Spalding offered me comp tickets to his performance that night, just a few miles away. I was touched, but self-conscious about accepting. I'll buy my own, I said. No, he insisted. He told me where he was staying in La Jolla, gave me the room number and his intended whereabouts for the rest of the day so I could figure out when to come by and pick up the tickets. We said warm goodbyes, him wishing me luck on the job interview, me wishing him luck with the performances.

Later, I was relieved he wasn't in his room when I called up from the lobby. I didn't want the day's exchange on the beach to be marred. I wanted it to stay etched in my memory as it already was: sunny, naked, self-contained, celestial and intriguingly awkward -- what with the sunscreen globs and all.

I bought a ticket and went to Spalding's performance the next night.

And when I got home, I started to write.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Over the years, when I wasn't on deadline with a personal essay, I continued to read and reread everything Spalding Gray created. My mom would send me newspaper clippings when he delivered a performance down in South Florida. Friends would call if they heard a mention of him on TV or saw him interviewed. When his work turned more sweet than neurotic in "Morning, Noon and Night," I rejoiced for him. I wanted him happy.

I wrote about meeting him on Black's Beach, but then sat on the piece for a spell before I considered sending it to him. Would he remember me, five years later? Would he like my work? Or would he find it silly and derivative, and just toss it on a pile to join all the other packages from simpering, sycophantic would-be memoirists? Finally I kicked all that aside and sent it, getting his address from directory assistance in Sag Harbor, N.Y., where he mentioned relocating in "Morning, Noon and Night."

And then I waited, dreaming up all sorts of fantasies. Spalding would be so floored by my stuff, he'd call his agent on my behalf and we'd all meet for lunch in New York. Or he'd feel so connected to me through my writing, he'd invite me up to Long Island to hang with his new wife and kids. All of that was ludicrous, I knew, but I couldn't help myself.

I kept waiting. Months went by. I figured he might be traveling, or on a hairy book deadline, so I remained patient. But then, rereading one of his books, I came across a passage about how he was often inundated with other people's writing and found it annoying and overwhelming. Blood rushed to my face. There was my answer right there. My hopes of hearing from him drained through the floorboards.

I stopped waiting, which was a good thing, because Spalding never wrote.

I gathered all his books and put them back on the shelf, sneering when I passed them. Pretty soon I found another neurotic, self-deprecating memoirist to fuss over: David Sedaris. Spalding now seemed to me like a first boyfriend, one you think back on and grimace. What was I thinking?

I got over the scorched feeling, though, and soon I could look at Spalding objectively. Serendipitously bumping into him broke through something in me, and thrust me into writing: I now had a personal column in the Baltimore City Paper with a sizable following. I was writing for glossy magazines and I was working on a book project, a memoir. I was deeply grateful to him for that.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Last fall, I was flipping through a copy of GQ in my doctor's office and came across a piece on Spalding. The news wasn't good. He'd been in a terrible, head-on car crash in Ireland in 2001. The crash resulted in debilitating injuries and crippling, disorienting bouts of depression. The following year, he'd even tried to kill himself, which his mother had done, too -- only she'd succeeded.

Haunted, I went home and reimmersed myself in the waters of Spalding. I pulled all his books off the shelf. I rented "The Killing Fields" so I could introduce my husband to Spalding and have another look myself.

I was rereading "Swimming to Cambodia" on the morning an e-mail came in from a friend, telling me I needed to go to CNN.com right away. There, I found the report: Spalding was missing, thought to have committed suicide. On Jan. 10, he had taken his kids to the movies, brought them home and then vanished, leaving his wallet behind. People reported seeing him around the Staten Island ferry.

I read every report I could in the days and weeks that followed, hoping poor Spalding had maybe slipped into a fugue and wandered off into the woods, and that some nice person would take care of him, get him to a hospital. But I knew better. He was likely dead, replicating the legacy of his troubled mother. Or was he? I chose denial. Yeah, someone would find him all gnarly and speaking in tongues in the woods and bring him home. There, rest and meds would cure him and he'd return to the Spalding I saw on the beach -- tan, happy, serene, vital. Yes, that's what would happen. I picked up "Sex and Death" for the fourth or fifth time, hoping my reading it again might send some good vibes into the universe that would radiate back down to him, wherever he was.

Almost two months later, I was in my car turning out of my neighborhood when I heard the news on NPR, that the body of Spalding Gray had been found in the East River. It was likely a suicide.

I went heavy and slack-jawed, no longer paying much attention to traffic lights or road signs. He was gone. Really gone. My original, powerful inspiration, taken by madness. He left a wife, two sons, a stepdaughter, and countless indelible images in people's heads and hearts, that raving guy in the plaid shirt. He'd changed everything for me, and I had never been able to thank him.

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