Speaker 1: Hey, before this episode begins, I just want to make
Speaker 1: sure you know that this series gets into some things
Speaker 1: that might be triggering to some listeners, specifically depression and suicide.
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts,
Speaker 1: please seek assistance from a mental health professional, or visit
Speaker 1: the National Institute of Mental Health website at n I
Speaker 1: m H dot ni H dot g o V for resources.
Speaker 1: If you're currently in crisis, you can call one eight
Speaker 1: hundred to seven three talk that's eight two five five,
Speaker 1: or text the word hello to seven for one seven
Speaker 1: for one to speak to someone immediately. Thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: and I guess why that's me and Alex singing Britney
Speaker 1: Spears as Womanizer. In two thousand nine, were on a
Speaker 1: farm in Michigan, out of the city to clear our heads.
Speaker 1: We had spent the weekend hiking, getting high, cooking, and
Speaker 1: having a sit down meal. More than anything, there was
Speaker 1: just a lot of laying around. In the exhausting years
Speaker 1: I spent racing to earn a master's degree, that trip
Speaker 1: stands out as a rare stretch of time where I
Speaker 1: did almost nothing at all. One afternoon, Alex and I
Speaker 1: wandered into a bedroom in the farmhouse, where we came
Speaker 1: across an old pump organ of some sort. I laid
Speaker 1: down on the bed while he took a seat at
Speaker 1: the keys and started playing womanizer, or at least an
Speaker 1: approximation of it. You you got to go in. After
Speaker 1: Alex died, one of the friends who was on that
Speaker 1: trip with us went looking for footage of this moment,
Speaker 1: eventually finding it in her ex's Facebook archives. She sent
Speaker 1: it to me and we reminisced about what a special
Speaker 1: trip that was and how spending time with Alex had
Speaker 1: changed us both. This episode, I want you to get
Speaker 1: to know Alex a bit more and meet some of
Speaker 1: the people who were transformed by his presence in their lives.
Speaker 1: To know him is to know a bit of each
Speaker 1: of us. What happens when you lose someone so close
Speaker 1: to you that you can trace the ways they shaped
Speaker 1: your life, your personality, and what are you supposed to
Speaker 1: do when they leave behind a trail for you to follow.
Speaker 1: I'm Chris Studman and this is unread episode two piece
Speaker 1: of Me. Call them back all the little clean open
Speaker 1: dread that Stills sent for you back. Yeah, Sandy, Eva,
Speaker 1: I said, be scared, stared breaking. While singing Womanizer Alex
Speaker 1: and I intentionally pitched our voices down as a contrast
Speaker 1: to Britney's higher voice in the song and to match
Speaker 1: the bizarre flat way he was playing the organ. But
Speaker 1: lowering my voice comes naturally to me as a closeted
Speaker 1: queer kid, I trained myself to speak deeper than I
Speaker 1: naturally would. Growing up, I've been loud and talkative, but
Speaker 1: when I realized that flamboyance might give away my queerness,
Speaker 1: I went quiet. Suddenly, hyper attuned to how I was
Speaker 1: being perceived at all times, I started pitching myself down
Speaker 1: in voice and temperament. I began coming out as a teenager,
Speaker 1: first to Internet strangers, then my mom, then friends. As
Speaker 1: the circle widened, I let my guard down bit by bit,
Speaker 1: bringing the parts of myself I had tucked away back
Speaker 1: into the light. Still, the habit of hiding had become
Speaker 1: so instinctual, so built into the fabric of who I was,
Speaker 1: that I kept making myself smaller in ways I wasn't
Speaker 1: always aware of, including my speech. Here. I am as
Speaker 1: a teenager when I appeared in a documentary film about
Speaker 1: a summer camp for lgbt Q teens. I'd gone through
Speaker 1: puberty at this point, but you can hear the intentionally
Speaker 1: layered bush nous of my tone. It seems to me
Speaker 1: like some people are getting the wrong impression about me.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, people may notice that I act.
Speaker 1: I don't know the word that some of them uses
Speaker 1: goofy a lot, because you know, I like to have fun. Um,
Speaker 1: and maybe it is acting stupid, but I do like
Speaker 1: to be stupid down and then too. Um. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: know I'm rambling, but my point is, Um, I think
Speaker 1: some people have gotten the wrong impression of me, and
Speaker 1: that does blug me a little bit because I don't
Speaker 1: like people to think differently about me, because I can
Speaker 1: be really serious at times and I know that, you know,
Speaker 1: I just basically, I just want to be myself. So
Speaker 1: hopefully that's coming across right. This defensive diet tribe is funny,
Speaker 1: but I WinCE hearing it now. I grew up thinking
Speaker 1: that presenting a polished version of myself would keep me safe. That's,
Speaker 1: seeming smart or accomplished rather than irresponsible or carefree, was
Speaker 1: key to survival. I was terrified that because I was
Speaker 1: letting go and having fun at camp. People wouldn't see
Speaker 1: me as serious or thoughtful, or of any value at all.
