I Lost a Sister Today
Today Karl called me at work to tell me Tabitha died some time last night. I didn't believe him at first, so I called Glenn, her husband, and said, "Hey Glenn, it's Sarah, I heard this terrible rumor.." when he stopped me and told me it was true. Everything seems to point to a drug overdose. Glenn said she'd been acting weird for a few days, and at one point he even confronted her, asking if she had any pills on her, she said "no" and stormed out of the house. She went to our friend Brandi's house, yesterday where apparently she mostly slept on the couch. When she got home, she went to bed, and Glenn found her dead in the morning. He said it started on her birthday when she got a card from her religious zealot mother. Glenn told her to not even open it, just write "return to sender" on it, and put it back in the mailbox, but Tabitha was headstrong and read it anyway. Apparently it was nothing but a bunch of hateful, shameful, nonsense, that left her feeling awful. It's hard to say if the drug overdose was accidental or not. I'd like to think she knew she was loved enough that it was a horrible accident, but I'll never know.
I always looked up to Tabitha. Statistically, she should have been dead long before I ever knew her. She'd had HIV since the 80s. Somehow she managed to survive. No matter how hard it got, she never managed to give in to depression. Sometimes it was really awful. I can't imagine staying as upbeat as she was through all of it. She was a true survivor. I guess this time she finally lost that fight. Tabitha was always crazy, never in a bad way, it was always little-kid-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar kind of plotting. She always had bizzare ideas and weird plots that were borderline criminal. I don't think she ever really thought of hurting anyone, but at the same time she always had an angle on things. She was always sort of a street urchin. Tabitha was an old whore. She was remarkably shrewd. She'd walk into a bar and know everyone's business, but at the same time she couldn't be trusted with her own credit cards. Her husband kept them all because she'd spend like her money was going to be worthless in the morning.
Tabitha was frustrating sometimes. She'd try to barter when people expected cash. That was a never ending source of frustration between Tula and her. She was kind of a mess and you couldn't take her places because she might not act appropriately. She always wanted to go to NYC with us one time, but we never took her because we weren't sure we could trust her not to disappear for days at a time. I kind of regret not taking her now, because I think about that possibility and I'd still have loved her even if I had to hike halfway across Manhattan to find her. Tabitha was more than ten years my senior and sometimes I felt like dealing with her was like dealing with a small child. She'd always call me at work, even if I told her not to, and it was always about some absolutely bizzare plan of hers that would probably never work and even if it did would land us both in prison. The last time I talked to her she was trying to figure out how to take out a mortgage (she lived off her disability checks) on a house that doesn't exist to get plastic surgury. Eventually I convinced her that this was never going to work.
Tabitha was remarkably protective. This summer we went to a pool party at Kerri Blake's house and she wouldn't let me out of the car once we left the city. She was worried some Virginia red neck would start something with me. I thought her worries were a little exaggerated but I respected how protective she was of me.
I remember one other time when she was hosting a show in Adams Morgan, a neighborhood notorious for it's gay bashings. She, Glenn and I were walking back to my car when some guys started following us. She turned around and their eyes got big and they ran away.
The one time Tabitha failed to protect me, I think this was much more upsetting for her than it was for me. She didn't like getting beat. It was the New Years Eve we got mugged in front of the old Ziegfelds. I still remember the phone call from that night when she invited me out, "Oh girl! It's New Years Eve, and this is the last night for Ziegfelds, it's going to be IT!!!" I remember the guy went after her, and put a gun to her head, I suspect she was targeted because she was the one most capable of defending herself. He was no fool, he went for our center of gravity and she lost that fight. I remember sitting on my hands and knees that night with her next to me, feeling how quiet it was at night, feeling the mud seeping through my pantyhose, thinking, "this is the last thing I'm ever going to feel." Luckily that turned out not to be the case. Never one to be defeated, she was up and chasing after those guys on foot once we both realized we were alive.
Before I got my current job, things were rough for me. When I couldn't find work to save my life and was living with my parents, Tabitha got me a job at the candy store she ran every Christmas with Glenn. I toyed around with the idea of doing it again this year just for the extra money. I liked the job. It was fun. She was well known to everyone in the mall, and was better at catching shop lifters than even the mall police. It was uncanny how fast she was on them. I guess it takes an old crook to catch a crook.
Tabitha was an old whore, and she wore that like a badge of honor. She could be very pulled together when she wanted to be. When I realized that when she did go out looking like SUCH a slut it wasn't by accident, it was meticulously calculated, I gained an all new appreciation for her tackiness. It's one thing to be tacky when you don't know any better, it's another thing to be exactly as slutty looking as you intend to be. Of course, the down side of this was the one night the police stopped her in Logan Circle for being a street walker while she was walking home from Halo one night. I never stopped teasing her about that one.
You know, I think about some of the outfits she'd wear, and I hope I can get a hold of a few of them. Sometimes, I think it'd be good for me to go out looking unapologetically like a cheap hooker. It'd be my own little Tabitha memorial night on the town.
Tabitha loved that I danced. Once Christmas she got me a little ballerina doll that still sits on my bed. When she gave it to me she was so worked up that she started to cry. It seemed like a silly thing to get worked up over to me, but I think she liked thinking of others. I always tried to get her something nice for Christmas too.
She was the crazy big sister I never had.
R.I.P. Tabitha Versace Starr