Sincerely,
Ian Duncan

Just noticed your tweet after you followed me, so I thought I’d share my history with suicide with you. Suicide has been with me my whole life. I never got to know my father’s father because he killed himself before I was born. His wife had died a few years earlier and he’d been depressed ever since. He drove his car out into the woods and ran a hose from the exhaust in through the window. He wasn’t found for six months or so. I know it had a big impact on my father, but since I never knew my grandfather it didn’t really affect me. I lived right beside my mother’s parents and they were all the grandparents I needed, but looking back now I am disconnected from my father’s family. I don’t have the closeness to them that I have with my mother’s side. I wonder if things would be different if I had had to split my time between both sides of the family.

I started with this suicide because I used it one time when I wanted to hurt my father. My parents were separating when I was 12-13. My dad was leaving, at a time when I felt I needed him most. So when they told me, I said the one thing to them that I knew would hurt them as much as they were hurting me. I told them that I would never live to see the day they divorced. In my mind I didn’t really consider suicide an option. I had my cat Cocoa to consider, and couldn’t do that to her, but my parents didn’t know that. When Cocoa had to be put to sleep a year later, there went my excuse for not carrying through with it. I decided then that I’d run away if they did divorce. If I never saw them again, that would be the same as not living to see them divorced. I’d head to Detroit and see my cousin there before heading to Los Angeles and living on the street as a rent boy. Fortunately my parents reconciled so I never had to go there, but I did consider suicide many more times throughout my life even figuring out ways to make it look like an accident so that insurance would pay out.

That all ended though on September 30, 1996. Growing up I was an only child. I had a cousin who lived right across the street from me who was a couple years older than me, and she was the closest thing I had to a sister. I also had a younger cousin, Travis, who was a year and a half younger than me. He was the closest thing I had to a brother. Travis and I would spend every weekend at our grandparents house. We played together and slept together, bathed together and ate together. He looked up to me, and I loved him with all my heart. When he turned five, his parents divorced. They went on to each marry other people and have additional kids with their new family. Travis never truly accepted this, and always felt isolated as though he didn’t really belong anywhere. His visits became less frequent, and by the time I went off to college I’d only see him at the various holidays. He ran into trouble with alcohol, and wrecked his truck while driving drunk at one point. He was on various meds off and on to help with his depression and addiction. I still loved him, but his inner rage would always be lingering there. His view of life seemed skewed. I remember how he told my grandparents that it hurt him everytime they called him grandson number two (which was his birth order) because it made him feel like he was less important and less loved than me, the first born grandchild.

So in 1996, I saw him at his half brother’s birthday party in August. My parents were there, along with my grandparents, myself and his dad and step mom. It was a nice time with no scenes. Then at the family Labor Day picnic, he and I had a really nice talk, the nicest we’d had in ages. He finally seemed at peace to me, as though he’d put all his rage behind him. He was talking about the future and how he was going to start a new job at the end of the month. I felt he’d finally gotten his life in order after so many missteps. I saw him one more time at my birthday party at my parents house. His dad, stepmom and half brother were there along with my parents and grandparents of course. It was a nice afternoon but there wasn’t any serious talks like we’d had on Labor Day. Two weeks later, I was driving past his apartment on my way home but I was running late. I had talked about stopping to see him, and even had something in the car to give him, but I drove by without stopping. Sometime within the next couple of hours he had gone into his bathroom and shot himself in the head in the shower stall.

I found out the next day. When he didn’t show up for his new job, they had called his mother. She went over to his apartment and found him. She contacted my dad, who worked with his dad. He went and told my uncle, and also contacted my mom. They let my grandparents know, and also called me. After the initial shock, I began contacting my other cousins. I cried that first five minutes of knowing, but then bottled it up. I had to be strong for the family. My mom and I are the ones who take care of the family during times like this. The next few days were hard, and I appreciated having a chance to say my goodbye privately to Travis before the funeral. I still remember the putty that they used to fill the hole, and how it had a different texture and color than the makeup they used to try to hide it. I remember how cold his skin felt when I kissed his forehead. As soon as the funeral started, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I became to sob and cry, gasping for air in between wails. I cried the whole service, comforted by my “sister”-cousin. Even after the service, the tears continued to flow though I was able to talk normally, introducing pallbearers to each other who didn’t know each other. The tears didn’t stop until after we had left the graveyard.