Speaker 1: I can hear the fear in my voice in that documentary,
Speaker 1: still low, even though I've been out of the closet
Speaker 1: for years by that point, A fear of people seeing
Speaker 1: my unrestrained self of being too much. We all self
Speaker 1: monitor and compartmentalize. Every one of us edits curates, tucks
Speaker 1: away certain parts of ourselves, and tries to show a
Speaker 1: more controlled self image to the world, especially online. Still,
Speaker 1: sometimes we perform a certain kind of self because we
Speaker 1: want to, and other times we do it because we
Speaker 1: feel we have to. For a lot of my life
Speaker 1: it felt necessary to present a team er version of
Speaker 1: myself to the world. I learned to hide, and hiding
Speaker 1: became habit. But then I met Alex. How are a
Speaker 1: little from on our little postre? How don't for us
Speaker 1: to throw off its coat and to talk more? Because
Speaker 1: Alex was hard to miss, six ft four, always in
Speaker 1: a T shirt, hair never styled. He looked wild like Bigfoot.
Speaker 1: If Bigfoot was sensitive, gay and love to quote Britney lyrics,
Speaker 1: he could be just as elusive to He'd lose a
Speaker 1: whole day in internet forms, and the next he'd be
Speaker 1: off getting lost in a national park. He was restless
Speaker 1: and impulsive. He once suggested we go on an impromptu
Speaker 1: camping trip, and after driving for hours without being able
Speaker 1: to find an open campsite anywhere, said we should just
Speaker 1: go back to my place and watch Shakira she Wolf
Speaker 1: music video on repeat instead. Another time, he set up
Speaker 1: sleeping bags on the roof of his mom's house for
Speaker 1: us because the temperature was perfect that night, and he
Speaker 1: said he never slept at an angle before. When Alex
Speaker 1: and I met on Okay Cupid, I was living on
Speaker 1: the South side of Chicago working on a masters in religion,
Speaker 1: and he was living with his mom and sister up
Speaker 1: in Skokie, a suburb just northwest of the city. At first,
Speaker 1: we kind of sort of dated, but romance quickly turned
Speaker 1: to friendship. Then about a year after we met, I
Speaker 1: was off to the East Coast chase a job at Harvard.
Speaker 1: Within a couple of years, he left Chicago to following
Speaker 1: his compass out west. Alex and I both moved around
Speaker 1: a lot over our decade of friendship, though for different reasons.
Speaker 1: I pretty much always moved for some new, better job. Well,
Speaker 1: he would pick up and move whenever whim struck. Here's
Speaker 1: a voicemail he left me in. Sorry I've been like
Speaker 1: you know whatever. But first of all, I was a
Speaker 1: new microphone now and no one ever returned phone calls
Speaker 1: or ever names out so and lay little bitch now.
Speaker 1: He wasn't flaky, but he was a restless spirit, forever
Speaker 1: on the move. But wherever he was going, whether it
Speaker 1: was a road trip to try some new roller coaster
Speaker 1: or an impulsive amateur storm chase, it was always with
Speaker 1: a deep sense of self intact tornado chasing in East
Speaker 1: Colorado and a tornado just hit the ground fifteen miles away.
Speaker 1: I'm excited. I'm a big boy, I'm a scientist, I'm
Speaker 1: a meteorologies. In Alex, I found a person who was
Speaker 1: singularly true to his nature, someone who, despite the world's
Speaker 1: best attempts to make him feel like he was too intense,
Speaker 1: seemed considerably less worried about how he was coming across
Speaker 1: or proving his worthiness than I was. Alex didn't care
Speaker 1: about all the ways I hid. He didn't love me
Speaker 1: because of how busy I was, or because I seemed smart,
Speaker 1: but because of who I was. The person he saw
Speaker 1: behind the facade around Alex. I didn't have to pitch
Speaker 1: my voice down unless I wanted to. For fun made
Speaker 1: them Let's go back to the evening. I got Alex's
Speaker 1: goodbye email in December Chris listen. He began, I am
Speaker 1: writing to let you know that when you receive this
Speaker 1: scheduled email, I will no longer be alive. He explained
Speaker 1: that his depression had gotten so bad that he was
Speaker 1: in too much pain and felt he needed to, as
Speaker 1: he put it, opt out. Then he started talking about
Speaker 1: our friendship. Words fail me these days, he said. All
Speaker 1: I want to say is how much I love you
Speaker 1: and cherish everything about you. I'm sorry I lost touch
Speaker 1: with you. If only I could explain, it's just words, words, words,
Speaker 1: too many words. I hope you understand you are one
Speaker 1: of the best people I've ever known. I don't know
Speaker 1: how else to say it. It's very get naked, I
Speaker 1: got a plan or quicksand and yes, that last line
Speaker 1: was Britney song titles. Again. I know, I'm so lucky
Speaker 1: to have this email. When Alex died, I was plagued
Speaker 1: by worry that I hadn't been supportive enough, but he
Speaker 1: offered me the profound gift of putting into words what
Speaker 1: I had meant to him. He did this for others too.
