interviewed. He said he knew the police were just doing their job that that he had nothing to fear.
A few weeks later after I had returned home to San Diego, I called Rod and told him about an encounter with a particular celebrity. (I'm not going into details about celebrity encounters in this phase of the blog.) He said that he hoped that he would hear from me more in the future. However, I never called him again. I don't know why, but it probably had to do with the upheaval that was taking place in my life at that time. (Again, more details on that much later.)
In July of 2005, my mother called and told me that one of my classmates who lived in Artesia had been killed in a drug-related shooting. It was someone I remembered, but was not particularly close to. At any rate, I did a Google search on him and came upon the website of Artesia's funeral home. It listed people who recently had services held, and I saw Rod's name among them. I read the obituary. It was definitely him. He died at the age of 42.
I called Mom and asked if she knew anything about him dying. She said she hadn't heard anything, but she would find out. Rod's uncle happened to be the high school principal when we attended there and Mom called him. He had died of AIDS. His family couldn't afford to pay for the funeral, so his uncle was able to provide for it.
Rod was living in Las Vegas, NV at the time that he died. I did a Google search on him and found that he had been the floor manager at the Liberace museum. There was one article that told about how he had put on a costume and played Santa for the kids who visited the museum at Christmas. That was amusing because I never imagined him as wanting anything to do with kids.
I really felt bad that I didn't try to keep in contact with him. That's a regret I will always have to live with.
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