David DeFrances

So, I met David De Frances at my local Starbucks.  He seemed trustworthy so I asked him to watch my laptop.  We struck up a conversation and soon we had a friendship a la Starbucks. This friendship expanded to include several other Bux regulars, one of whom was Carol, someone I had seen in the neighborhood for a long time. 

I went to Starbucks to write but David was very chatty.  And soon I knew everything about his life, in great detail. He’s an actor and went to Brown.  He was in a soap opera - The Guiding Light for several years, though it ended in September 2009.  He owns a brownstone next to Sarah Jessica Parker and they are friends.  He knows Mathew Broderick and was in several plays with him.  He went to theatre school in London and still owns an apartment there.  This is where he met his good friend Edie Redmayne.  

David was in Spring Awakening with Lea Michelle and flew to LA to console her after Corey Monteith's passing.  He went frequently to LA to audition.  And would get parts, just not the ones he wanted.  David just broke up with his boyfriend, an attorney.  Together they had two dogs that David was keeping because David loved them so much, though the ex insisted on visitation rights.

David was very concerned with his hair. He had thick black hair that he checked over and over again. It was so shellacked that nothing could happen to it, even during the humid days of summer. He was kicked out of the local Rite Aid because he would frequently check his hair in their mirrors, that they thought he was casing the joint.  He was very upset, and couldn’t see the humor in it.

One time, David mentioned he just had lunch with SJP at Café Cluny because he had to inform her that while she was on vacation, her staff partied on the steps of her town house.

David grew up Catholic in South Dakota, his father was a sheriff and he played ice hockey.  He had two sisters, one in London with two kids and one sister who was a doctor and married to a doctor.  They lived in Boston with their twin boys.  He would describe in minute detail everything that he sent them for birthdays and holidays.  In fact I knew more about David’s life than I know of some of my closest friends.

My schedule changed and I didn’t see the Starbucks crowd for a while.   It was many months later when I ran into Carol one late afternoon.  She’d been looking for me, she had some news about David.

David committed suicide.  And everything he told us had been a lie.  

David's brother-in-law found David's phone and wanted to inform his friends.  The only friend he could find was Carol.  So he called her to let her know about David's passing.  It was the moment that Carol asked about the family, that she learned that everything he told us had been a lie.  

Everything - a fabrication.  David wasn't an actor, didn't live next to SJP, didn't go to Brown, and didn't know Edie and Lea.  He didn't have an ex and he didn't have dogs. There was little that David said that he hadn't made up, including what he said about his family.

It's been a year and I'm still so sad.  For the senseless loss of life. And to think about the pain he must have been in.  He must have felt so bad about himself that he felt the need to invent an alternative existence.  I'm a writer and I make money doing it, however, when I knew David I was working 3 jobs to make ends meet.  Carol is retired from the NY Times.  Why us, we ask ourselves.

There were red flags.  And in retrospect they were huge.  I looked up the Spring Awakening cast and he wasn't listed.  Carol didn't find his name in the Guiding Light.  I told myself actors are story tellers - they embellish, subtract, add, change the retell all the time.  All artists are, all people are for the most part.  

I know and have been involved with very famous people.  Unless I know you for a very long time, I don't name names and I may or may not in this platform, depending on the story.  That's my decision, and not necessarily holds for everyone. So David knowing all these stars was never out the realm of possibility.  

Apparently, he was a dog walker and we think he may have walked dogs on the same block as SJP.  The house of cards came tumbling down when David's landlady in Brooklyn decided to sell the house and he didn't have the money to move.  He was in great despair and thought he had no one to turn to.

He could have turned to me or Carol.  He could have found help from the lovely people at Church of St Luke in the Fields across the street. He hid so much.  

I do know that he was fun, clever and bright.  If only he knew - he was just fine the way he was.  We all are.