Speaker 1: From what I've been able to gather, Alex sent out
Speaker 1: at least a dozen emails to friends and family, and
Speaker 1: also left a note saying there were many others he
Speaker 1: couldn't summon the ability to write notes too, but who
Speaker 1: he wanted to know. We're loved to. Each of us
Speaker 1: who did get an email got a piece of what
Speaker 1: felt like a disjointed story tailored to our connection with him.
Speaker 1: It was like Alex's last act was to disperse little
Speaker 1: fragments of himself across the world, and we could only
Speaker 1: piece together the full story by finding one another. First,
Speaker 1: an email thread began with all of us who got notes,
Speaker 1: where we swapped stories about Alex. Then a smaller crew
Speaker 1: started a group chat, almost by accident, initially to coordinate
Speaker 1: around planning a meet up in California and share some
Speaker 1: updates on Alex's memorial in Chicago, where his mom lives.
Speaker 1: Before long, the six of us in this group chat,
Speaker 1: we're talking so often that we gave ourselves a name
Speaker 1: Team Thor Daniels, a pseudonym Alex sometimes used online. I
Speaker 1: want to offer some of their pieces of Alex's story
Speaker 1: with you, the ways he helped them find their voice too.
Speaker 1: There's Bath. She was on the phone with a friend
Speaker 1: when she got her email. I was like, I think
Speaker 1: my friend just killed himself. And he's like, what, oh
Speaker 1: my god, Okay, do you need to go or can
Speaker 1: I help you? I was like, I think I just
Speaker 1: need to go. So I'm in my backyard here in
Speaker 1: front of my garage and I just respond right away
Speaker 1: like Alex, wait, call me. I want you to stay.
Speaker 1: And I said I love you and I always will.
Speaker 1: I just said thank you for bringing you. Um, he
Speaker 1: made my life better. Alex once introduced me in Bath
Speaker 1: over Twitter because we were his two blue check friends. Well,
Speaker 1: my check is questionable. Beth is legit famous and for
Speaker 1: good reason. Like Alex, she's thoughtful, empathetic, but perhaps above
Speaker 1: all else, a comedic genius. A couple of months after
Speaker 1: Alex died, Beth came to my city to film a
Speaker 1: comedy special for HBO Max. It's called Girl Daddy. You
Speaker 1: should definitely watch it. And I'm also not on birth
Speaker 1: control because sometimes birth control is like I know you're hungry,
Speaker 1: but what if you cried. She dedicated the special to Alex,
Speaker 1: whose free spirited nous influenced so much of her approach
Speaker 1: to humor. He really was he was sort of already
Speaker 1: out of this world before he left this world. And
Speaker 1: that sounds maybe cheesy, but in death people can be
Speaker 1: made to seem like greater than they are. But really
Speaker 1: I think it's just more looking back and analyzing how
Speaker 1: great he really was. Like he really just was, I mean,
Speaker 1: someone I still would like to be more like. And
Speaker 1: I wish I absorbed more about while he was here.
Speaker 1: But when you were around him, you got to act
Speaker 1: that way, you know, or feel a little bit of it.
Speaker 1: Um just the fully not afraid to be yourself. I
Speaker 1: just I mean, it sounds silly to say I envy it,
Speaker 1: but yeah. There's James, who, like me, also met Alex
Speaker 1: on a dating app, and the photo that he had
Speaker 1: was him like outside with like kind of a douchey
Speaker 1: smile in a backwards hat, but there's also like a
Speaker 1: cat on his shoulder, and I was like, okay. I
Speaker 1: remember clicking on his Instagram account and like seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of shots of him like just outdoors, and like
Speaker 1: it seemed very like kind of posed and very like
Speaker 1: mask for mask, but then like interspersed with that would
Speaker 1: be like bizarre images of Britney spears and just like
Speaker 1: all this random stuff thrown in, which I mean at
Speaker 1: the time was like I think that's kind of what
Speaker 1: made me intrigue to like talk to him, because he wasn't.
