Remembering Salem

With yesterday's passing of Salem MacGourley, the world has lost a delicate, poetic soul.

Sure, he adopted an air of cool indifference, but his perceived callousness was really a dark, heavy coat that he wore to protect himself from emotional harm. If you could coax him out of it, like a bunny from its burrow, you would find (like I did) that he had a soft, fluffy, almost marshmallow-y heart. This man, who so carefully cultivated an aura of detached disdain, would giggle like a schoolgirl in anticipation of the next Dr. Who episode.

I remember he weeped openly when Rose Tyler died. Great, shameless, wracking sobs that made his entire body shudder, as if his grief was a hole into a dimension of unthinkable pain and despair. He was inconsolable for months after.

Not many people know this, but Salem and I were lovers. I was keenly aware of the problems he was having in his marriage, and I tried my best to counsel and comfort him. I soon fell in love with him, this broken man who only needed tenderness and sympathy to mend his wounds.

I eventually became the other woman that ended his marriage. I'm not proud of it, but it's true, and it's something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life.

What I found most remarkable about Salem was the fact that he never once judged me, even when I revealed to him that I was (at the time) a pre-operative transsexual. When we met in June of last year, he was incredibly open-minded about so many things. He was also skilled and tender in his lovemaking. Innovative, as well. The things that man could do with his tongue...

We hadn't announced it yet, but he proposed to me last month, on my birthday. It was all I could do not to shout from the rooftops that I would soon be Mrs. Erin MacGourley. His wedding gift to me would have been an experimental uterine transplant, in the hopes that I'd be able to bear his children. We were planning to have as many as possible and name them after characters from Dr. Who and Serenity. We would've made a killing on the convention circuit, winning costume and trivia contests.

Of course, there was also the subjugation of the blogosphere. "Sonic Lurkings from the Rhythmic Stapler", the merger of our two blogs, would have crushed all others like a juggernaut. Salem, wonderful, sensuous, robust, caring, virile man that he was, promised me Chris Sims' head on a pike.

He would have approved of the way he died: in a drunken stupor, pantsless, t-boned by the Oscar Meyer wienermobile and then hit head-on by a Wonder Bread truck. That the accident happened in Roxfall, Texas, and everyone died in the crash, would have suited his impish sense of humor. Of course, as an Irishman, he would have preferred to have drowned in a vat of Guiness, or at least Harp lager, but it couldn't be helped.



Good night, sweet Time Lord. May flights of Gallifreyans sing thee to thy rest. And I, ever your Rose, must bide.

Until your next regeneration....