The Ballad of Chest Rockwell
When I first met Chest Rockwell (I believe the year was 1995 or 1996), we had both just recently joined the Great Lakes Bears. I'd only recently learned they existe and he'd only recently relocated here from the Northeast. The organisation had been growing explosively and their annual event, Bear Pride, was starting to become the tail that wagged the dog. The officers realised that the bylaws--written for a smaller and looser organisation--had become outdated and asked for volunteers to form a committee to revise them.
I joined because I thought it would be a good way to meet folks. I imagine he thought the same thing. I don't recall who else was on it except that ubiquitous Bob Singer, who I recall functioning as committee chair (whether officially or otherwise). We met maybe a half-dozen times at Reza's in the evenings to hash out the document, which was approved with minimal discussion.
I liked Chest from the start. He was only a year or two younger than me and already seemed more confident. We had a lot of interests in common, not least among them daddy bears. Chasers were a small contingent in those days and it felt like most of the members were bears-seeking-bears, so it felt good to have an ally. I suppose we could've seen each other as competition instead, but that was so contrary to the Bear ethos that it never occurred to us. Those were the heydays of GLB and Bear Pride and we soon became "Bauchbrüder". He became someone I would seek out at every gathering. We developed a greeting ritual consisting of running at each other dramatically and falling into furious feigned snogging. We traded intelligence about the Bears we had had or wanted to have or who we wished wanted to have us.
And this was how I came to glimpse the first hints of the bitterness that would later consume him. I remember the disastrous Bear Pride of '99, the first of three at the Mistake on the Lake. Monshu had just broken up with his boyfriend--three short months after dumping me to reconcile with him--and I was furious. I went to the Welcome Party, only to find his ex there, so I sought out Chest. But he was equally upset, ranting about being ignored by the older daddies whose attentions we were unsuccessfully angling for, who he venomously called "paedophiles". (Like me, he was rapidly closing in on 30.)
Shortly after that, our paths began to diverge. Monshu and I got back together and decided to close our relationship. His ex requested that I keep my distance from the Great Lakes Bears--never mind that I'd joined it years earlier, I had Monshu now, so what did I need it for? I didn't need the aggro (and I did have Monshu), so I stayed away. (There were also rumours that Chest's boyfriend had spread gossip about me, hoping to break them up so he could sleep with Monshu's ex, but I never knew whether or not to give those any credence.) The death of a popular president of the organisation robbed it off some of its soul and Bear Pride crested, its attendance dropping annually until it ceasing to exist entirely a few years back. Chest had a partner and they moved out of Rogers Park to a cheaper apartment that no one wanted to go visit.
A few years later, LiveJournal became a new haven for Bears. I'd joined it in ordered to see locked posts from a RPG pal but soon stumbled across acquaintances from the GLB and began reconstructing something of my social circle online. Chest was soon part of it and began sharing his work woes with us. He'd graduated from law school with crushing debt and the need to pay it down in order to keep from losing his licence led him to work for some dodgy firms. I began to see much less of his carefree side and more of unease and resentment.
This reached an apotheosis on a disastrous trip to the southwest. Their car broke down in the desert and he went to LJ to beg for help, but none was forthcoming. In response, he soured not just on his acquaintances in the vicinity but all of beardom. It became an event that he regularly referred back to during his frequent rants about the lack of community in our community.
Our friendship didn't survive the transition to Facebook. He posted screeds, I attempted to engage, he got annoyed and eventually unfriended and then blocked me. I didn't take it personally because he wasn't the only one and he was still cordial on the very rare occasions when we still saw each other. At HiBearNation, we even greeted each other in our old flamboyant style. But when I ran into him this spring at C2E2, just before the pandemic nuked all social intercourse in Chicago, he was distant, chatting briefly for form's sake but not intending to rekindle anything. I, buddied with an exciting new friend, shrugged it off and moved on.
So he was just about the last person I expected to hear about this past Saturday when I went over to friends' apartment for a socially-distant chat. He'd come to their attention in just about the worse way possible: by retweeting white supremacists. I wish I could say I felt more shocked, but it seemed like a logical endpoint for his trajectory. He'd always felt entitled to more professional success than he achieved, so there must be some explanation for his failure to achieve it that put the blame on others.
