An excerpt from This Vital Absence by Sophia Veltfort

Every few weeks, Dean posted a new video about famous musicians he’d known in his prime. Eric Clapton, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd. He sat in a black mesh chair in what looked like a home office. Behind him, shelves painted a fading cerulean held slender statuettes of birds with long necks and legs, their plumes carved in porcelain or bronze. He wore thin gray T-shirts, sometimes maroon, often a hoodie or crewneck sweatshirt, his receding gray hair pulled back in a ponytail. When he talked, his spine pitched him forward, his eyebrows shot up and down, and his voice lurched with emphasis. His desire for appreciation was so naked it embarrassed me, made me reassess my own prowess in camouflaging a desire that I harbored, too. Below one of his videos, someone had commented, This man is an idiot. He’d lost his medical license for administering anesthesia while high on fentanyl.…