It’s been almost 13 years now, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of him still. He and his suicide are always with me. I could never kill myself now, having lived through his suicide and the effects it has had on the family. While his suicide temporarily brought peace between his parents, they have grown even farther estranged since. The fear of handguns has taken hold in some family members, while others have started down the same reckless path with alcohol to mask their pain. But there have been positives too. I’ve gone on to become first an EMT, and now a paramedic so that I can help others in need. My mother has become a child advocate to be there for children of broken families, speaking for the children’s best interests in court hearings. My grandmother has used it to become closer to God and preaches to those who need to hear her story. His half-sister has gone on to study psychology and wants to work with trouble children.

Earlier this year, I was on duty as a paramedic and was dispatched for a shooting. It was the first suicide by gun call I had to go on. I had always worried that I would not be able to handle it since that’s what Travis had done. It was a 15 year old boy, and I did my job without any problem. The boy’s parents and I had gone to college together. His mother was one of my Resident Advisors my freshman year. The year before I had been on duty and had to declare her father deceased. If it had not been for my experience with Travis, I would not have the knowledge of what she and her family would be going through. My heart goes out to all families who have to deal with a suicide. This boy left a note, so he at least attempted to explain. Travis left no note. We’ll never know his reasons.

I’ve rambled enough I think. I haven’t mentioned my high school physics teacher who killed himself six weeks into my senior year. Nor have I mentioned the girl in my class who did it in eleventh grade. Nor have I mentioned my other cousin who did it a couple years ago. There’s the husband of the cousin from Detroit, the manager of the JC Penney’s store that I was the EMT for, and the terminal patient who wanted to go out on his terms. There are others too who tried it and lived. All of these suicides have touched my life in one way or another. They stay with me. They make me want to live. They make me want to be there for others, who may not have anyone else. They make me want to not forget. That’s the website link I included. It’s entries that I started on the 10th anniversary of Travis’ suicide so that I could share his story, and let him know that he isn’t forgotten.

I hope this helps answer some of your questions. If you or any of your readers need someone to talk to, I’d be happy to listen.

I’ve known two people to have committed suicide… and come close myself recently.
One, was a friend I had known for years, and had lost contact with in 2002. It’s a shock to the system to be sure. The family kept the situation very private, so I was never given reasons why, or even a full story as to what happened. (Other than he overdosed.)
I’ve burried most of my family now, and each time someone I know dies, there’s an odd sensation of the world feeling like it’s one person short.

The second person I wasn’t quite as close to, and hadn’t spoken to in several years. It was the brother of a good friend, but I still knew him. In 2006 he hung himself with no warning, no note, no nothing. To this day his family & friends are still in a quandary as to what brought him to that point in his life that he felt he had to end his life. The best they could come up with was a possible mental illness.

When I’ve lost family members, it’s usually been to illness, or accident. So you know what happened and why. There’s closure. And you know it wasn’t their choice.
But with suicide, there doesn’t seem to be any closure. You keep thinking… if only there was something you / I could’ve done. If I just knew what he/she was thinking or feeling…
… if only.
I suppose there never are any concrete answers.
Having been close to the edge myself, I can understand some of the reasons people don’t discuss it, and how far circumstances reach in a persons head to bring them to that point.
It’s sad, but it’s a reality.

Anyhow Ian… sort of a bit of a downer to re-introduce myself with.
Glad to see you’ve been keeping up with the business. I hope it’s been good to you.
All the best!
Phil

But also I want to say a huge thank you for sending me the story you wrote for Xtra Magazine. I put two links in your article that go directly to their page, so I hope that’s all right. Your story was tragic, but also very beautiful at the same time as you describe your friend’s ambitions and weaker moments and the great spontaneous friendship you obviously shared. From your descriptions, it sounds like he was a larger than life character, and I’m sure the scene in Toronto is just not the same anymore without his energy. And I believe you when you say that he’d love the fact that you’re telling part of his story now. The fun and enthusiasm he brought to his own life and to those he knew will live on through his story. So thanks so much for sharing that with all of us, and just know that his story will continue to touch and affect people for many years to come.

Hope to see you soon in T.O. Todd,
Ian
xo

Here it is:

“Remembering a Rebel Friend”
A couple weeks back, a friend of mine was found dead in an apparent suicide. When I got the Facebook message, I went numb for a couple days. I don’t have a lot of experience with death — father, all four grandparents, a former business partner, one random motorcycle accident of a friend when I was in high school, that’s about it. At first I worried that I wasn’t feeling anything, but then some wise older friends assured me that grieving is something that happens in strange, organic, and ongoing ways.

