Connect

Mission 1. Hook up with someone as old as my mom (54) and as young as my sister (20) in a month.
Mission 2. Live a completely gay lifestyle (without the gay sex) for a month.
Mission Three: Live without an apartment for a month.
Mission Four: Reconnect.

There's been a disturbance in the force for the past month. Even as I get back into my place, things seem different. It's taking a while to settle in. Even worse, Evan changed my outgoing message. It took me a year to have a message I was happy with, not too cool, not to lame, not to funny. Now, it's back to the drawing board.

The message inspired hangups. Evan was trying to fake an American accent with phrases like "You've reached Rob Lowe Sex Club." Some people actually thought it was me, faking a German accent. Worse, I'd been getting a bunch of calls for my birthday. One out-of-the-blue call came from Jim,* a relatively-famous actor friend who thought it was me doing the voice. With filming, travel and conflicting schedules, we haven't seen each other in about a year-and-a-half. If he's as clueless as I remember, he probably thinks I'm running a german fetish club.
I hope that's not why he invited me for a beer.

Jim's call is the latest in a series of occurrences that have been taking place in my life. First, the numbers thing, is still a bit disturbing. It was the first time that I felt the universe was being controlled by a greater force. It was creepy. The other happening, as evidenced by Jim and others, is the resurfacing of people from my past. I rarely keep in touch with old friends and acquaintances for the same reasons many of you don’t. There are a few friends, but most have slipped away, involved like me in their daily lives that they can’t see beyond, or in this case, behind. I send and receive an occasional e-mail, but it seems forced. How can you sum up the last five, ten, twenty years of your life in an e-mail? Most times it all sounds the same anyway, marriage, kids, jobs. I would keep in touch but its hard to get beyond the bullshit layers of lifestage.

This is nothing breakthrough, it happens to most of us. But lately a picture of my life has been created from the tapestry of my past. From kindergarten through college, these people have once again crossed my path in a way that is both leading and unexpected. I feel as if I’m walking toward the “light” and they are there to guide me. It’s very confusing.

I went golfing with my dad last weekend in PA. As we snuck in nine, he tried best to update me on what was happening in the hometown. I was too tired to give a shit. But one nugget did make me care--he told me about a childhood friend, Matthew, who had died a week ago. He had been fighting a world of illness, and at 29 his body gave up. Matthew wasn’t a great friend, even a good one. I knew him in first grade, and he moved away in second. He resurfaced once again in my hometown as an adult, but I never got to meet him as such. I was already gone. To me, he was the kid who could flip his eyelids back. A talent I never had, but not for lack of trying. The one time it worked, I just about freaked out. I wasn’t cut out for sideshow theatrics.

When my dad shared the news, I felt a bit sad. For Matthew and for myself. After I pondered the thought of his death for the last four holes, I came to a pragmatic realization. Matthew had been dead to me for years. If not for a brief year in my life, Matthew lived only in my occasional thoughts. And as he was taken from one world to another, I realized that his place in my life hadn’t changed with the crossover.

Then I started thinking about how I would feel if other people from my past had met a similar fate, people that I was connected with in more significant ways than mere eyelid tricks. But no feelings changed. If those people passed, I would feel the requisite sadness and remorse, but their place in my memory would remain the same. I would remember them as children or high school students or fraternity brothers. I would not see them growing bald or getting overweight or as dads or moms with their kids. In my world they were placed in a suspended reality. They were both alive and dead in my finite memory. And they would remain there forever.

This realization was unsettling. Was I that cold and unfeeling? Or was I pragmatic and rational? Going to school across the country and establishing roots here has disconnected me from my past. The moment I left for college,I knew I would never see many of these people again in my life. Yea, my path has been unique, but I've been counting the steps along the way, and could easily retrace them. I could reconnect to a past filled with skinned knees, dusk baseball games and winter handjobs in the woods. This was my life, I knew the way back.

Prior to this blog, I would have never thought about reconnecting. But the last few missions have helped gain me confidence and completion in many parts of my life that were lacking in both, so I'm going to try out my new life skills. I am about to experience the most fantastic decade of my life, so why not say a proper goodbye to all that came before it.

I’m on a mission. A mission to reconnect, rebuild and rekindle.

*fictitious name.