Speaker 1: It's like some dude, I knew nothing of James before
Speaker 1: Alex died, but I get why Alex messaged him. He's cute, funny,
Speaker 1: so sweet and supportive. As I started looking for Alice,
Speaker 1: James became one of my biggest cheerleaders, and like Alex,
Speaker 1: he always did it in a teasing way that kept
Speaker 1: me from taking any of it too seriously. I think
Speaker 1: Alex did for him too. There's so many people that
Speaker 1: he connected with online that don't have any relationship to
Speaker 1: each other. Like, no, I'm really glad you mentioned that, because, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: in the months after Alex died, I was like randomly
Speaker 1: tracking down people who he knew, because like I was
Speaker 1: just trying to like be useful somehow. You know, it
Speaker 1: is useful. It was more selfish than anything. No, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's selfish. I mean the image of it.
Speaker 1: You feel like that name of like Charlie and always
Speaker 1: studying in Philadelphia, like with in the office, like surrounded
Speaker 1: by like putting strings in between one of my favorite
Speaker 1: names ever. And that's a picture you making this podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm not even joking. It is truly an image that
Speaker 1: has come into my head multiple times. Just pianic gig
Speaker 1: and sweating and like seeing things. Yeah, that's definitely you've
Speaker 1: got me nailed there. Next, there's Due, who lives in Croatia.
Speaker 1: Do It is funny in a way that no description
Speaker 1: could do justice. He's unhinged, so witty, and I know
Speaker 1: he'd want me to say he's extremely cute too. Well, technically,
Speaker 1: what he really want me to say is that he's
Speaker 1: cuter than James. Is James doing this? Yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to interview him in a couple of weeks. Okay, just
Speaker 1: please make sure that if I have admitted that he
Speaker 1: gets like a second. In the days after Alex died,
Speaker 1: do It was the first person to make me laugh.
Speaker 1: He sent me some memes about Alex's death that were
Speaker 1: unbelievably dark but also exactly Alex's humor. In one, he
Speaker 1: took an old picture of me and Alex. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: on Alex's shoulders as we stand outside the gates of
Speaker 1: Lollapalooza in Chicago, trying to watch Santegal performed from across
Speaker 1: the street because we couldn't afford tickets. And he duplicated
Speaker 1: it in the duplicate image, do it erased Alex, so
Speaker 1: I'm just floating in the air. Then he put this
Speaker 1: new image side by side with the original above them.
Speaker 1: He wrote the caption ten year Challenge, a phrase that
Speaker 1: was making the rounds online at the time, where people
Speaker 1: would put an old and current picture side by side
Speaker 1: to show how they had changed over the last decade.
Speaker 1: Like I said, dark, when I saw do as meme,
Speaker 1: I laughed, cried and cried from laughing. Do it reminds
Speaker 1: me so much of Alex that it can actually be
Speaker 1: a little jarring. One time they even got suspended from
Speaker 1: the Britney fan forum where they met because the moderators
Speaker 1: thought they were the same person with two accounts. To me,
Speaker 1: it was a huge compliment because I'm like, gosh, because
Speaker 1: he's hilarious. So if somebody thinks some Alex, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's I mean, that's the thing you sometimes
Speaker 1: the way that you remind me of Alex is almost
Speaker 1: sort of eerie. It's like, you know, you guys just
Speaker 1: obviously had a very special connection. Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was really based on being more bit sarcastic and but
Speaker 1: overall loving. He was so loving to everyone, and I'm
Speaker 1: like the same way. But if you really don't know me,
Speaker 1: you might think of me and sound like this six
Speaker 1: ft two hung guy that doesn't really interact well but
Speaker 1: not quite. I'm a dancer for guys like Duet got
Speaker 1: his email from Alex early in Croatia time. I think
Speaker 1: I read it in six am in the morning, and
Speaker 1: I haven't got any emails from Alex. I think that
Speaker 1: last year, and because I was sending him emails and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, he finally responded, I was
Speaker 1: just horrified. I don't know, I was really really bad.
Speaker 1: Joey very hard once said beautifully, I don't know who
Speaker 1: passed away, but she said, it's always said to ban
Speaker 1: comedian dies and um because Alexi was such a high
Speaker 1: energy person. I think he filled every room. He showed
Speaker 1: up and when you lost that person, it's like silence.
Speaker 1: You just loved with silence. At the beginning of our friendship,
Speaker 1: Alex showed me his signature loud, high pitched dog bark.
