By Danielle Yampuler

I will always remember him as the man he was that day, the one I knew everything and nothing about.


There’s a room in my head where I take him apart to preserve what I can.

I dig the scalpel barely a centimeter into his flesh. I run it along where I imagine the seams of his body would be if he were a toy, birthed by being sewn together. I cut a thin red line around the back of his head and peel at the incisions carefully, slowly. I want his face to stay as intact as possible.

The last time I saw him, we were in a room lined wall-to-wall with beautifully preserved dead animals. I was scared to move unless I accidentally touched one of the stuffed rabbits he had reconstructed from roadkill or knocked over a snake he had put in a jar of preservatives. I felt this weirdly primal sense of fear, yet I could not tell if it was caused by the predators baring their teeth at me dotted around the room or the thought of death itself.

I remember feeling ashamed of being scared by something he loved so much. I felt guilty I could not hide my discomfort, but how could I? He knew everything about me. He could see the stiff way I held my body, the way I barely spoke.

He asked if I wanted to leave, and I’m certain he knew I was lying when I politely responded, “No, here is fine.”

I found comfort in the skulls that sat on his shelves; I focused my eyes on them. They had been there ever since I met him, and didn’t spark this sense of discomfort in me. Their lack of flesh made them seem sterile and separate from life. In the present, they were barely noticeable among all the animals he had stuffed, skinned, bleached…

I lay his skin out to dry.

He first came to me in the form of a girl just as odd and young as I was.

I was an unusually confident 12-year-old lesbian. He was a new student unable to assimilate even in a theater class. We gravitated toward each other with an almost cosmic certainty and spilled our life stories the moment we met. From that point on, he and I were practically conjoined in a way that was notable to outsiders. We would often meet at the end of the day and recount stories of boys whispering our names before laughing to their friends; of girls we had never talked to asking us if we were each other’s girlfriends.

I could tell he was queer from the moment I met him, but that wasn’t unusual. Weird closeted gays flocked to me like moths to their guiding light. His intense curiosity about my sexuality didn’t help his case. I had already learned that if a person came to me with a little too many questions about the queer experience, it wouldn’t be long before they came out.

He quickly figured out that he liked girls, yet still had much more to ask. These were usually atypical questions I didn’t know how to answer. I remember lying on the floor of his bedroom late at night during sleepovers. I would listen to him try to explain how he felt, as I imagined the animal skulls that sat near me growing back their bodies to prance around the room.

I paused him once to ask why he had the remains.

“I think they’re cool. I’d love to get more,” he responded. Then he asked, “What if I want to like girls, but in the way boys like girls?”

“You don’t have to be a boy to like girls,” I defensively replied.

Despite my initial anger, I could tell he was only trying to describe something he could not yet verbalize. It often felt like he was trying to scrape something out of me that he could only find within himself, but I couldn’t give him answers about an experience I had never lived. His situation began to make more sense when he told me his worst fear: him, as an old woman. His hair white, hands brittle. A sign that he would never change, even if he refused to accept what he’d rather be.

Hearing this fear prompted me to question him endlessly with the insensitive curiosity only a middle schooler could possess. Our conversations often ended with us in tears as he voiced his fear that he would not be a good man. I would listen attentively, eager to dissect his words and reassemble them into something we could use to make sense of his feelings.

I spent all my time with him and every moment without him waiting until we saw each other again. Our mutual obsession felt almost romantic. It certainly was to him.

I had already learned how to reject people when he confessed to having a crush on me. He understood and dropped the subject with painful urgency. I knew by then that when you aid somebody in learning how they love, eventually they will want to transfer that love onto you.  It was common for those that asked me questions about being queer to confess a crush on me months later, but I had never been so close to the admirer. It felt painful to push him away. Doing so created a distance that had not existed prior and would never be closed.

I lay the skin over the metal frame that shapes his chest, and I wonder if my guilt will carry on forever. I wonder if my heart will always squeeze a little when I hear his name.

I remember when he started to call himself a man, in quiet tones, like if he said it too certainly the universe would strike him down. Our time together would end shortly after with an abruptness that my feelings were not prepared for. We attended different high schools and suddenly went from two children entirely obsessed with each other to mutual afterthoughts.

I saw him sparingly. I learned his new legal name through text messages. I only saw him post-top surgery months after the procedure had been done. With trimmed hair, stubble on his chin, and a flat chest, he looked like an entirely different person. His interest in taxidermy evolved with him: instead of merely collecting skulls, he began to gather and preserve carcasses himself.

His passion may have been morbid, but I have defended it against the many who call it demented. All of his dead animals were ethically sourced. He would clean the corpses and reconstruct them with care, granting them an eternal existence. His hobby grew not from a fascination with death but a love for life, an empathy so deep that many choose not to understand it. He was a man tasked with the unique process of recreating his own body, and he treasured these animals enough to do the same for them.      

Despite my understanding of him and what he loved, his affinity for the macabre made my skin crawl. I used to beg for details about the preservation process in an attempt to maintain the bond between us. However, I couldn’t help but feel bile build in my throat when he would describe setting beetles upon a carcass to clean its flesh from its bones, or be nauseated by the smell of formaldehyde.

I dress him, pose him just as I would like. My reconstruction of him is not the man he is today, but it is the man he was to me.

That final time I stood staring at his skulls, he still knew me, but I did not know him. He had become someone new in our time apart. I was the same person I always had been. I wondered if the difference was as stark to him as it was to me.

I wish I had asked him to take me apart the way he had his animals. To tear into me and see my heart, my brain, my flesh, and make me into someone he could still be drawn to. Into someone still drawn to him.

Instead, I said nothing. He opened his door and guided me out of it.

I felt the tension in my shoulders release away from the staring eyes of lives that had been paused indefinitely. I watched him close the door to his room, and we hung out elsewhere.

I look upon my final recollection of him, the art piece I built using his remains. He is gently shutting the door to his bedroom, and subsequently, a life I no longer have a place in.

I will love him forever, and he will remain static in my mind for the rest of time. ■