My lover died the day I was supposed to stay with him. The day I thought we would finally be together and stop dragging ourselves back into the hell that is toxic relationship patterns. Not literal Hades, but the perpetual mental anguish we commiserated about for the last two years of his life.
"I can’t make it today," I type into my phone as my heart races and sinks. "I have a work meeting I can’t get out of." I press send on Facebook Messenger from the cold, windowless office. Orpheus sends me a message back, "It’s OK. I’m reachable while away." I take a deep breath because I’m relieved he’s understanding.
I later learned not visiting Orpheus that day was one of the biggest mistakes of my entire life.
As I tell you this, I imagine him sitting on his bed in front of an overflowing bookshelf or surrounded by synthesizers and gear. Orpheus was quite literary, but his main passion was for music. He was a drummer, programmer, engineer, and multi-instrumentalist. Right now, I can sense his intoxicating smile all the way from the underworld, beaming across the aethyr, and his ghost looking back toward me without consequence. I’d do anything to see that smile again—to feel his skin against mine, to inhale every pheromone.
Since I couldn’t visit Orpheus before his first European tour in years, we made plans for me to come up as soon as he returned. I was already counting the days. All day, I reminisced about the last time I saw him, when I caressed the dark pentagram of his soft chest hair for hours, as we talked on his bed and kissed and kissed. He had the sweetest kisses I’ve ever known. One thing we never understood was people who don’t like to kiss. How is that even a thing? "Monsters," we would say in unison.
I leave early from the jail where I work and drive to the important off-site meeting I couldn’t cancel. As I’m driving, a wave of absolute despair shocks me out of autopilot. Everything in my body tells me something is wrong, and it has to do with Orpheus. I can’t catch my breath. I weep harder than I’ve ever wept in my life. My body quakes with loud sobs I can’t stop. Tears blur my sight. I almost crash my car, so I pull over on the side of the busy road. Visions of Orpheus flash through my mind. The deepest sorrow consumes me. I can’t stop the waves of remorseful agony. I don’t even understand where they’re coming from. An unrelenting grief over us not being together immobilizes me. I vow aloud to do whatever it will take to get across the border and be with him when he returns. I nearly drown in the tears filling my car, and then open the door and get some air to calm down. I re-enter traffic and rush to the meeting, holding a cold water bottle under my swollen eyes.
I sent Orpheus a text the next night, letting him know I hope he arrived okay. Eager to tell him my epiphany in the car and to re-confess my undying love, which we did for each other habitually since we first kissed. Hours went by with no response, which was unusual after such enthusiasm on his part.
Days passed with no word from Orpheus. By the fifth day, which was a Saturday, I saw online that an artist friend of his hastily shared a rest-in-peace poster for him, with that day’s date. Immediately, I knew the date was wrong. I left a comment, "He didn’t die today. He died on Monday." Soon after, one of his friends messaged me, asking how I knew the date was wrong. I explained to him that I was expecting to hear from Orpheus but didn’t and that we last talked on Monday. Really how I knew was because I felt him dying. Then, I told him about my random meltdown in the car the afternoon Orpheus died. Not long after, Orpheus’s family publicly stated that he had died on Monday of fentanyl poisoning, around the same time I pulled over with premonition and unwittingly mourned him.
Before I continue with my story, let me share some fentanyl facts with you because many folks out there don’t realize this tasteless and odorless silent killer is ubiquitous now.
Fentanyl is 80-100 times stronger than heroin and 50-100 times more potent than morphine. Almost all drugs are cut with it: cocaine, heroin, MDMA, and meth, even Xanax and oxycontin are being replaced by it, unbeknownst to buyers. From August 2019 to August 2020, approximately 88,000 people lost their lives to drug overdoses in the United States, which the Center for Disease Control and Prevention says was "the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period." There is likely a correlation between these overdoses and fentanyl because so many people who are dying have it in their system. Like Orpheus did.
The day after Thanksgiving in 2018, I broke up with my then-boyfriend because we were fighting, yet again. Admittedly, I was also deeply concerned about Orpheus’s well-being. Earlier that year, he confided in me that he relapsed after his longest duration of being sober. He was ashamed and dreaded ridicule from his loved ones. "I don’t want to be the loser everyone expects me to be," he said. I did my best to console him, to be an unconditionally loving presence, but it wasn’t easy.
I drove seven hours to wait in a McDonald’s with free Wi-Fi, while he made his ex-girlfriend a sandwich that she demanded on her way to work, while she cried about not having enough money to take with her when she was finally leaving him alone and moving across the world. He apologized profusely and said she stopped by unexpectedly. I knew he was in a bad way, so I accepted the apology and said what I came all that way to say, "I fear for your mortality, Orpheus." Then, I begged him to return to treatment, but he didn’t go.
You can order fentanyl test strips online at https://dancesafe.org/shop/. If you live in Portland, Oregon, you can go to Outside In and have your substances tested for fentanyl: .
