Pen Pals.

Christina, a coworker, handed me a book one day. She said she thought I might like it. It was titled “Getting Over Homer” by Mark O’ Donnell. I read it and loved it. It was a gay dramedy full of laughs and swoons—my favorite type of fiction.

Christina and I discussed it every morning before work. We talked about the book as well as our crushes on the author—though my crush was more plausible. He was a sort of ruddy Irishman with happy smiling eyes. He lived in Manhattan. 

One morning she told me that she was inviting Mr. O’Donnell to read at an event she was coordinating. I told her to put a P.S. at the bottom that I wanted to take him to dinner if he made it into town. Ha. Ha.

A couple of weeks later I was paged for a phone call. “Scott, Mark O’Donnell on line one.”

WTF?

I picked up the phone and the voice on the other end said “Hi Scott. This is Mark O’Donnell.” Gulp. No one but Christina had known about my invitation and this voice was much too low for her to impersonate.

“Hi Mark,” I stammered. He went on to tell me that he regretted that he couldn’t make it to Christina’s reading nor to dinner but he appreciated the invitation. We talked for a bit more, mostly small talk. He asked if he could call me again and we exchanged numbers. Then I peed my pants.

Mark and I talked on the phone a from time to time and exchanged a few letters. He was also a cartoonist for The New Yorker and would send me some of his works. I would send my feeble attempts, too. I was overjoyed when he won a Tony Award for his writing the book for “Hairspray” and saw him live on TV—as live as that could be.

Mark was also pretty depressed and so was I and our correspondence grew darker with time. When Christina was found dead on Christmas Eve, I wrote to tell him the news. He told me how saddened he was. I never heard from him again.

Mark collapsed and died at home in 2012. He was 58. One of the cartoons he sent me was of the Grim Reaper surrounding a cute, happy family. The caption read: “How dirt is made.”