When a close connection breaks, what's left over? If you then have a superficial relationship, or perhaps none at all, does your knowledge of that person lose value? Or is it just as strong, merely suspended in an inhospitable past?
The last time I saw Evan was at the Empty Bottle. He was leaning against a brick wall, and I saw him before he saw me. When I greeted him, he looked at me with absolute horror. I introduced him to Phil, and at my apartment after the show, I broke down sobbing in the bathroom. "Ibs dot dat I still lubbim," I sniffled. "I jubst miss our frehdship, you doh? We were bedst frehds and dow dere's nod-dinggggg." Poor Phil looked confused. Fast forward a few months, when I log into Friendster to see that Evan has de-friended me. I wonder what I have done wrong, so after a few weeks I call him to congratulate him on his engagement. "I'm so happy for you and Ann," I tell him, because I am. But he does not sound happy to hear from me, and when I ask what I've done, he says he does not know what I'm talking about. The conversation is awkward and sad and short, and I realize that there has been an irreparable schism.
Months after the Empty Bottle meeting, I'd wind up crying because of Phil. For a couple of weeks, my adrenaline surged whenever I saw a black-haired indie boy on a bicycle; I worried that I'd find him living it up while I was evaluating the merits of getting out of bed each day. Everywhere I went, I'd first check to make sure that he wasn't there, and when that constant process proved exhausting, I just stopped going east of Western. I spent the summer morosely skating around Smith Park, halfheartedly putting food into my mouth at new restaurants, bicycling through empty neighborhoods at night, wandering around museums by myself. I had not felt that alone and abandoned since my grandfather died.
The strange thing is that I think about these two people every day. It's involuntary. I made a heeeeelarious Matlock joke the other day and thought, "Oh, Evan would get a kick out of that." Sometimes I'll see shadows hit the ground a certain way, and I know that if Phil were there, he'd pull out his camera and shoot from a few different angles. And that's where the questions above come in, and how they remain unanswered today.
The last time I saw Evan was at the Empty Bottle. He was leaning against a brick wall, and I saw him before he saw me. When I greeted him, he looked at me with absolute horror. I introduced him to Phil, and at my apartment after the show, I broke down sobbing in the bathroom. "Ibs dot dat I still lubbim," I sniffled. "I jubst miss our frehdship, you doh? We were bedst frehds and dow dere's nod-dinggggg." Poor Phil looked confused. Fast forward a few months, when I log into Friendster to see that Evan has de-friended me. I wonder what I have done wrong, so after a few weeks I call him to congratulate him on his engagement. "I'm so happy for you and Ann," I tell him, because I am. But he does not sound happy to hear from me, and when I ask what I've done, he says he does not know what I'm talking about. The conversation is awkward and sad and short, and I realize that there has been an irreparable schism.
Months after the Empty Bottle meeting, I'd wind up crying because of Phil. For a couple of weeks, my adrenaline surged whenever I saw a black-haired indie boy on a bicycle; I worried that I'd find him living it up while I was evaluating the merits of getting out of bed each day. Everywhere I went, I'd first check to make sure that he wasn't there, and when that constant process proved exhausting, I just stopped going east of Western. I spent the summer morosely skating around Smith Park, halfheartedly putting food into my mouth at new restaurants, bicycling through empty neighborhoods at night, wandering around museums by myself. I had not felt that alone and abandoned since my grandfather died.
The strange thing is that I think about these two people every day. It's involuntary. I made a heeeeelarious Matlock joke the other day and thought, "Oh, Evan would get a kick out of that." Sometimes I'll see shadows hit the ground a certain way, and I know that if Phil were there, he'd pull out his camera and shoot from a few different angles. And that's where the questions above come in, and how they remain unanswered today.
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