I feel sorry for his remaining friends. Reportedly, some were sticking with him and trying to talk him back off the ledge. (My friends didn't stick around to see how this turned out and don't hold out much hope; one didn't seem to think he was long for this world.) I wonder if what pushed him there was more bad news at home, since his husband's health problems were another frequent theme in his litany of complaints. It's a sad ending to a relationship I once really treasured, but some things just can't be helped.
I joined because I thought it would be a good way to meet folks. I imagine he thought the same thing. I don't recall who else was on it except that ubiquitous Bob Singer, who I recall functioning as committee chair (whether officially or otherwise). We met maybe a half-dozen times at Reza's in the evenings to hash out the document, which was approved with minimal discussion.
I liked Chest from the start. He was only a year or two younger than me and already seemed more confident. We had a lot of interests in common, not least among them daddy bears. Chasers were a small contingent in those days and it felt like most of the members were bears-seeking-bears, so it felt good to have an ally. I suppose we could've seen each other as competition instead, but that was so contrary to the Bear ethos that it never occurred to us. Those were the heydays of GLB and Bear Pride and we soon became "Bauchbrüder". He became someone I would seek out at every gathering. We developed a greeting ritual consisting of running at each other dramatically and falling into furious feigned snogging. We traded intelligence about the Bears we had had or wanted to have or who we wished wanted to have us.
And this was how I came to glimpse the first hints of the bitterness that would later consume him. I remember the disastrous Bear Pride of '99, the first of three at the Mistake on the Lake. Monshu had just broken up with his boyfriend--three short months after dumping me to reconcile with him--and I was furious. I went to the Welcome Party, only to find his ex there, so I sought out Chest. But he was equally upset, ranting about being ignored by the older daddies whose attentions we were unsuccessfully angling for, who he venomously called "paedophiles". (Like me, he was rapidly closing in on 30.)
Shortly after that, our paths began to diverge. Monshu and I got back together and decided to close our relationship. His ex requested that I keep my distance from the Great Lakes Bears--never mind that I'd joined it years earlier, I had Monshu now, so what did I need it for? I didn't need the aggro (and I did have Monshu), so I stayed away. (There were also rumours that Chest's boyfriend had spread gossip about me, hoping to break them up so he could sleep with Monshu's ex, but I never knew whether or not to give those any credence.) The death of a popular president of the organisation robbed it off some of its soul and Bear Pride crested, its attendance dropping annually until it ceasing to exist entirely a few years back. Chest had a partner and they moved out of Rogers Park to a cheaper apartment that no one wanted to go visit.
A few years later, LiveJournal became a new haven for Bears. I'd joined it in ordered to see locked posts from a RPG pal but soon stumbled across acquaintances from the GLB and began reconstructing something of my social circle online. Chest was soon part of it and began sharing his work woes with us. He'd graduated from law school with crushing debt and the need to pay it down in order to keep from losing his licence led him to work for some dodgy firms. I began to see much less of his carefree side and more of unease and resentment.
This reached an apotheosis on a disastrous trip to the southwest. Their car broke down in the desert and he went to LJ to beg for help, but none was forthcoming. In response, he soured not just on his acquaintances in the vicinity but all of beardom. It became an event that he regularly referred back to during his frequent rants about the lack of community in our community.
Our friendship didn't survive the transition to Facebook. He posted screeds, I attempted to engage, he got annoyed and eventually unfriended and then blocked me. I didn't take it personally because he wasn't the only one and he was still cordial on the very rare occasions when we still saw each other. At HiBearNation, we even greeted each other in our old flamboyant style. But when I ran into him this spring at C2E2, just before the pandemic nuked all social intercourse in Chicago, he was distant, chatting briefly for form's sake but not intending to rekindle anything. I, buddied with an exciting new friend, shrugged it off and moved on.
So he was just about the last person I expected to hear about this past Saturday when I went over to friends' apartment for a socially-distant chat. He'd come to their attention in just about the worse way possible: by retweeting white supremacists. I wish I could say I felt more shocked, but it seemed like a logical endpoint for his trajectory. He'd always felt entitled to more professional success than he achieved, so there must be some explanation for his failure to achieve it that put the blame on others.
I feel sorry for his remaining friends. Reportedly, some were sticking with him and trying to talk him back off the ledge. (My friends didn't stick around to see how this turned out and don't hold out much hope; one didn't seem to think he was long for this world.) I wonder if what pushed him there was more bad news at home, since his husband's health problems were another frequent theme in his litany of complaints. It's a sad ending to a relationship I once really treasured, but some things just can't be helped.