Sam was 12 years my senior; he could easily have been an older brother. In a way he was. I started following in his footsteps in my early young adult years. I felt competitive with him from the start. Yes, he was sexy and tough in a way I couldn’t quite embody. Yet, my tamped down anger, when it exploded, had a rough edge I felt was similar to his style. Still, his authentic emergence eluded my dreams, and I suffered watching him fade into a future I would never be part of.
He was a playwright. I was a playwright. His success shook much of the world, mine lit up one northwest city for a moment. He was a screenplay writer, I dreamed of such a fate. He wooed and partnered with Jessica Lange. That was when our ways dramatically parted ways. The only movie star that I have ever fallen in love with is Jessica Lange. Like an older brother whose footprints cannot be erased, Sam Shepard embraced his life in a way that I longed to do but could not follow.
For all of my “connection”, I didn’t know of Sam’s death until six months after the fact. I had recently retired from business life and retired to a seaside town to resume my writing. And, of course, I opened portals of past influence. It wasn’t long before I unlocked my memories of Sam through his exchanged letters with Johnny Dark. Long before bromance was a word they lived in that rich vein. I pined to know what they experienced, but could only read their exchanged letters and pine. After reading Two Prospectors, I pushed into the internet for more information, only to learn that Shepard had died some six months before.
I read heartfelt testimony from Johnny Dark, from Jessica Lange, all of which never mentioned me. Of course. I never knew Sam Shepard, even though we were brothers in some sense.
