Thinking Of Hector

I met Hector a few years ago, at a small gaming convention that he was running in Portsmouth, NH.  He owned a comics/gaming/science fiction store, but I noticed off the bat that he wasn’t making any money off the event; in fact he was taking a loss.  Typically it costs to attend a convention, but this one was free, and as such there were many more kids than usual.  The focus was more family oriented, and I found it refreshing.

Hector and I had traded emails prior to, but he still surprised me with his openness and friendliness.  I felt like I was reconnecting rather than meeting him.    

Months later at another of these events I decided to run an original episode of the Buffy RPG and Hector, who I learned was a big Buffy fan, joined in.  I’d created a character named Raine, an introverted biker – sort of Faith with lots of engine grease, and Hector brought her to life.  Since then, he and Raine have been regulars, and Hector has written several hundred pages of fiction based on her and the setting I created which he hopes to turn into a novel.

Hector has cancer.  He emailed today about some experimental treatment that he’s agreed to at Dartmouth.  If he’s doing this, that means that his doctors believe that conventional treatment won’t work.  Hector is married with two kids.  God, I think you take the nice ones so that you’ll have kind people to talk to.  Like Yung-Ming, but that’s for another time.