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During the early morning hours of January 27th 2003 a friend of mine went out to a beach here in San Diego, reviewed some pictures which were dear to him, put a gun to his head, pulled the trigger and wasted the rest of his life.  I will miss him.

I knew Richard could be morose at times.  I also knew he had a lot going on and it was understandable that he was depressed at times.  I'd no idea he'd been fighting clinical depression for some many years now nor that he was also on some pretty powerful meds to help him fight that depression.  He was both however.  It was something he didn't see fit to share with me.

I knew Richard primarily from our involvement in Club X here in San Diego.  Richard arrived on the scene here some five or six years ago and, as it typical with many a newbie, threw himself into it with a zeal.  In short order he ran for the Club X board of directors and was elected to his first term in 2000.  That was also my fourth term.  I was the Club President and Richard took on the duties of Secretary.

I wish I could say that his first year on the board was an exemplary one, but it wasn't.  Richard's performance was uneven to say the least.  It wasn't that he couldn't do the job for he surely could.  It was that he wouldn't do it consistently or do it consistently well enough.  He'd do it passably one month and then slack off for the next couple of months.  Then, once I'd lit a fire under his butt, Richard would burst forth in an absolute frenzy of activity and do his job not just well but outstandingly well.  And then it would be back to his usual pattern of slacking off.  It was frustrating for all concerned and Richard was frustrated with himself as well.

The next year, however, was different.  Richard ran for the board again in 2001 and was elected to his second term.  His performance that year was vastly different.  He took on the duties of Vice President of the club and soon he saw those duties expand in a very unofficial way.  It turned out that of the seven board members, five of them were pulling double duty as a result of their also being on the LeatherFest XI staff.  Richard and Jeff were the only two on the board who also weren't up to their eyeballs with LeatherFest.  As the work on LeatherFest increased the amount of energy these folks had left over to do their board duties decreased.  Richard moved in to fill that void.

It was here that he excelled.  Richard began doing all the things that the rest of the board should have done themselves but had not the time nor the energy to do.  In this Richard cut corners.  He violated procedures.  He didn't do things as they should have been done.  He did, however, keep the club alive.  For several months there it was essentially only Richard running club X.  Had he not done that then the club might well have collapsed when LeatherFest collapsed.

When LeatherFest XI did collapse it was Richard who once again stepped into the void.  The directors of LeatherFest XI, Jake & Michelle, were utterly spent.  It was entirely beyond their energies to do anything about the bill we owed the hotel for the empty rooms we'd promised to fill.  That bill came out to some $27,000.  After a month of fruitless effort by Jake & Michelle, Richard persuaded the board to allow him to take over the negotiations.  Within but a few weeks of this Richard had persuaded the hotel to reduce the debt to $14,000 and then to reduce it to just $6,700.  A quarter of its original amount.  By himself.  In but two or three weeks.

In typical fashion for Richard he had to wade through some truly abusive stuff within Club X in order to see this through however.  At the start of 2002 he was hoping for a year of recharging as he wasn't running for reelection.  That too was not to be as he found he had to face down a woman who had mis-represented her credentials to others for years and who had threatened him when he challenged her about this on behalf of the club.  Richard sheparded through Club X's first Do Not Invite policy.  This became his major preoccupation for most of that year.  By the summer I had joined with him in facing down this threat as this woman was truly a threat to us all.

This effort should not have taken as long as it did nor been as hard as it was.  In the end however, Richard prevailed and the abusive woman was expelled from Club X and her name was placed on the DNI list so she could threaten club members no more.  At least not as a Club X member herself.  I was proud of my efforts here, proud of my having helped Richard in this, and proud of him.

In being so ardent in his efforts to ensure Club X was protected from such a threat and its members were also protected, Richard demonstrated a determination and a degree of selflessness which was truly admirable.  I also got some idea of just how intent he could be when he had set himself a goal.

Over those months Richard turned to me for advice on many an occasion.  I was flattered by this.  Especially as I had previously been something of a task master to him during his first year on the board.  However, he had changed.  He had evened out.  His performance greatly improved.  Gayle was at the root of this.

Gayle is an awesome woman.  I'd thought that from when I first met her at a Co-Ed Rap group meeting some several years ago.  She was new to the scene then but that didn't last long.  Eventually she and Richard got together and seemed inseparable.  The clicked on a very deep and powerful level.  Richard was a pretty hard pain pig and Gayle was a pretty intense sadist.  It was however, a lot more than that.  They were a joy to behold and I was happy for them both.

As their relationship grew and deepened, Richard seemed to find more of himself and his performance in the rest of the world improved greatly.  It was this Richard which I saw the most of in 2002.  It was also this Richard who was turning to me for advice and for references.  I formally introduced him to Guy Baldwin after Richard had seen him speak at the Leather Leadership Conference in Los Angeles that year.  I was somewhat surprised that the two of them kept up such a communication for Richard was well and truly a hetero man.  Initially, he had many an "issue" about this as he came from a very homophobic family.  In due time, and with solid work on his behalf, he overcame his phobias and began enjoying the company of gay men without regard to their sexuality.  Richard had even been helping to set things up for a private, men only, play party and was looking forward to getting some intense scene play with some of these men at that party.  This was a long way from the skittish and unaware Richard Chatterton I'd first met and who had been deeply afraid of even walking into Wolf's to attend a Club X workshop.

