Another classmate died

I got the latest issue today of my college alumni magazine. Another classmate is dead.

That makes five, now, that I know of: not all the same year, but close enough. Many of us hung out together, at least from time to time.

Today's news is about a woman I've mentioned a few times before. When I first wrote about her I called her "L" (not to be confused with the sex-blogger formerly known as L!), but at this point I think I have gone back and changed all those references to call her "Flora" instead. So "Flora" it is. And I've written about her in a number of posts: for example, she shows up in some of Marie's recollections (here, here, here, and here) and also in one of mine (much tamer, here). 

Flora was a science major, back when we were all undergraduates. Somehow (maybe because we were all young) many of the stories I remember about her have to do with sex. 

• When I got to know her (through R–, one of my circle of friends), she had already had an affair with one of the science professors. 
• During the time we were in school, she settled into regularly fucking both R– and Mac (q.v.)—though to be fair, I learned not long before graduation that R– and Mac were both fucking each other as well. (Yes, they are both guys. It's amazing the things people will say casually when everyone's on MDA.) 
• She wanted to fuck Schmidt, who really wasn't interested. He had determined that "Everyone who fucks Flora goes crazy," and he didn't want to go crazy. He later said that at one point he had to make a point to fall asleep at a strategic moment, while she was trying to seduce him.
• Marie remained friends with Flora after that time, and fell in love with her for a while. Marie tried to go to bed with Flora, but it never worked out—as she describes (with some anxiety) in the selections linked above. 

Not long after Marie and I got back together, she [Marie] contacted Flora to ask her some questions about relationship-management, and to catch up. It turns out that in the intervening decades, Flora had married and her husband had later died. At that point she was seeing someone new. The way she described it to Marie was delicate, but to my ears it translated as "We are fucking but we're not monogamous yet—or at least I'm not." (I don't remember if I ever discussed this with Marie.) I never heard Marie mention her again. I thought of getting in touch with her independently, but it felt like Marie discouraged that.

Anyway, now she's dead.

Who else?

Two and a half years ago, it was K.

A year before that, it was Fillette. 

Also sometime in mid-2022, it was AW. I've never talked about her. She was heavily into science fiction, and read faster than anyone else I knew. She could stand in a bookstore, pick a novel off the shelf, and read the whole thing in an hour or two while still standing inconspicuously. She has not figured in any of my stories. She never married, and I am unaware of any romantic entanglements (with either men or women). This doesn't mean there were none, of course. Just that she was tidy about them.

And way back in 2010 there was GR. She wasn't really part of our crowd in any concrete way, but she lived in the same dorm as Schmidt and R– and lots of the others one year. She was a couple of years behind me, and very cute. But I didn't know her well. I list her only because of the dorm connection, and because I know she's dead.

So that's five:

1. Flora
2. K
3. Fillette
4. AW
5. GR

Anyway, I don't know what to say about all this. But I've been depressed all day.