The Floater

That phrase--"outside of the corporate world"--sent me to his old workplace, where tracking down people who knew Tino was easy. He had worked there for over two decades. Beyond that, he was unforgettable: flamboyant and voluble, the type of guy who gives everyone a nickname and who might break into a show tune at any moment. He was also famously sentimental. Every day at work, he would neatly arrange a row of photographs at his station, pictures of friends, family, co-workers, even the children of co-workers.

He also displayed a few photographs of himself. Tino loved to dress up. So he was Santa at the drop of a hat, the Easter Bunny in springtime, and Greta Garbo whenever the spirit seized him. Because he loved Garbo so much, he got the nickname "Greta." He didn't care. He was open with his co-workers about his sexuality and his enthusiasm for drag. And if someone called him an old fag, he would laugh it off. Tino liked to joke. He liked ribald language.

Among his friends and former co-workers, there is not much question what precipitated Tino's slide: the loss of his job. According to three of Tino's friends, he was suspended for "unprofessional behavior" last winter after a female co-worker complained that Tino had used a slur. He was instantly despondent. One day not long afterward, says Tino's longtime roommate, Tino walked from his home in Minneapolis's Jordan neighborhood, down West Broadway to the Broadway Bridge, where he tried to jump in the river; he was rescued by a passerby and landed in the psych ward at Hennepin County Medical Center for a nine-day stay.

After the suspension came the firing, and Tino was crushed. He consulted a lawyer, only to learn his chance for redress was slight. This wasn't a union shop. He had violated company policy. But Tino's friends are certain that he said whatever he said to his co-worker in jest, not in spite. They believe the hotel was simply using a corporate speech code to get rid of an older, expensive employee.

Whatever the case, Tino soon fell out of touch with most of his former co-workers. He was slow to return calls. He was always a drinker, but the drinking accelerated through the long winter months. Before he killed himself, his roommate says, he downed a half-quart of hard liquor.

It wasn't the loss of money that hurt him, according to friends. He had bought his house more than a decade ago--the down payment coming from the proceeds of a radio station contest in which he had won a car--and his mortgage was just $32 a month. But, friends say, the hotel had become the focus of his life. It was a gay-friendly environment where he could be himself, where he could show off his latest drag outfits, where he could joke. When that was taken away, he was lost.

Perhaps, under different circumstances, Tino could have turned to family and righted himself. But neither his eight surviving siblings nor his parents live in Minnesota. Besides, there was much about his life that his parents--traditional and devoutly Catholic-- might not understand or accept. When Tino died, his roommate says, the family decided to tell his mother that it was a car accident. Suicide is a cardinal sin, and she has a weak heart. Why make things worse for her? The truth isn't for everybody.

After his death, Tino's body was returned to Texas, where his status as a Vietnam veteran earned him a military burial. In Minneapolis, friends rented a community hall from Lutheran Social Services over on Park Avenue and conducted their own memorial. After the eulogy, his roommate recounts, people just got up and talked about Tino. How he could light up a room with his 1,000-watt personality. How he could embarrass the hell out of you at a restaurant by sending back food that wasn't prepared exactly to his liking.

Everyone did agree on one thing, though. There was nobody like Tino.