Karl

A Light On My Path To Adulthood

Note: I originally wrote this in December of 2025 and have sat with it for a while, but I have been thinking a lot about the human concept of “loss”, and all that that word contains, of late.

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It had already been a long day and I was hungry, but I still had some distance to go, along with a couple more errands to run. I was coming up on my favourite fish ‘n’ chip shop–always a reminder of my British roots–and was trying to decide whether to stop or not. It had been a ‘four seasons in one day’ kind of day and, at that particular moment, there was a blue sky, fierce white and grey clouds, and spray kicking up from the highway. And then I saw it, a perfect rainbow pointing to the fish ‘n’ chip shop. I had been looking for a sign from the universe and there it was.

I parked up, took a couple of iPhone pictures, sent one to Christi, and then went inside. I ordered my usual and then, as I was alone, lazily opened Instagram to see what was what (I may not post there, anymore, but I do like to see what everyone else is up to). And there it was, that jolting piece of news that comes upon us unexpectedly and coldly; a notice of death, an instantly recognizable face, a punch of emotion. In this case it was a man from my youth, my long distant past.

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The details are lost to me, now, but I met Karl around the time I was around 17 or 18, I suppose. He wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before. He looked like he’d come from a different time. Maybe a different planet. I know now that he was only about 7 years older than me, but at the time I could not have guessed that. He could have been in his 40s, he could have been from the 1840s.

The 1980s were a time of some seriously questionable fashions but Karl hewed to none of them, and was always immaculately turned out; tweed sport coat, waistcoat, pocket watch, waxed handlebar moustache, perfectly pressed trousers and (I’m guessing) hand made leather shoes. And none of this was affected hipster behaviour or ersatz in the slightest, this was who he was, this was how he dressed. I’m not sure if I ever really knew where he was from or what he actually did, he seemed like he was carried aloft on an air of unknowns.

He ran a small theatre group¹ that put on performances at the local hospital and I, with some thespian ambition, was recruited into the troupe. I loved it. The first thing we put on was a bedroom farce with lots of comings and goings through lots of doors. Lots of fun. Then Karl, with some lofty ambition, wanted to put on a production of Equus, by Peter Shaffer. Now, if you are not familiar with the play it is, well, not a farce, it is serious stuff. It follows a child psychiatrist (“Martin Dysart”, to be played by Karl) trying to treat a troubled young man–“Alan Strang”–who has a pathological fascination with horses. It is an exceptionally emotional and difficult role to play and, for some reason, Karl thought that I could carry this off².

Rehearsals were intense. There is one scene where Strang leaps to his feet and, in a rage, stabs and blinds imaginary horses. I remember one rehearsal where I did that, in an absolute fury, a whirling dervish. Somehow I had simply given up who I was and had become this character. As I crumpled to the floor sobbing and heaving I remember an absolute silence from the cast. I looked up to see a group of stunned looking amateur thespians looking back at this mess of a man.

I don’t think I’ve ever discussed this with anyone, and I’ve definitely not written about it, but it is a deep, core memory for me for I genuinely became someone else for those 3-4 minutes, and the knowledge of that left a lasting mark³.

“The unexamined life is not liveable for a man”
Attributed to Socrates

Karl also presented me with the first real challenge to my adult sense of self because, for the first time in my life, I found myself inexplicably attracted to another man. He was intelligent, well-read, erudite and witty. He had a style and panache that was unlike anything in my peer group, perhaps the entire city. I should say that there was no Svengali-like element to any of this, and no undercurrent of physical attraction. I had no idea if he was gay or straight. In this he was, again, an enigma, although his somewhat effete manner invited ridicule from the city’s knuckle-dragging hoi polloi. And I was straight, right? Right? It was perhaps the first time that I realized that sexuality–and human attraction–wasn’t a simple binary. The first time that I realized that it was complicated because we are complicated, because we contain multitudes.

Karl took a liking to me perhaps because he saw that I was someone trying to find a way out, a pathway to who I really was, to who I might become. His attention made me feel that I, too, could become this interesting, this witty, this learned.

For whatever reason life moved on and we lost touch. I feel that there may have been some bad blood, a falling out perhaps, but I no longer remember the details (I feel sure that that was my fault). I moved away from my hometown and, aside from visits to see my folks and one or two friends, I stayed away.

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In 2017 my brother and I had to clear the family house ready for sale. One day I took some time off and went into the city for lunch at a delightful little place in Hockley. As I sat at the counter in walked a man with a waxed handlebar moustache, tweed sport coat, and well-made brogues. Older looking, but not quite as portly as he had once been, I recognized him immediately. We struck up a conversation and he asked me about my life and where it had taken me. I told him that I was in Canada and that I was now married. Pictures may have been shown. He asked about my parents (unsurprisingly my mum was a big fan of Karl) and was sad to hear that my dad had passed, and consolatory about my mums dementia. He was warm and seemed genuinely happy in my happiness. He told me about some of his adventures and invited me to his gin bar (but of course he had a gin bar!)

I was so happy that we had bumped into each other, and that we were able to spend a few minutes talking.

Karl was just 65 years old, when he died, although I think that maybe there is a missing “1” at the beginning of that number. Our paths crossed for such a short moment in time, in the arc of a lifetime, but what an impression he made on young me. I truly loved the man, and how I loved that he challenged me to dig deeper into my thoughts, into my ambitions, and into my life.

Rest in peace, chap, rest in peace.

1. We call it “AmDram”, for amateur dramatics, in dear old Blighty.

2. The 1977 film adaptation of the play starred Richard Burton as Dysart, and Peter Firth as Alan Strang. Daniel Radcliffe played Strang in a 2007 stage production in London.

3. Ultimately the production never happened, for various reasons to do with things out of our control.