In the summer of 1996 I took a class called “Dangerous Writing” from a writer I didn’t know named Tom Spanbauer. Portland State University ran summer classes in Cannon Beach, Oregon, and although a week in an upscale beach town was a stretch for me, I made a reservation at the Argonauta Inn for a room euphemistically called The Lower Lighthouse. It was a converted garage.

On Monday morning, I joined the twelve or so other students in a classroom at the local elementary school. We all looked at our notebooks, coffee cups, and sandals as we waited for the teacher. He finally walked in and apologized for being late. He had been so anxious to come in, he said, that he had trembled for ten minutes in the hallway. People reassured him, nodded, thanked him for being brave. I immediately relaxed. In his vulnerability, he had given me permission to admit my own.

That day, Tom gave us an assignment to write something that felt dangerous to us. Tuesday and Wednesday, we read our work out loud and discussed it. Tom praised places that felt dangerous, pointing out cliches and pushing us to do better. I left my critique realizing that I hadn’t scared myself enough. I was writing about driving through South Dakota with my family as a child and being afraid of the Native kids in a hotel swimming pool. I had to be willing to expose my shame about my parochialism and racism. I knew, when I completed a second draft, that I had touched that nerve in myself.

Thursday and Friday we shared our revisions, and Tom’s reaction was the confirmation I needed. I sent it to Raven Chronicles, which published it in 1997.

The photo of Tom and me above was taken one evening in his cottage near the beach. He must have invited students to hang out; I remember a few other students being there. He was playing Meshell Ndegeocello’s album Peace beyond Passion, which I had at home, and I vividly remember piping up, “She identifies as bisexual!” Tom smiled at me like a kindly uncle and repeated what I had said. I heard in his voice how earnest I had sounded. But I didn’t feel shamed; I felt loved.

It was thrilling to have a gay teacher. I had been out for a decade, but it was hard to be out in my new community college job, with my family, and in the world. In his class and in his company, I felt whole.

Tom hosted a weekly workshop at his home in Portland, and I tried to figure out how I could join it. I went a couple of times and chatted once with Chuck Palahniuk, one of Tom’s most famous students. The afterparty went late into the night. One of those nights, as people drifted away, I found myself alone or mostly alone with Tom in his living room. He told me some things about his life and his writing. I don’t remember what I told him. He was so present, listening so intently, I felt as if he was looking right into my soul. I was more than a little in love with him.

Ultimately, I couldn’t make the three-hour drive to the workshop every week, and I saw him only a couple of times after that, once when he read at Bailey/Coy Books in Seattle.

Tom died in September at age 78. In his most celebrated novel, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (although Faraway Places is my favorite), a character says, “Story goes if you live your life being true to your heart, you’ll find a place like this where you can come to when you die, and you can tell the story of your life out loud to all of nature listening. Death has got to wait until you’re done with your singing and dancing and whatever else you got to do to get your story told.” Tom lived true.