Speaker 1: Almost anyone who's met him has probably heard it. Beth
Speaker 1: remembers him doing it all the time when they met
Speaker 1: as co workers at a bengel shop the same year
Speaker 1: Alex and I met too. We would just be working together,
Speaker 1: he would, you know, either like moan makes a sort
Speaker 1: of corny moan, or like you know, we'd bark at
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah. I found this old video of Alex
Speaker 1: teaching me how to do that bark. Yeah. It sounded
Speaker 1: so real. It sounds like there was a dog in
Speaker 1: the bagel shop. Here's him trying to teach me. I
Speaker 1: try the bark, but I'm not quite getting it. My
Speaker 1: barks are hesitant and too low, like the way I
Speaker 1: had trained myself to speak. I'm embarrassed, looking down, averting
Speaker 1: my eyes as I try. So. Alex steps back in
Speaker 1: to show me how to do it. He encourages me
Speaker 1: and I try again, but I'm still not getting it,
Speaker 1: and I start laughing uncomfortably. The thing about the bark
Speaker 1: is that it's higher than I want to go. It
Speaker 1: feels so counterintuitive, so opposed to what I had told
Speaker 1: myself was safe. To do. It's high wild, but Alex
Speaker 1: doesn't chastise or shame me. He simply shows me again
Speaker 1: how it's done. Growing closer to Alex felt like an active,
Speaker 1: deep programming of all the bullshit I had internalized years
Speaker 1: of shame of what I should or shouldn't do, what
Speaker 1: did or didn't make me worthy of love. But he
Speaker 1: didn't do it by telling me how to be or
Speaker 1: what to do. He just showed the way and let
Speaker 1: me walk by his side. This is friendship at its
Speaker 1: best and most pure. I think when you find someone
Speaker 1: who loves you as you are, who tells you it's
Speaker 1: okay to let down your fronts, someone with whom you
Speaker 1: can both be yourself and become something more than you
Speaker 1: were before, who can help you find your voice and
Speaker 1: expand it. But after Alex died, it was like I
Speaker 1: lost part of my voice. I think this is partly
Speaker 1: why as I looked over his email again and again,
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop wondering about Alice, about this detail in
Speaker 1: Alex's email that I didn't understand, wondering what exactly he
Speaker 1: was trying to show me here. But am I Like
Speaker 1: some of the commenters on Brittany's Instagram, looking for meaning
Speaker 1: and the smallest thing so far we've heard from re.
Speaker 1: Out of the five people who became my inner circle
Speaker 1: after Alex died, there are two more, and they know
Speaker 1: Alex's interiority better than just about anyone. They're also the
Speaker 1: people who, because I began fixating on Alice, actually encouraged
Speaker 1: me to try to find her. There's Show She Alex's sister.
Speaker 1: In the weeks after Alex's death, we texted basically all
Speaker 1: day every day to coordinate details about his cremation and memorial,
Speaker 1: but also just you know, to deal. But Show She
Speaker 1: wasn't just texting me. She was working overtime to make
Speaker 1: sure all the people in Alex's life knew what had
Speaker 1: happened and to connect us to one another. Her determination
Speaker 1: in those days in the face of immense loss was
Speaker 1: unreal to me. I can't imagine getting through those first
Speaker 1: few days without that. I mean, I feel so grateful
Speaker 1: that you let me in. I'm so grateful that you
Speaker 1: you were you, you were so available and how full
Speaker 1: and understanding and respectful. Show. She and my paths first
Speaker 1: crossed in two thousand nine, when she and Alex were
Speaker 1: living at their mom's place, but she didn't really remember
Speaker 1: that when she found me online after Alex's death. I
Speaker 1: mean we hadn't really even spoken before. Well, you said
Speaker 1: that we met a couple of times when I was
Speaker 1: like super stoked. We like passed like ships in the
Speaker 1: night in the hallway of your house. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: my brother and his like friend hanging around exactly. Yeah
Speaker 1: was too cool. You were, for the record, very cool.
Speaker 1: A lot has changed Show. She is kind, sharp, and
Speaker 1: unapologetically herself, perhaps more so than anyone else I've ever
Speaker 1: met besides Alex. I aspire to one day be even
Speaker 1: half as much myself as Show she is. She's as
Speaker 1: one of a kind as Alex was. Their childhood wasn't
Speaker 1: always easy. Alex and Show She grew up in tight
Speaker 1: quarters with limited resources, and their big personalities could clash,
Speaker 1: But maybe in part because of that, there was total
Speaker 1: honesty in their relationship. They were never afraid to tell
Speaker 1: each other the truth, to fight, and to make up
Speaker 1: whenever the time was right. The last time that I
Speaker 1: spoke with my brother was through text messages, and I
Speaker 1: got mad at him for not responding to me. I didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got mad at him. Um, I mean I called
Speaker 1: him selfish and rude for not responding to me and
Speaker 1: at least letting me know that he was okay, and
Speaker 1: he blew up at me in his text message back
Speaker 1: to me and then blocked me, and um, that was
Speaker 1: the last time that we talked. When he did this,
Speaker 1: she decided to honor the boundary Alex had put up,
Speaker 1: knowing they'd find their way back to one another. You know,
Speaker 1: I wonder if because I was always keeping tabs on him, Um,
Speaker 1: I was always kind of asking where he was, what
Speaker 1: he was doing, like, just check in with me, if
Speaker 1: that was partially the reason why he wanted to disk
Speaker 1: totally disconnect from me. And because it's not that I
Speaker 1: forgot about him, I just let him disappear because I
Speaker 1: felt that's what he needed to do. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think that the argument that my brother and I
Speaker 1: had was enough to really warrant a block, because you
Speaker 1: guys had had arguments before, Like you guys, but oh
Speaker 1: my god, he's my brother, because my little brother were
Speaker 1: eighteen months apart, like we fought, they thought, because they
Speaker 1: loved each other so much after everything they'd gone through,
Speaker 1: Alex knew he could share even his darkness, his anger
Speaker 1: and intemperance with showshe and still be loved because they
Speaker 1: saw and accepted each other for who they really were,
Speaker 1: for better and for worse. He was a unique, eccentric original.
