A Memoir · Based on a true story
"You already pictured him, didn't you? That's exactly the point."
This is a memoir about two men who had no business being best friends.
Me: a buttoned-up white aerospace engineer who spent thirty years losing a knife fight with his own brain. And Andrew — brilliant, gay, from Jamaica — the first person who ever made me feel like I belonged to someone.
I call my bipolar disorder the dragon. For most of my life it ran the show — the manic highs, the crashes, the years I quietly rehearsed my own exit. Then I met Andrew. And then, suddenly, he was gone — and I had to figure out what it actually means to love a friend like family, and how much time you can waste never telling him.
It'll make you laugh out loud on one page and wreck you on the next.
The people are real. The events are real. The dragon is real. A few names and timelines I changed — memory's imperfect, and a good story sometimes asks you to tighten the line.
"My empathy for other people is what kept me breathing."
"I spent years rehearsing my own exit."
"I had this image in my head of who people were supposed to be. Andrew blew it up."
"I'm a square peg in a world of round holes, forever seeking enlightenment, chased by my dragon."
"And I knew — had always known — that I loved my gay, best friend."
"He was and always will be my friend."
David Sedaris · Jenny Lawson · Matt Haig
…this one's for you.
Yes, it's my voice — I trained an AI clone of it and directed every line, because I couldn't sit at a mic for six hours straight. The whole story's in the intro.
Kristin Young is an engineer — aerospace first, then software after a layoff — and, all along, a musician who eventually became a luthier. For decades he hid severe bipolar disorder behind a high-functioning career, undiagnosed until his thirties. The Dragon and My Gay, Black Friend is his debut memoir: a darkly funny, brutally honest account of mental illness, an unlikely best friendship, and learning, too late, what it's worth.
He "narrated" the audiobook in his own voice — via an AI clone he trained and directed.
For adult readers: candid language, frank sexuality, and honest depictions of depression and suicidal thinking. If you're struggling, you're not alone — in the US you can call or text 988.
Review copies, interviews, podcast invites — or just to say the book got you. Send a note; it comes straight to me.