For 21 years Peter and I have been exchanging emails, commenting on each other's blogs and discussing everything from politics to people to social issues but I hadn't heard from him for a month and I started to get worried. I emailed him a few times and no response. I tried to get hold of his book publishers and then I started to wonder if something had happened. He and his partner Hans have been together for over 50 years but I only know Hans from a picture of the two of them. I don't know if he has Peter's passwords or even uses a computer.

With snail mail chances are if the receiver is deceased you will get a notice to that effect IF the person you live with informs the PO--with email it just piles up in the inbox! I thought I had their home address but I can't seem to find it but I will keep on looking.
In any case I started to think about the many people who have touched my life over the years and all of a sudden all communication stopped and I wondered what happened to them. Did they just change their life and didn't have time to keep in contact with old friends? Were they so busy they didn't have time? Okay, granted, most were old now so there was always the possibility they died but if they had a partner wouldn't the partner inform their friends via social media?

I thought back to my teenage years and my next door neighbor Jerry who really helped me when I needed help but when he? me? moved away we stopped communicating. There were the 'Joes'--redhead Joe from the Bronx, Joe Dorcette from the Brass Rail, Joe the Greek from Miami Beach--I was close to all of them but haven't heard from any of them in decades!

There were the WW/OW 'girls'--Margie, Barbara, Carole, Bella, Elaine, Shirley, Bonnie Giem, just to name a few who I haven't heard from since 1979 when I left Tennessee.
Talking about Tennessee I haven't heard from that Joe nor after Issac Searcy visited Micheal and me here in Fort Lauderdale I never heard from him again just as I haven't heard from anyone in Chattanooga or Memphis (okay Nina and Jean live in Texas now and Glenn lives in Georgia). Close friends I made in Hollywood, California and Hollywood, Florida, are no longer in my life.

Jose (Pepe) Cuesta who was very important in my life in the 1960s never missed my birthday, even when I moved to Memphis in 1969 he acknowledged it and even came to Memphis to see me and Johnny in 1975 but he never showed for my 10th Leap Year gala in 1976 and I have never heard from him again.

Bob Kingsbury, Bob Barry, Bernie Abraham are a few I know have died but how many else have and I don't know!
Surprisingly recently I was contacted by Mark and Emir who I haven't heard from in years, the former who I met in Memphis but surprised me by coming to my Leap Year birthday party in 1992 in Fort Lauderdale, due to their seeing me on Facebook. I was thinking of just listing names and downloading pictures on my facebook page as I had done a brief, very brief, search once there years ago and I did get in touch with 2 women I knew as girls in the Bronx--whatever happened to Susan Schwartz???

I could go on for pages naming names and asking what happened to them but I don't think many people would read them. I do know I arranged for a small comment to be made on my posts about my dying when it happens so people will know whether they care or not--at least they won't wonder "Whatever happened to GreatMartin?"

Where did these people go????