Remember that Sesame Street song that goes: “These are the people in your neighbourhood, they’re the people that you meet when you’ve walking down the street; they’re the people that you meet each day?”
I thought of this song when I read that it was Kendall Adams who had died in a fire that tore through a brownstone walkup on Maitland Street here in Toronto behind the PROUD FM studio where I host my show, two weekends ago. The Saturday night fire and the “death of a 61-year-old hairdresser” made headlines.
Actually, I didn’t even know Kendall Adams by name – it was from the accompanying picture of him in the current Xtra that I recognized him.
Although I’ve never said a word to him, I knew him to see him, and I saw him too many times to count. At some point or other in the last twenty years I’ve either lived or worked in and around the queer Village, which means that over the past two decades I saw Kendall more than I’ve seen some members of my family.
He worked at a hair salon on Church Street south of Bloor and you couldn’t miss him when you saw him walking home or hanging outside the salon for a cigarette: his dyed blond hair, his tatts and jewels, and the way he preferred a plunging neckline.
So when I read that HE was “the hairdresser” who had died from that fire, I was surprised – but then again not really – by how shocked and saddened I was.
We have family, friends, co-workers and neighbours that make up the bigger pieces of our lives, but then we also have people like Kendall Adams, who you see with great regularity, and even wonder a little bit about sometimes.
But it takes something like Kendall’s tragic death to make you realize just how much of the content of your experience familiar faces really are – especially in a close-knit neighbourhood like our queer Village – even if they are only ever faces.
Maybe it’s because we’re more likely to take these faces for granted that when something like the death of Kendall Adams happens, we get to feel the surprising sting of a little piece of life as we’ve always known it, gone for good.
… from H*I*M*B*O! www.shaunproulx.ca/himbo
Beautiful. Timely. Profound.
Thank you Shaun for the reminder that we are connected in ways we may not realize until…
Blessings,
Natalie
You are so right Shaun.
Wish you love, peace and happiness.
Trisha
Thanks for the sweet comment, Natalie!
x Shaun
Natalie, thanks so much for taking time to say that.
x Shaun
Shaun,
You are more than welcome…
It is a very well written and heart felt post and I am grateful that you took the time to share it.
Many Blessing to You on your journey,
Natalie