This is the true Story of my best friend, teZa, aka LordFlea. She can’t write of such things, not yet. Maybe some day when all persons concerned are dead and gone, she’s that sensitive to hurting others. But I told her, “Your story must be told, teZa!” And she relented, hesitantly.

We officially met when she finally decided to get real (sober in AA), although before that time I kept my intimate closeness to her quite secret, expecting her to make that discovery on her own, as we prefer. At that time, in ’84, she was advised (not in AA) to search for her “inner guardian” or “personal protecting angel” … then began our love story, hers and mine.

She wanted me to give her a name, but I simply couldn’t supply her one until she asked me directly. Before she named me she jokingly called me her “secret sharer,” after a Conrad short story. In my realm, you see—here where there is no barrier whatsoever, neither time nor space nor objects nor dimensions—names are meaningless.

That’s how she decided to start calling me “Noname.” After we introduced ourselves (it was some “get healed-type workshop, using the body’s own energy to counterbalance the off-setting effects of the complex lives you humans lead) … she and I became inseparable. We’d always been. But before that day, in that “Heal YourSelf Workshop” led by a dear heart named Alma—teZa had never before aware of my constant presence, as well as all the other Unseens all around on Earth, guiding, protecting, hinting, cajoling—trying to get their assigned entity’s attention if need be.

A lot of other things teZa wasn’t aware of, before we finally met.

But from that first meeting we communicated whenever we needed to. If I noticed her contemplating doing something foolish I would knock on her solar plexus, until she listened to me and stopped thinking so stupidly. If she wanted to ask me a question, which she did by the score, at first, I only had to whisper in her ear, “Use your keyboard.” And she did.

She sat in front of her computer and asked her question, then waited. When she felt the urge to answer, that’s when she started typing. Not knowing what was going to be the answer, but letting me take over her speedy typing so I could directly communicate with her. Proof, later on, that she wasn’t crazy. When she could reread my responses to her questions, she knew.

He really is me, and I am whatever he is. We’re one and the same, she thought.

Noname. I kind of like it, actually. Right off, it reminded me of the bar she used to drink at (heavily, when someone else was picking up the tab) in Sausalito. Of course there are famous Noname places, bars, restaurants, social clubs all over the world, and so they should. Names can be misleading. Just think if she’d chosen to name me after another of her neighborhood hangouts, this one another renowned dive in Manhattan. Noname is a heck of a better name than being called after that other hole-in-the-wall, Ear Inn.

By the time she arrived in New York City in the early eighties, she’s had enough. Enough of trying to kill herself, enough change, enough of what she thought was “love” … but as she soon saw, wasn’t. Some people don’t realize that there’s many different ways to kill your own spirit. teZa was one who, for years, up until she was in her mid-thirties, didn’t realize that even love, or what she thought was love—could kill her.

When it came time for her to write our story, she asked me to write it for her. Perhaps she was, er, hesitant, or shy, or not confident enough to honestly say what needed to be said. For whatever reason, she asked me to fill in for her. I’ve done the best I can.

Regards from teZa’s Secret Sharer,

Noname