The year that just ended is a difficult one for me to summarize. It was not the best year of my life, nor the worst. But it was possibly the most complex, with a number of major events and changes. As we get older, time seems to accelerate, and it often seems like years slip away. This year wasn’t like that for me, for the most part. The beginning of the year feels like it happened years ago to someone at a much different point in their life–and then there were years of experience in between then and now.

I started the year with a promotion, one that promised to upend my life just as much as if I had changed employment entirely. It more than fulfilled that promise. It was difficult and rewarding work. I learned a lot about what I am capable of. I also learned a lot about what my limits are. I went in there expecting it to break my heart, and I wanted and needed it to. Again, it more than fulfilled that promise.

Halfway through the year, I was offered another promotion, one that would yank me from the new trajectory and what my life was shaping up to be. It was not an easy decision overall, but circumstances lined up to where I decided to seize the opportunity. It’s taken me longer to adjust to this position and it’s responsibilities.

It was also a big year on the creative front. My first book as sole author, A Cold Fire Within, came out, the culmination of a lot of work and patience. It’s a bewildering feeling to see it in the world, and it means more to me than I would have ever imagined. I also helped set up a new publishing imprint, Stay Strange Publishing, as editor, and I and my partners saw our first release.

While at NecronomiCon Providence, I had the first major episode of atrial fibrillation in a couple of years, and I had to go to the emergency room. This was frustrating and distressing on a number of levels. I was on a working vacation at a convention I always look forward to, with friends I hardly ever see. My episode came about from ridiculous circumstances. In the past, it had been from physical exertion. This time, it was from minor stage fright performing karaoke. Waking up alone in my hotel room and still feeling my pounding, jittery heartbeat was terribly demoralizing. As I recently wrote, I have a plan in place, replacing the current one of treating my condition medicinally with a surgical solution.

And hardly least, I fully came out as genderqueer. This was something I had been considering for a long time, and I had already begun the process in 2018 in certain contexts. I’ve more or less understood who I am and what my perspective on gender, sex, and sexuality is for over twenty years. It has primarily been something internal rather than something to publicly acknowledge, and I had basically always thought it would remain that way. But experiences over the last few years led me to finally be explicit about this fundamental aspect of my life.

There are other significant events that took place for me this last year that had a profound effect on me, but these are the ones I can share publicly. It certainly seems like plenty.

I know a lot of people who have had a difficult and overwhelming year. I thank everyone who stood by me in my own struggles and offered their support. I can only hope that I have and will do the same for you.

Farewell, 2019, you messed-up monster of a year.

I wrote this last year on social media, and I was reminded of it when San Diego Comic-Con International, possibly the most crowded and chaotic of pop-culture convention events in the world, ended this year. I edited one sentence that I had agonized over.

Comic-Con 2018 is over, leaving only memories. Here is one such memory of an intimate encounter I had on the dealer’s room floor.

We both strained toward each other, surrounded by sweating, pressing bodies. We had different goals in mind, but luck brought us together. Our eyes met—just for a moment—and I looked away. Then, it happened. As I tried to veer out of your hobbling path, your belly pressed into the back of my hand. Your soft flesh quivered against my unyielding knuckles, spreading to envelop them…filling every space they offered. I felt the heat radiating from beneath your T-shirt, running from my hand, up my arm, and to my core. Your husky body stood in place. My lean hand did not move. How long did this last? It felt like forever, with neither of us allowing our eyes to meet again—with neither of us voicing our desires.

We should have moved on, and, perhaps, we were always two male-bodied people in motion, each in our own directions—neither of us truly coming together with the other. This moment—this fleeting eternity—was all we would ever have. This collision of flesh—this hesitation—was everything and nothing. As our halting, passing embrace continued, I felt your supple belly languidly drag itself across my hand. Your flesh flowed and rippled, lingering as if you never wanted to lose my touch. One last moment, and then your skin sprang free from the edge of my hand. You moved on, leaving me unsure which way to go in all these strangers.

This last weekend, I participated in two San Diego Pride events with the San Diego County Library: outreach at Trans Pride and marching in the parade. This morning, Facebook showed me what I wrote on social media during Pride weekend in 2016:

Happy Pride weekend, San Diego. Never stop, never rest. Your enemies will not.

In the early 1990s, I attended my first Pride parade. I cried when, for a moment, I was overcome by a glimpse of a world better than the one I had been told to settle for.

In 1999, someone threw a teargas canister during the parade. I saw a distant white mass of smoke drifting down the street. An announcer in the stand across from us calmly but urgently spoke into the microphone: “This is teargas, people.” Moments later, it was on us. In seconds, I was reduced to fumbling instinct–unable to see, disoriented, in pain. I had no idea where Arianne was and no way of doing anything to ensure her safety. I didn’t know what was going to happen during the chaos to the pregnant woman who had stood near us or any of the children in the audience. I felt along the wall until I could dimly see again and went down a side street where residents mobilized and provided water and support. Four people were hospitalized, including a three-year-old girl. Many other adults and children, including a pregnant woman, were treated for respiratory, skin, and eye complications. The terrorist responsible was never found.

Last year, I marched in the parade for the first time, with the San Diego County Library, during the downpour.

This year, as with every year, there were numerous reasons to come together. I didn’t march, though I did wave joyously at my coworkers as they went by.

After the Orlando massacre, I saw someone take umbrage at a post that stated that the shooter was born and raised in America and that the toxic stew that he swallowed whole didn’t have just one ingredient, and which followed with examples of the long history of atrocities visited on this community. He asked how could the most horrendous shooting in US history happen during the time when we are the most tolerant? One ready possibility is that of backlash. Forty-seven years ago, you didn’t have to massacre homosexuals in their “hideouts”; you could harass them there while wearing a uniform. Forty-three years ago, you could throw the ones who “flaunted” it in an institution. Thirty-six years ago, you could ignore a health crisis and let it weed people out. Eighteen and twenty-three years ago, you could destroy them one by one if they stepped out of line. Move forward to the day when gay people have had the temerity to become fully visible, to demand that they be treated with the same dignity as any other person in society. The expansion of rights such as marriage equality is progress. But while we pat each other on the backs for how enlightened we’re becoming, let’s not forget that those on the other side are not going to go quietly, hanging their heads in defeat. They will enact legislation to bar people from safely using public restrooms. They will shoot a hundred people because two men kissed each other in public. You don’t have to look outside our borders or dominant culture to find people who hate us because of our freedoms.

Last night, I heard of Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire’s death from friend and editor Bret Kramer. This morning, my Facebook news feed contains numerous images and remembrances of this singular individual. So, I throw one more picture of ye Queen of Eldritch Horror into the void in the vain hopes that it should finally be full. I took it of Wilum holding a copy of the author’s sumptuous Centipede Press collection, THE TANGLED MUSE, in 2010.

I did not know Wilum well. We spoke briefly at conventions, and we occasionally interacted online, including a brief correspondence a few years ago. But I greatly admired Wilum’s work, a delirious, atmospheric brew of Poe, Wilde, Byron, Baudelaire, and Lovecraft.

Wilum understood the allure of the monstrous and the grotesque and shared that mystique with us in a wealth of stories. W. H. Pugmire was many things: prose-poet, too-humble “dweller in Lovecraft’s shadow,” punk, queer, Mormon, recluse, gender nonconformist, warm-hearted and gracious soul, icon. Now, perhaps, WHP is nothing. Now, perhaps, WHP is everything.