Peter and I were born hours apart (on different coasts), so I felt a sort of kinship with him — and maybe a partial understanding. He had a Scorpio ascendant, I had a Gemini ascendant, other than that our charts were nearly identical.
I met him several times. One of my fonder memories was after the Fillmore show supporting October Rust. It was the hottest day of the year, surprisingly hot, and even at midnight it was around 80 degrees outside, so I dressed lightly to go to the show: sleeveless t-shirt and a sarong. Josh Silver and I did an impromptu tattoo show-and-tell by the bus when I went up to him and said, "I don't want an autograph, I just want to see your ink." He grinned and showed me his arms. There's a lot of detail in his work that doesn't show up in the magazine or online photos, and I could see the older stuff against the newer. I showed him my Lascaux Shaman tattoo on my leg and he said, "You're taking your time getting paneled out, you're better off."
After Peter, Johnny was my favourite member of the band. Very friendly, cool, suave, always ready to chat.
When Peter came out, someone in the hang-out crowd said "Peter alert!" and everyone got their autograph stuff ready. I didn't ask for an autograph, I'm not in the habit. I'd rather collect anecdotes for re-telling later (like now). So when Peter gave me his attention, I said I'd read that his birthday was January 4, 1962, and I wanted to know what time he was born. "Three-thirty AM, why?" I told him I was born 3:41 PM the day before. He smiled and said, "Well, happy birthday." So he knew. I like to think he was tickled that one of his fans was almost exactly the same age as him.
The next time I went to see them was at the (formerly) Keystone Palo Alto. I was in the group hanging out by the bus, waiting for them to come out. We were sitting because we'd been waiting for awhile. Then Peter came out the back of the club and heads down the alley towards the bus; we spotted him and got up, and he yelled, "Awww, don't get up just for ME!!" And I said, "Okay, I won't" and sat back down. He laughed and said, "A woman after my own heart!"
There used to be a big Type O Negative e-mail list on a server back in Indiana. We were a crazy bunch; according to the admin, we posted "2 megs of crap every month" — on the average. Sometimes it was more. But that was because we'd welded as a community and more often than not were friends offlist as well. There were four of us that were dressage aficionados and wanted to get Friesians and tour the country as the Technocratik Republic of Vinnland Colour Guard, performing quadrilles to Type O music and having black and green as our colours. Unhappily, it didn't pan out, mostly because we couldn't afford Friesians ($20,000

) and one of the girls was 5'2" and couldn't ride a Friesian (big horses, they be).
The list kind of wound down to a trickle after October Rust came out; I've no idea why, because it was a great album and there was a lot of excitement and discussion over it. I guess the list-mems just settled into contentment mode, and/or drifted away, or Life™ intervened for most of us. A troll from Australia with a fascination for KFC was partly to blame. But when we were in our hey-day, we produced a t-shirt, a slogan ("Frontways they will fall" — from the Mis-Heard Lyrics thread), the Ogre Salami Cult, and some friendships. I'm still in touch with some of them, either directly or indirectly.
Peter Steele touched many lives. I'm glad to see the tributes and memories and anecdotes being posted in the wake of his death. The night I found out, I looked up at the moon — and was somewhat bittersweet to note that it was the same moon he was born under, according to the ephemeris.
Godspeed, Wolf Daddy.

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