One of my most beloved friends died yesterday. He had survived seven years of dialysis, one kidney transplant and a heart attack. He was given the all clear by his surgeons two weeks ago. Tuesday he drove himself to his doctor's office to check what he thought to be acid reflux. The doctor found his lungs were full of fluid. He was taken from the doctor's office to the hospital and put on oxygen. It was serious but not dangerous, or so everyone told us. A few more days on oxygen to dry out his lungs and he would go home. Yesterday, as he was joking with his mother, he lay back, blood poured from his mouth, and he died.

He survived a lot, but mostly, he survived being a gay Cuban-American male, in a culture where being gay is at best considered a disease and at worst a disgrace. He didn't "come out" to his family until after his father's death; there are still older members of his family who think he dated my sister through his thirties, and are grateful that they managed to remain friends after the "breakup".  Because he lived in Miami, where gay culture is a substratum that is in many ways not really visible unless you're part of it, he could be shocked at the openness he found in other places like San Francisco or LA or London.

He didn't know science fiction from a hole in the ground, so when I told him about Torchwood, he was all meh. Even when I told him about Jack and Ianto, he was sure that they would turn it into "the terrible secret" as so many American tv shows of his teenage and young adult years did. Then I sent him a clip of the To The Last Man kiss. He called me in complete shock. They showed that on television?  I teased him about being "the straightest gay man" I knew.

His sense of humor was notorious among his friends and sometimes when he was on a roll we resorted to hand signals not to give him an opening. He convinced a whole gaggle of Japanese tourists at the Met in New York that some Egyptian frescoes were a description of the Egyptian myth about the invention of beer. Once, on a crowded train from London to Canterbury, he whipped out an imaginary writing pad and started what became "the Penelope letters," messages sent by a rich spoiled aristocratic girl to her papa. It was amazing seeing him reduce a car full of serious, Times-reading Brits to barely concealed laughter.

I am going to miss him dreadfully.