In Memoriam: Edgar Dāle 

I keep catching myself talking to him. I can see the look he would give if he walked in and saw me sitting in the all-white-office in my gay-ass tank-top and chipped nail polish with knee-high socks and short shorts at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night, the night before his final show, banging my head against the keyboard. 

"This production for Edgar was meant to open in a couple days, not in under twelve hours. Trust there to be some last minute surprise with Edgar."

I'm writing this because I always looked up to Edgar as a paternal uncle. Us queer people are not generally born to queer parents, so we need to find those role models within the community. I have been fortunate to have had two of these father figures, the first being Ari Mäkinen, who was a long time owner of the oldest still operational gay bar in Finland, the second being Edgar, the oldest gay owner of Teddy Bar in Cambodia.

A life before the Kingdom

Before Cambodia, Edgar helped build spectacles. He was a bass-singer in The Philadelphia Gay Men's C horus, architect for the Trump Taj Mahal’s Xanadu Theater in Atlantic City, with consulting and project work from Las Vegas to Macau. The man who once drafted glitzy palaces later chose Angkor’s quieter charm and swapped gold-plated walkways to the first rays of sunlight on some very, very old stonework. 

The quiet American

Edgar arrived in Cambodia late 2014. In 2015 he met Sombor, a young 20-something Khmer man that would become the most important person throughout his Cambodian chapter. With Sombor (better known as Teddy), Edgar started Teddy Bear Restaurant in Tuol Tom Poung. Part kitchen, part living room, with gay pride cliché’s pumping out the speakers like a good neighbourhood watering hole should.

You were a regular on your second visit and family on your third. Teddy’s relatives worked the bar and the kitchen. In time they became Edgar’s Cambodian family. He was loudly, joyfully gay, and he made that an ordinary fact of daily life.

Thespianism

In 2017 Edgar joined our non-profit theatre troupe Phnom Penh Players delivering his Phnom Penh stage debut in Wyrd Sisters. He must have liked it, since the same year he joined two other productions, Macbeth and a Panto called Unsleeping beauty. He loved the Christmas pantomime, wanting to audition to Cinderella another Christmas, but couldn't due to his schedule to visit the States.

I first met him in Missionaries Mercenaries and Monsters (2018), a Phnom Penh original about the stereotypes of expats, and got to really know him when he played a Jewish florist in a very gay musical, Shanghai Cabaret (2019). He was supposed to play Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof before it was cancelled. 

When not on stage himself, he still supported The Orphan Train (2019), 3 Steps to Supernova (2019), The Nether (2020), and Fingerella (2022) through sponsorships as Teddy Bear Restaurant. In 2021 he returned to the stage for the final time in Romantically Insane as Walt and delivered the funniest goose Ya-Honk this city has heard. 

People still smile thinking it.

Should I stay or should I go

There is a moment for many long-haulers here when you either need to leave or decide to stay. Edgar’s turn came around Covid. He had a big leaving party at Teddy's. But fate had notes. A bad slip on stairs and a broken hip. 

A long and painful recovery while the world closed its borders, flights vanished, funds and plans dissolved. That accident could have ended the Cambodia chapter. It did not. Teddy and Teddy’s family nursed him back together. They fed, clothed and cleaned him while gathering funds for surgeries. Somehow despite all adversities Edgar, Sombor and Teddy Bear Restaurant survived Covid.

Temple town

When the Angkor Special Pass appeared for long-term residents, Edgar was still recovering, relearning to walk, but informed friends and family that he would be moving to Siem Reap. 

Of course he did. Of course the man who once worked on palatial spectacles made of drywall and polyurethane bricks would fall for actually old, elaborately laid stones. 

He wandered temple stairs like galleries, took sunrise seriously, and called the ruins beautiful without trying to sound clever about it. He posted from hilltops and lintels and looked calmer every month. Phnom Penh never lost him though. 

In June 2025 he came back, cane tapping, to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream on closing night. He loved it.

Exit stage right

Edgar died in Siem Reap on 25 August 2025, twelve days shy of 68. The sendoff in Phnom Penh came together the way many things do here: At first we didn't know when, then we were told it's now! Mysterious are the ways of foreigners laid to rest in Phnom Penh.

On Saturday 13th afternoon we heard he was to be cremated that very day, but thanks to Teddy's quick thinking we were graced with an extra night. 

Edgar would have loved the weekend scheduling chaos this caused. 

--

Come Sunday morning, Maria the stage manager is always on time, which in Cambodia means she is always the first one, arriving to nothing; a coffin on the floor. Maria ID'd the resident in the wooden box before a wreath was placed next to it with Edgar’s name in a black sash, while the rest of our group trickled in. 

Some hasty prayers were said by the monks and then it was time for the races: 

4 foreigners, Teddy and 2 staff members from Teddy Bar on tuk tuks and motorbikes trying to keep up with "the hearse" (a grey beaten up van) legging it between temples packed with people celebrating Pchum Ben.

Naturally the group of foreigners don't get the ride all the way to the crematorium (One Player even ending up in the wrong temple) but instead we are dropped in front of a crowd of Pchum Ben celebrators by the main gates to continue on foot.

The path to the crematorium in Wat Sambour Meas is winding, narrow and most of the way under water. Due to us foreigners causing all kinds of delays in the process, it is now rice-o'clock, so we are rushed to say our final farewells, take final looks (those who needed it) and off he goes! 

Teddy agrees to collect the remains at 2pm.

Through all of this I kept joking on progressively macabre topics, partly to keep the party going, but also because it is my coping mechanism. The tears flowed later while writing this.

Final curtain calls

To Teddy.

Without Teddy, many of us might have never met Edgar. Without Teddy’s unwavering support, Teddy Bear Restaurant might not have started or survived, and Edgar might have slipped from our lives years earlier by the way of Elsie. Teddy’s friendship got him back on his feet and sent him north to enjoy stones older than anyone’s sadness. That is a miracle made of meals, phone calls and patience. 

To you, Sombor, I am grateful and hope I will have someone like you in my life when it's my time to go.

To Edgar.

thank you for choosing the good about people, events and situations. Thank you for showing a younger gay man that the point is not to pass as anything, but to live so obviously as yourself that people adjust. Thank you for the stories over gin and tonics, and Teddy Bar.

Oscar Wilde said it cleanly. “Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”

To you.

If you are in Phnom Penh, make a pilgrimage to Teddy Bear, hug Teddy, and raise a gin and tonic to Edgar. Face to the sunshine. Shadows behind. Curtain down.

Lai tev vieglas smiltis