I hate myself for my forgetfulness, but I cannot remember when we first met. I have strained my mind for months after I heard that he had died to remember everything about him that I could. Reeling and empty, I found no record of our first meeting, our first conversation, the day we first were alone. I by nature have difficulty with topics in history, but I curse myself a thousand times for losing so much of one so great.

Whenever he entered my life, I do remember clearly the day when I first fell in love with Zee Poo-Dyba. On November the seventeenth, 1997, we emerged from our isolation tanks at the same time at the Clarence Eep Centre. The tanks were scheduled so that no participant in the tank program would ever meet another, but fate is devious.

My eyes were likely pinpricks, and I always stumbled when exiting, attempting to re-accustom myself to sensorial input. In the white and cathedral-like space, four tanks towered. I headed toward the showers to clean the salts off my body and to dress.

In 1997 I was nineteen, and struggling with my body image. In the tank, the flood had settled to a steady pulsing, from which a shark with breasts emerged. I began to cry. The shark sported a massive handlebar moustache.

Halfway to the shower, I began again to cry. Dripping wet, I sat suddenly and involuntarily on the white squeaking mats which covered the floor. I lost it, and began sobbing involuntarily. I felt a strong hand on my shoulder, and fell into it, forgetting for the first time since I began puberty my nakedness.

I did not turn to see him, but I knew. I cannot remember his face now, more than a cartoon of the stately old man he was then, but he held me, his penis flopping against my back.

What followed that evening, I cannot remember. There is a void in my memory, with sharks patrolling it. All of the sharks sport the moustache, but none of them have breasts. The sound of his hand, his silent footfalls, the music of my sobs tapering into a soft slow breath-cycle.

I have since attended the Clarence Eep Centre many times, and have never again cried. When I ask those I thought knew him, they shake their heads doubtfully. "Softly," they say, "you are incautious with your dreams. No one else ever sees what you see."

I am convinced he was real, and now I am convinced that he is dead. Zee Poo-Dyba was everything to me for most of my life: father, mentor, friend, lover, doctor, teacher, harmonica- player. The sharks are still there. The sharks are still there.