Martin - he had been sick for a long time when he decided to really not have any more contact with people. I was really the only one he talked to as he had no family that he was in contact with (gay, you know!). Aside from some acquaintances where he lived, he really was alone. But he preferred it that way. He suffered from so many serious, fatal ailments that it's a medical miracle he lived as long as he did. It was not unusual to not hear from him for two or three months at a clip, when he wasn't well, or in and out of the hospital, as he would really cease contact with everyone. He seemed to enjoy spending time in Balboa Park, when he could physically get out, as he lived directly across the street from there. Last time he called me, it was to ask me what kind of pressure cooker I had, as he wanted to go out and buy one for himself when he was able to get out again.
I found out he was gone when he stopped returning phone calls and his phone was disconnected and his e-mail account just returned all e-mails as undeliverable, and mail sent to his apartment came back as undeliverable. I did see him in Sept of 2005 while I was out in San Diego at a conference, and he really made an effort to come out for an evening, but it was so hard for him to even walk 20 steps without stopping to rest.
But if you thought he was a character on here, that pales in comparison to how he was in person! A very amusing and interesting guy who had really lived quite a life. Overall, a good, kind and decent person with an incredible wit who could converse intelligently on many, many topics. But he was also a very private and independent person, who let very few people "in". For all the health problems I know he had, he would never talk about them, so it was hard to know exactly what was going on or how seriously ill he really was.