I thought about this a great deal, and know that he would have wanted me to write something about his life. But rather than a community tribute with his photo, I am going to write about his “secret life.” Because although his journeys through the underworld are ultimately what caused him to die before the age of 30, and he was conflicted about some of it, he was proud of his rebel identity. I have changed some minor details to protect the privacy of his family, but I also know he wouldn’t care about people figuring out who I’m talking about. He’d like it.

I’ll call him “Brandon” because that’s what he called his alter ego. As recently as a few months ago he would phone me and say “Hey Toddly, write this down… Brandon’s got a story for you..” and then he’d giggle and tell me about some wild adventure with a client. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s go back to the beginning.

In late 1997 I was bartending at a club on Yonge St called Studio 619. A tall, thin, model gorgeous boy with big lips came in one night and while I don’t remember the details of our meeting, soon enough we became quite close. I had been escorting for more than a year, and discovered early in the friendship that Brandon was also in the sex business. “Not a hustler, Toddly, I’m upscale all the way… Exclusive!” he’d say. My best friend at the time was Randy, a 30-year-old bodybuilder from a small town who had just moved to Toronto and came out of the closet. The three of us formed this strange sort of bond — I think at one point there was some kissing and fondling and fooling around, but it quickly became evident that we were better off as a strange sort of misfit family. We would often spend the days and nights wandering around the Village and ended up sleeping sideways on my futon, Brandon in the middle, our arms around him. We were all into sobriety at the time.

One day we were walking up Church St and Brandon got a call on his cellphone. He started arguing with the caller, and then we overheard “You’re only 16!” from the earpiece. Brandon looked at us sheepishly, and said “Busted!” He was part of the generation of kids who came out young, and didn’t want to wait for adulthood to become part of the gay scene. We had a long talk with him, he assured us that he was mature enough to make decisions like working as an escort, and we trusted his judgement. It had never crossed my mind to feel bad for someone for being young, but I sympathized with his predicament — he was always scared he would be rejected if people found out his real age. He would tell people he was 20 or 21, to divert suspicion.

Time flew by quickly and soon enough Brandon was 19 and could stop being concerned with fake ID and scaring off clients. He had done some modelling as a teen and was obsessed with making it his career. But he had started dabbling with the drug ketamine (Special K) and soon enough he was always high. He got a few modelling gigs here and there, but he’d be moody or late or cause minor dramas, and like a lot of young people in the harsh world of selling beauty, he started to age young. He was by no means ugly, in fact, he was still well above average in the looks department, but the window of opportunity for him to be a famous runway model (which was his dream) was rapidly shrinking. This thought was one I kept to myself, but I remember seeing him at 23 and having the shocking revelation that it’s possible to worry about being past one’s prime at the age of 23.

Brandon was the king of adventure, and he was quite the entrepeneur, at least when it came to his escorting. When we met, I was charging $120 per hour and he gave me shit: “You’re well known, you’re still hot, you’ve got a big cock — $200 minimum Toddly!” he’d lecture me. I didn’t want to price myself out of the market, so I kept my prices where they were. But I always admired his ballsiness. We calculated that he was making between $150,000 and $200,000 per year at his peak.

He got into drug dealing for a while, and became one of many of the biggish small-time dealers in the scene. He used to come home from the clubs and count his money and realize that he must have dropped a couple hundred on the floor and then he’d laugh about it. He’d do crazy paranoid things like the time he thought the cops were watching him, so he hired movers, packed up everything and moved into a luxury apartment in Mississauga within two days. He had of course managed to decorate and furnish it within those two days, one of his uncanny talents. His interior design skills were intense, and I encouraged him to go into that field. He could take an entire two-bedroom apartment and have it fully painted, proper artwork hung, and furnished within 48 hours. He didn’t own a measuring tape, so he would just go to the 24-hour Home Depot and start pulling stuff off the shelf. I don’t know where he learned to do this — it was just innate talent. He knew from a young age that it was important to build his credit and he was proud to be debt-free for the most part.