Speaker 1: He was empathetic, he was gentle, he was kind, he
Speaker 1: was trustworthy, loyal, I'm super fun I think Alex was
Speaker 1: probably the most authentic person that anyone has ever come across.
Speaker 1: Definitely me, I can say that for sure. And finally,
Speaker 1: Lexi Alex's best friend. Anyone who knew Alex knew Lexi
Speaker 1: was everything to him. Honestly, I was pretty intimidated before
Speaker 1: we talked for the first time because I knew that
Speaker 1: Alex had such a high opinion of her. Once you
Speaker 1: meet her, it's obvious why. She's brilliant, hilarious and unbelievably
Speaker 1: talented artist and also so generous. When my dog Tuna,
Speaker 1: very suddly and unexpectedly died half a year after Alex did,
Speaker 1: Lexi sent me a hat with Tuna's face on it,
Speaker 1: which she had embroidered by hand. Her creativity reminds me
Speaker 1: so much of Alex's. When Lexi showed she and I
Speaker 1: worked together to plan Alex's memorial. Lexi was in charge
Speaker 1: of everything creative. She made a Roman Michelle's high school
Speaker 1: reunion inspired post it board for guests to write tributes,
Speaker 1: a nod to Alex's favorite movie, and it was her
Speaker 1: genius and appropriately dark idea to put Alex's ashes in
Speaker 1: Britney spears fragrance bottles so that each of us could
Speaker 1: have a piece of him. Lexie and Show She had
Speaker 1: already been looking for Alex the day his scheduled emails
Speaker 1: went out after a rental place called show She about
Speaker 1: a car that Alex hadn't returned. Lexi was out shopping
Speaker 1: for her job as a costume designer when she got
Speaker 1: a call back from a sheriff in Wyoming, where Alex
Speaker 1: had been living in the final months of his life,
Speaker 1: and learned they were looking for him to Very shortly
Speaker 1: after that, I received my email and I was at
Speaker 1: a fucking Macy's in the valley and I opened my
Speaker 1: email and I just fucking lose it. I'm like, it
Speaker 1: was the worst moment of my life. I still can't
Speaker 1: go back to that mall, like truly, and I just
Speaker 1: like kept reading it and just it was sobbing, and
Speaker 1: just yeah, it was like horrible, totally horrible. One thing
Speaker 1: in particular about Lexi's email from Alex stood out to her.
Speaker 1: I think it really resonates with me, the part in
Speaker 1: his note where he um, it's like one of the
Speaker 1: first sentence is just saying that he's so sorry, but
Speaker 1: also that he's like really not and that he was
Speaker 1: like sorry that he was doing this to me and
Speaker 1: to all of us, but at the same time he
Speaker 1: really wasn't the fact that he could say that Alexei,
Speaker 1: I'm not sorry and know that she would understand as
Speaker 1: a testament to how close they were with her, as
Speaker 1: with Alex there's no bullshit, But like with me, that
Speaker 1: wasn't always the case for Lexi. She and I talked
Speaker 1: a lot about how hanging out with Alex was sort
Speaker 1: of like going down the rabbit hole into wonderland, both
Speaker 1: an escape from the constraints of your reality and something
Speaker 1: that changed you. They met at summer camp when she
Speaker 1: was fourteen. He was the rabbit and she was a
Speaker 1: teenager in Nebraska living with strict parents who expected a
Speaker 1: lot from her. His invitation was a simple one. Whatever
Speaker 1: you feel deep down inside, whatever version of yourself that
Speaker 1: you're hiding or suppressing, be that It was like the
Speaker 1: freest I had ever felt in my entire life. Up
Speaker 1: until that point, I had never fully felt myself ever,
Speaker 1: because I always just felt like I didn't fit in
Speaker 1: like anywhere. Everybody was so fucking conventional, and like no
Speaker 1: one did anything ever to like shake it up. And
Speaker 1: then Alex came a lot. He really like shook up
Speaker 1: my whole world. After their magical summer at Camp one
Speaker 1: that changed Lexi forever, it was time to part ways.
