A Dozen Years, Give or Take
On Saturday I went hunting for an old entry I wrote back in 2002 and passed a couple of hours remembering things that I did and said and felt during the first couple of months after Andy showed up semi-unexpectedly at my 24th birthday party with the sign from a CTA bus stop and a Kurosawa Critierion Collection DVD. He stayed late, sitting with me on the back porch as we carefully talked around some things that didn't get said out loud for another few weeks, during another conversation on that back porch. In the middle of all of it is a private entry that begins "So that I don't forget this," and I had, so am glad I thought to put it in writing. Some of what I wrote back then has shifted in meaning with time. There's one tossed-off transcription of a short conversation he had with a mutual friend of ours that's downright sad now, though less sad than it would have been if I unearthed it before this year. The core of it, the thing where mutual friend summed up his perception of Andy and me, that's still true. My favorite is a bit of stream-of-consciousness story-type-thing featuring an underwater dance with a giant squid and a home-cooked meal. It, too, has shaded in meaning over time, despite being a total invention, and the tossed-off reference to three countries I have never visited at the end seems significant, especially because I've been to so many other countries in the meantime.
I dug around in old emails after that, too, looking for the response to the squid-thing that he sent, and found the one from July 18th, 2002. That's the date I count forward from, when I bother to count, and I always have to look up the email to find the exact date. I remember other details, though, like how far away we were sitting from each other when we first kissed, and which way I leaned to reach him, and not the exact words, but the formality of the statements that came before the kissing, because we were both a little wary, both technically on the rebound, both probably unsure. That's something I really don't remember - feeling even the tiniest bit uncomfortable around him - but it was real.
The email of July 18th, 2002, subject line "Nope," says only this:
"Not regretting.
So there.
ann"
If I were a more careful and sentimental person, I would have sent an identical email every July 18th since then, but I am not. Still, it would be true every time.
I dug around in old emails after that, too, looking for the response to the squid-thing that he sent, and found the one from July 18th, 2002. That's the date I count forward from, when I bother to count, and I always have to look up the email to find the exact date. I remember other details, though, like how far away we were sitting from each other when we first kissed, and which way I leaned to reach him, and not the exact words, but the formality of the statements that came before the kissing, because we were both a little wary, both technically on the rebound, both probably unsure. That's something I really don't remember - feeling even the tiniest bit uncomfortable around him - but it was real.
The email of July 18th, 2002, subject line "Nope," says only this:
"Not regretting.
So there.
ann"
If I were a more careful and sentimental person, I would have sent an identical email every July 18th since then, but I am not. Still, it would be true every time.