This has already been an odd one for me.

tehgreatllama died Thursday night.

It was storming that night. They think he was driving too fast, hydroplaned and flipped his truck into a ditch around a steep curve. They found him Friday morning after his mother filed a missing person's report.

I met him in August, 2005 along with Maggie, Mikey and Melissa. All of them were freshmen from ASMS, an Arkansas school for kids gifted in science and mathematics. They all came to their first PRIDE meeting as a unit but, over the years I felt I got to know each one of them individually.

Alex was a lit geek like me. The only class we ever took together was an honors colloquium on Multicultural Britain, where we got to watch "My Beautiful Laundrette" and read Absolute Beginners -- a "queer little book" according to him. I agreed. When I started to write my book, Alex was the first one I really consulted on the narrative, the themes of Americans in Britain and the cultural exchange between the two nations, the genderfuck of a couple characters. I think we bored Mikey and everyone else to tears the night we went over my notes -- off in our own little world.

I'm sorry I didn't finish it in time for him to read it. I'm even more sorry that I hadn't spoken with him in so long. He has a place on my altar now: my Colin MacInnes reader is on the third tier, between the jack o' lantern and the dish of dried apricots I left out for my dad.

R.I.P. Alex. Let the wild rumpus begin.