Richard was also a man with an intense need to serve others, to be useful, and to find some sense of family.  I've since learned that his family of origin wasn't worth much to him in his life.  We, the leather community, became the family that mattered to him.  I was glad to be a part of this.

During the years that I knew Richard he transformed himself from a somewhat naive hetero man who was also somewhat fearful of gay men into a far more knowledgeable, experienced, skilled leader who was so at home among leatherfolk that he was able to compete in the International Boot Black competition at the International Mr. Leather contest in Chicago in 2002.  That is no small step.  Richard also transformed himself into one of the more kinky people I've ever met.  And considering that I've been in the scene for over a decade and a half, have come to know some pretty intensely kinky people during those years and have done some pretty intensely kinky stuff myself, that's saying something about Richard.

As 2002 drew to a close there were more changes afoot with Richard.  After about four years his relationship with Gayle came to a close.  That was extremely painful for the two of them.  Richard was also in the process of divorcing his wife, a Japanese woman he married while serving overseas in the Navy, and he was also selling his house.  That was a lot of stuff to happen in the span of just a couple of months.  It was understandable that it could leave him depressed.  That's what I thought and that's what he presented to me.  I figured that he'd work his way out of it once the divorce went through, once the house closed escrow, and once he'd moved into his new apartment.  Time would also help with the ending of his relationship with Gayle.  That and filling his life with all the high tech toys and such that he was always buying.

So that last Monday in January was a surprise to me.  As it was to all of us.  Richard had spent that entire Sunday with his friends.  He'd been to a Super Bowl party with them and even hung out with another of them until the late hours of the night.  All of them knew of his depression but he gave them no clues at all as to how he was feeling that day.  He was just his usual smiling self.  And so it goes.

I think the one hardest affected by all this has been Gayle.  She knew Richard like no other.  The two of them had achieved something truly special and something far more intense than he had achieved with anyone else.  Yet, as the divorce had not gone through by the time Richard pulled that trigger, it was his wife who had all the legal title the state grants in such a situation.  Gayle was the one though who stepped in to pick up the pieces until Richard's wife got herself together enough to do so.

Oh, and then there's also Richard's first wife and his child from that marriage.  Yes, things became rather complicated and messy for everyone.  That didn't make it any easier for us.  Even now, some two weeks out, things are still pretty damn messy.  That is life, I guess.

A week after Richard did this to himself we had a service for him.  It was a general one.  Gayle set it up and there was the wife's family over from Japan, and of some of Richard's coworkers.  None of which really knew of Richard's private life and who probably would not want to assimilate such information about him at that service.  So, as the rest of us - his newfound family - filled the church to say our goodbyes, we had to do so in a somewhat muted way.  A way which did say goodbye but in which we had to limit our expressiveness in doing so.

I was asked to speak at that service.  That was tough.  Much tougher than I thought it would be.  The grief and pain in the faces of everyone in the church was something all together different looking into it from the dais.  It was all I could do to make it through my eulogy.  I did though.  Others there told me I did well enough.  I've included, below, the text of what I said that day.

We packed the house at that service.  Standing room only in the church, the balcony, and the hallways.  For a guy who thought himself so alone in the world he sure couldn't count to well.  Tomas and Rick performed a song for us all that was very relevant, "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd.  I'd long thought that song to be a searing one on its own.  Performed in this setting that just made it all the more so.  There was to be another bit of music at that service.  This one was one of Richard's favorite tunes and was off of a new CD.  They'd tested it and had it all cued up.  It didn't work.  At first folks hadn't clued into that.  When they tried playing it again I figured it out.  And then I began to laugh.  This was so typical.  And so perfect.  Pretty soon the whole place was laughing.  We all got it.  We all recognized how fitting that was for that moment.  It was a good way to remember Richard.

A week later we got to hold our remembrance of Richard.  His friends in the leather community gathered at a local bar and had it out.  Gayle set this up, again, and asked folks to submit photos of Richard and tell the story behind those shots.  Phil got a slide presentation going of this and brought along his laptop and projector.  Once the Dessert Auction finally wrapped up, we gathered and went through our memories of Richard.  There was some crying, there was some anger, and there was a lot of laughter.  The man was far from perfect but he touched enough lives and made them better in doing so that he will be missed.  That was what we gathered there to share that night.  Between the photos of him and his pink Harley ("It's not pink - it's fuscia!") his caned and bloodied butt and his doing boots at IML we all shared what we knew of the man and how grateful we were for that.

Hopefully the mess that's left will soon be resolved.  The grieving will continue for some time, as it should.  The anger at him will also continue, as it should.  This was a first for me.  In all my forty some odd years on this planet I've not lost a friend to suicide before.  Richard is the first.  I've also not lost a friend to the Plague in some time now so his death was doubly hard for me.  I know some folks who have far too much experience at handling things such as this.  I don't envy them that experience.

It was a long week for me between the news and that service.  A long week indeed.  Not nearly as long as the one Gayle went through and, to a great extent, is still going through.  We'll be there for each other as this goes on.  If you've any comments about this, have any questions about it, or have found it and would like to be in touch with anyone about it, then drop me a line here.

Thank you,

Madoc Pope

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This page was last updated on: 05 February 2004