Speaker 1: They kept in touch online and he'd visit her a lot,
Speaker 1: but that initial parting was hard. It was the last
Speaker 1: day of camp and we had to say goodbye and
Speaker 1: like I didn't know if I was ever going to
Speaker 1: see him again, and like he was like getting on
Speaker 1: the van and I was just like sobbing. I had
Speaker 1: never felt like that strong of an emotion before. It
Speaker 1: was like truly love. He really was my first love
Speaker 1: in a very non sexual way, even though I did
Speaker 1: see his dick and bubble more times than I can count,
Speaker 1: same same, even though we only went out for like
Speaker 1: I don't know or something. Yeah, you probably saw more
Speaker 1: after you weren't dating than you did when you were
Speaker 1: way more. Alex helped all of us become more ourselves,
Speaker 1: but we were united in something else too. We each
Speaker 1: struggled to reach him in the final year of his life.
Speaker 1: At first, it didn't feel strange. Alex would vanish sometimes
Speaker 1: needing space for himself, and he was also just always
Speaker 1: on the move. I know, I couldn't keep track. There
Speaker 1: was an allusiveness to him, and there was definitely a
Speaker 1: side of him that I just would never see, you know,
Speaker 1: or didn't know about. But part of why we all
Speaker 1: stayed friends with him over the years, even as he disappeared,
Speaker 1: is because we understood and we could be the same
Speaker 1: way ourselves too. For many of us, communication with him
Speaker 1: was almost always touch and go, hot and cold on
Speaker 1: both ends. We would then become basic on the phone,
Speaker 1: and then again mounts nothing. Still, as this elusiveness stretched
Speaker 1: on much longer than usual, we all began to worry
Speaker 1: and got scared. But he didn't respond for like ten
Speaker 1: months and again. The whole time. You know your life
Speaker 1: is happening. You know, life goes on, but it was
Speaker 1: always like in the back of my head, like where
Speaker 1: the fuck is he? Some of us wondered if we'd
Speaker 1: done something to upset him. I really thought if I
Speaker 1: maybe did something. Maybe I don't know what I did.
Speaker 1: I had the same worry. It's probably the main reason why,
Speaker 1: besides my business, I didn't try as hard to track
Speaker 1: him down as I now wish I had. On some level,
Speaker 1: I think I was scared I had unknowingly hurt or
Speaker 1: offended him. So, like show She, I decided to respect
Speaker 1: his boundary. And because Team Thor Daniels wasn't a thing
Speaker 1: at the time, none of us realized it was something
Speaker 1: the other people in his life were experiencing too, so
Speaker 1: we tried to reassure ourselves that this was just Alex
Speaker 1: being Alex. He pretty bluntly said to me, like, I know,
Speaker 1: like I drop off the radar every once in a while,
Speaker 1: but I want you to know that, like, it's nothing personal.
Speaker 1: It's kind of just me. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff going on and it's never about you. In hindsight,
Speaker 1: it's clear that was true in his last year too.
Speaker 1: He wasn't mad at us. He was spending that year
Speaker 1: preparing for his final disappearance. Some of the things he did,
Speaker 1: whether it was disappearing from social media from time to
Speaker 1: time or disappearing from his friendships from time to time
Speaker 1: were things that he needed to do leading up to
Speaker 1: his final disappearance and death for himself, and I think
Speaker 1: he also did it for others too. I think it
Speaker 1: was like practice in a way. The Internet kept him
Speaker 1: connected to us over the years as he followed his whims,
Speaker 1: but it also allowed him to keep his relationships separate
Speaker 1: enough that none of us really knew one another, and
Speaker 1: it allowed him to log off and disappear from our
Speaker 1: lives when he sided he was going to end his own.
Speaker 1: His elusiveness and the role the Internet played in it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if maybe Alice understood him in a
Speaker 1: way that none of the rest of us did, because
Speaker 1: she could be so elusive too, because she, like Alex,
Speaker 1: was a digital creature prone to disappearing. Shortly after Alex died,
Speaker 1: I told Lexi about the Strange files. At the end
Speaker 1: of my email. I made a joke about trying to
Speaker 1: find Alice for a podcast, and it was Lexie who
Speaker 1: first said, you really should. Instead of playing along with
Speaker 1: my tossed off comment, Lexi simply told me honestly to
Speaker 1: go for it, and I knew that if she said it,
Speaker 1: she meant it. I think that, like there's a reason
Speaker 1: why he left you those files, and like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can exactly like pinpoint what it is,
Speaker 1: but I mean, it would be fucking cool if we
Speaker 1: could find out. It's definitely the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: like with me and my personality that like I just
Speaker 1: can't let go of. And maybe that was part of
Speaker 1: it too. Maybe he knew it would like torture you forever,
Speaker 1: So maybe he knew that, like you would start a
Speaker 1: podcast about it, and was like hoping this would happen.
