tikistitch

I knew John Guth. He was actually over at our house a couple of times for local Star Wars events, and we went to a couple of parties at his place. Everybody in the fan community kinda knew he was a bit "out there," but I guess no one really knew how far out there until his recent suicide.

The Phantom Menace:
The secret life of Seattle's most famous Star Wars enthusiast

One day in late July 2005, John Guth went for a drive in his red SUV. Five feet 6 inches with sandy blond hair, the slender 36-year-old lived in Maple Valley with his longtime partner on a street of tidy three-bedroom homes—as close to mainstream splendor as a gay man can get in the suburbs. He was popular among his neighbors, a gourmet cook with a taste for good cigars and Scotch whisky. In nearby Seattle, Guth was well-known, too—an obsessed Star Wars fan who'd gotten more than his 15 minutes of fame in 2002 for camping out at Belltown's Cinerama for four months, waiting to be first in line to see the revived franchise's Attack of the Clones and raising money for a children's charity.

Guth had youngsters on his mind that July 2005 day as well. Somewhere in King County, he picked up a boy barely 15 years old, whom he'd met on MySpace. The boy got into Guth's SUV, and Guth took him to a secluded area near the boy's father's home—where he showered the boy with gifts for his 15th birthday: black bikini underwear, a tight-fitting Under Armor T-shirt, and a new pair of jeans. The boy stripped naked in front of Guth and slid into the new duds. Guth then told the boy that he "looked good."

Nine months later, Guth was dead, the victim of a double life and internal conflicts he could not resolve—a fundamentalist Christian with a hankering for young male flesh who'd failed to heed Yoda's warning in Return of the Jedi: "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

The Weekly article doesn't really emphasize what was to us the most salient point of John's existence, the Seattle Star Wars Society (SSWS). At one point, John claimed that he had thousands and thousands of members, though I never recall seeing more than a dozen. We were impressed as well as puzzled, as our local Star Wars collecting club could rarely muster more than 50 die-hards. Most everyone in the collecting community got the impression that John was in it more for the publicity than for any love of Star Wars. But, there are a lot of weird people in the hobby, so we kind of have a live and let live attitude.

John's SSWS held a number of charity events, and they were inevitably to benefit Children's Hospital. It seemed odd to me that a person who ran ads in the back of the Seattle Gay News picturing himself in handcuffs and offering the address of his web site, which featured explicit nude photography, would also publicly support childrens charities. But perhaps, like Mark Foley, this was his way of exorcising some personal demons.

What I'll remember is the blazer. When the first two new Star Wars films hit, John and company were perpetually stationed at Cinerama, having a "line event." (We were infinitely relieved at SSWS's absence the opening of Sith, since it meant we wouldn't have to sit through 20 minutes of bullshit before we got to see our movie.) John would inevitably be right out in front, wielding a bullhorn, and wearing that Star Wars blazer. As any collector could tell you, the blazer had been hand sewn from old Star Wars bedsheets. Obviously, used Star Wars bedsheets. He may have been a perv, but that damn blazer still squicks me more than anything else.