reconnecting

i recently got in touch with a groovy chick i went high school with. she was 2 years ahead of me, sooooo sophisticated and beautiful. so together. so confident. she was my idol. funny how all these years later (she is at her 20 year reunion right this very second) our reconnection can rewrite some history.

she remembered me but not with the same clarity as i remembered her. (short, with blond hair and freckles? i think i recall...) but she remembers herself. she was not so confident and cool, on the inside. and i have to wonder, was anyone? even the ones that seemed that way... at the time. maybe i seemed that way to others. this girl now (woman, i should say woman) just remembers being confused and feeling like she didn't quite fit in. but that's how i felt. and i wanted to BE her. wow.

i once, years ago, ran into a guy at a party who remembered me from high school. i didnt remember him. he liked me... from afar. a far afar. "you were just like a cat" (must be the green eyes). i remember thinking 'how come this guy never even spoke to me?' were we all so isolated and lonely, looking out at everyone else, thinking they had something that we didn't?

and talking to this groovy chick brought up memories of some guys from school. i had guy friends. in fact, metro-sexual guy is one of them. we met in high school when we were 15 (a hundred years ago). i have a long line of the strictly platonic very best guy friends. poor guys. underneath it all is that drippy unrequited love, otherwise they'd of never put in the time or the effort. or the pain.

i was thinking a bit about one. and then i found a book on my head board, under the pillow where scooter had left it ages ago. no dust jacket (damn it, why can't he take care of my stuff?) i picked it up to put it on the shelf, opened the cover and there was an inscription. i had forgotten. it was from a guy. a high-school-best-friend-god-cant-you-see-how-you-hurt-me? guy.

that did it.

i googled him. and damn if i didnt find him on the very first shot. he is a director. he writes movies. he's all over the web. very successful. his wedding announcement comes up in Variety... damn. this inscription. it was so heart breaking because from here, from 2004, i can see that he loved me. and i was cruel to him. i never even knew how cruel.

so i emailed him. hi. i think you know me. remember? how are you? he remembers. he remembers things i forgot (like he came to see me in the town i live in now... 80 miles from that school. came to see me when i was 23 years old, that many years since high school.) he sent a photo of his son. i got the chance to say i'm sorry. he just said that he's lived and learned since then. and i wasn't so bad as i think i was. not in contrast to real life. compared to the girls that came later. but i know that it is the first crushes that crush the hardest. he's sweet, let me right off the hook.

so i told him that life is so strange... in my garage in an old photo album i have an 8 x 10 glossy photo of him in a tux dancing with his sister at her wedding. he was 12. i don't know why he gave me that photo. must of pissed his mother off severely (Where the hell did the photo in that frame go?) don't you think? actually, i do know why he gave it to me. because it was good photo, before the zits and crap of adolescence had a chance to make him feel like a troll.

"Isn't it weird? that i have that bit of your life in my garage?" the existential implications of this were astonishing me. ISN'T IT SO BIZARRE THAT I HAVE THAT CHUNK OF YOUR LIFE IN MY GARAGE?

he said "i wondered where that went. can you send it back to me?"