But it kept coming back to the Special K. He just loved that shit. He would say he had it under control, but he was always on it. We’d be driving in his car and he’d pour half a vial on the dashboard and snort it. He was a maniac, but a great driver. Somehow I was never scared to be a passenger, no matter how high he was. It’s a weird drug, I did my fair share of it back in the day, but I always knew it to be the kind of drug you’d do to complement other drugs. I didn’t know anybody who embraced it as fully as Brandon, who made it their daily reality.

Brandon never got bitter. That’s the main reason I’m writing this. He is one of those rare people, especially in the club/drug scene, who stayed pure. From the first day I met him, he was always trying to spread joy. He had an odd network of friends — girls from his high school, ex-boyfriends, old guys who started out as sugar daddies and then became junkies, me — and he was loyal to all of us. He tried to be good to his clients, and he had a fair amount of regulars. But I stopped hanging around with him a few years ago, when he got to that heart-breaking point most drug addicts reach: when they can’t hang around with “normal” people any more. He was fully immersed in his drug culture, painfully beyond denial. I’d been through a lot with him — I drove him to detox, I picked him up from rehab, but he always relapsed. I know that he was hurting, I know that part of him was ashamed that he couldn’t kick the habit, but he would still keep in touch. He told me he wanted his story to be part of my next book, which will be called “Us Whores.” He emailed me passages that he thought should be included: diary entries, rambling essays, funny client stories. I’m going to dig them off my collection of old hard drives.

He called me a week before he died, to tell me he loved me and he was proud of me. I didn’t find the call unusual, random calls from Brandon were the norm. Apparently he called a lot of his friends in his final days, which confirms for me that his death was intentional (because of the way it happened, it is possible it was an accident). He said he was going to come down to my club and say hi really soon. That was the last I heard from him.

Brandon, you were an important part of the underworld. You touched a lot of souls. Your spirit will be missed.

I love you too.

Ian
xoxo

Hi, I was puttzing around the web and came across your blog asking for stories about suicide. And it stuck a nerve, a deep one going back many years. My cousin, actual second cousin Danny was just a few years younger than me. Danny’s young life was almost a carbon copy of mine. We both grew up in the Midwest and both came from broken homes. The town, Granite City, IL is a typical Midwest town dirty, grimy and full of prejudice. It was nothing overt and I can’t say it was taught but some how we learned it. You played football, went to school and followed your father into the steel mill. Anything else was queer. I got out, Danny didn’t.

Danny was in his late teens when I left to join the USAF. I knew I was gay and I was pretty sure so was Danny. But since we both had the same upbringing it was not something talked about. Danny and I hung out before I left and after I got my first leave before going to Germany. He was a good kid and had a lot to look forward to. And I think he was looking for a role model, a father figure or just a big brother. After I left he moved in with my older brother. Dale told me years latter how Danny was during this time. He was increasingly wild, trying to keep up with his older cousins and friends, drinking and doing drugs. But Danny was small and couldn’t do it. Dale didn’t see it but I could. Maybe its 20/20 hind sight or just been there done that. Danny was trying to fight something and doing it in all the wrong ways.

I got the letter about Danny’s suicide about two years after I had left. Danny called Dale and told him what he was going to do and hung up. I guess that was better than having Dale walk in unprepared. Danny put a bullet thru his head. He was still alive when Dale got home although totally unresponsive. He died a few days later in the hospital.

To this day I still think about Danny. And to this day I still think; what a waste. Danny had his whole life to look forward to. Sure he had his demons to deal with, don’t we all but somehow we get by. Be it with the help of family or a friend or that something inside us that is a wall against all onslaughts. Danny’s wall was breached and the temple of his soul destroyed.

My memories of Danny while he was on this earth are good but that is all they are and all they will ever be, just memories! I’d rather have the person with all his flaws intact.

I found it troubling that you asked for memories of death. I can only guess as to why and hope. And perhaps help a little. I had a dream once. One that I remember vividly to this day, which is rare for me, I usually don’t remember any of my dreams. I was standing on the edge of a vast plane, a plane much like a checker board. Black squares, white squares as far as the eye can see. Someone is standing beside me although I can’t see who. This Someone is speaking, “this is life. You need to go thru the dark to get to the light and understand the difference.” I awoke as this Someone’s arm was laid across my shoulder. If you are walking in the dark and you are feeling all alone, just remember the dark will end and the light will come again.

I too have thought of getting out and I always come up with the same answer, “I’m not about to give the bastards what they want.”

Mike
Denver, CO