Speaker 1: After Alex's death, the six of us in the Thor
Speaker 1: Daniels group talked all the time, at first helping each
Speaker 1: other through it and then becoming friends in our own right,
Speaker 1: meeting you and Lexi and the Thorde Daniels group do
Speaker 1: a bath, James, you know, and all of Alex's friends.
Speaker 1: I mean, I consider you all my best friends. I
Speaker 1: would not have interacted with you guys, how do you
Speaker 1: not died? And that's just that's just so crazy to
Speaker 1: think about. Most often we talked in an ongoing Instagram
Speaker 1: d M chat, but we also sometimes got together over
Speaker 1: zoom to mark occasions like Alex's birthday or the anniversary
Speaker 1: of his death. But there's one conversation I want to
Speaker 1: highlight one that gave me what I needed to pursue
Speaker 1: my search for Alice, who, in so many ways was
Speaker 1: beginning to feel like she was hovering over my conversations
Speaker 1: with them if we were some kind of newly formed
Speaker 1: Scooby Doo gang. She was the mystery before us, one
Speaker 1: I couldn't solve on my own, so I brought it
Speaker 1: to the group. I'm curious if any of you, like,
Speaker 1: did Alex ever talk to any of you about Alice.
Speaker 1: He mentioned it to me. I think probably while the
Speaker 1: conversations he was having with her were happening, and I,
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't dismiss it, but I was skeptical.
Speaker 1: We were on this sense side and there was this
Speaker 1: girl and we would go to Tiny Chedd and she
Speaker 1: she Sunday because she would do like signature Britney things,
Speaker 1: so they kind of gave her credibility. And she never
Speaker 1: claimed to be She would say that she wasn't Brittany
Speaker 1: as you said, like there's lot of impersonators and stuff,
Speaker 1: but it did not sound to me like someone doing
Speaker 1: an impersonation, like even Biggs. It was really spot on.
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking it was Brittany, but it really did
Speaker 1: sound like if you ever mentioned it, I would have like,
Speaker 1: like I never just like right not believed everything or
Speaker 1: anything that Alex said. But I don't know. I feel
Speaker 1: like the like period of time in which he was
Speaker 1: chatting or talking to her was like very short. I
Speaker 1: feel like it happened in that moment in time, and
Speaker 1: like he talked to me about it like maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of times, and I like sort of dismissed it,
Speaker 1: and then we never really talked about it much further
Speaker 1: because like, for whatever reason, you're just like Yoka, it's
Speaker 1: Britney's weirds, right. But while most of them were skeptical
Speaker 1: about Alice, while Alex was alive, they began to have
Speaker 1: the same inkling of intrigue that I had when I
Speaker 1: found the files in my email. At first, it's like
Speaker 1: a small seed of an idea. Play sit and soil,
Speaker 1: water it a little, and just let it grow. Admitting
Speaker 1: my curiosity to the thor Daniel's crew, a collection of
Speaker 1: people who were all changed by Alex and his free spiritedness,
Speaker 1: was like planning my Alice seed in the richest soil.
Speaker 1: As we talked, I could feel my questions multiplying. After
Speaker 1: a while, the thrill of believing in something outlandish was
Speaker 1: like reconnecting with Alex's essence. As do I put it, fantasy.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like why not believe? Talking to them
Speaker 1: about Alice was like going back down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: I could stop overthinking it and just give in in
Speaker 1: the same way I could when Alex was around. None
Speaker 1: of us knew if there was anything to Alice, but
Speaker 1: we all agreed that it would be more fun to
Speaker 1: give in than to try and stop our curiosities from
Speaker 1: taking root. That was just sort of like part of
Speaker 1: the fun of being his friend. As his friend, you
Speaker 1: sort of like submit to that fantasy with him, and
Speaker 1: he just sort of go along for the ride. Skepticism
Speaker 1: maybe one of my strengths, but I can also wield
Speaker 1: it against myself like a weapon, one that dampens any
Speaker 1: curiosity that seems too colorful or absurd. One of the
Speaker 1: greatest gifts Alex gave me was teaching me how to
Speaker 1: stop questioning myself so much, to stop overthinking and hiding
Speaker 1: to bark like no one was listening. So I'm going
Speaker 1: for it. I'm submitting to the fantasy. If I ever
Speaker 1: said her name, Yeah, would. I'm gonna look for Alice
Speaker 1: next time. On Unread, people are very passionate over this.
Speaker 1: That was one thing I foiled. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of posts or someone just asks who has banana Alice,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty hilarious to see. There are so many
Speaker 1: passionate responses saying it's not Brittany, this was from so
Speaker 1: long ago. It's just someone pretending who cares Leave it alone.