A Girl...

Magic Muffin

September 2001--On my first visit home since moving to Berkeley (two months before), I didn't tell anyone besides my parents that I would be in Salt Lake because I'm lazy and afraid of the phone and I'm an irresponsible, bad, bad, bad friend. Brandin, not knowing I was in town or that I'd moved to Berkeley, called my house completely out of the blue during the four or five days I was home. I didn't call him back (because I suck).

September 2002--A co-worker and I were at a two-day conference in Provo, Utah, about 45 minutes south of Salt Lake. While sitting in my hotel room for the one night I was there, the phone rings, and it's Br, all "Hi, how are you, do you know who this is?" Apparently, he'd just been thinking of me that night so he called my mom to see what my California phone number was, and she told him what hotel I was staying at in Provo, so he called the number while I was sitting there alone, in the dark, in a strange place, and FREAKED MY SHIT OUT.

June 2003--Again in town visiting the fam and neglecting my friends, who I really really adore even though you wouldn't think so by the way I consistently ignore and avoid them. Ethan and I were walking around the Utah Arts Festival and who should we actually literally physically run into but Bran(muffin). Crazy. We talked for about five minutes but then had to go because we were hanging out with Ethan's friend Bob, who back then was not a very nice person and pouted because he needed a corndog right that second. Bob is better now.

September 2003--In Salt Lake for two days to hit my cousin's wedding shower and my grandpa's 80th birthday. My dad drove me from the airport straight to the new Main Library, sketches and models of which I'd been drooling over for years. We wait and wait and wait at one of the elevators and it doesn't seem like it's ever going to come to our floor, so we go down some hallways to another elevator, which, when the doors open, reveal my dear friend who obviously sold his soul to the devil for a rather peculiar type of magic. We just stood there and stared at each other for a second, not believing our eyes.

October 2003--Br comes to town on tour with his dance company and scores us some comp tickets to the show down at Stanford. Story here (note: Dylan = Ethan).

June 2004--I was back in Salt Lake for a week (unbeknownst to non-blood relatives yet again), and when I return to Berkeley, I have a message on my machine from guess who? "I was just thinking of you today and thought I'd give you a call. Let me know if you're coming to town this summer and we'll hook up." If only he'd called my parents' house...

July 2004--I'm in New York to help my parents celebrate their birthdays, and what says party like going to the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side? We got on the subway, went the wrong way for a stop, got off, waited while four or five trains went by on our platform before realizing we were still trying to go the wrong direction, finally got on the right train, got off one stop too early, decided to walk the streets some, and who is standing there at the bottom of the stairs at the wrong station at the wrong time on the wrong day in the New York Fucking Subway, but...Seriously. He'd been in town for a week or two attending a workshop and was just headed to a class. Photographic evidence!

He's a babe, huh?

(Oh, and the madness continued about a week later when, while back in Berkeley, I received a message from Br saying he'd just ran into our third, Ben, on the streets of New York. Ben had lived in New York for a year or so, but he wasn't living there then. He was, in fact, between homes, staying in Salt Lake for a few months before moving to Berkeley. No shit.)

July 2005 (the 4th, to be exact)--I get home from my crummy Federal Holiday spent at work and there's a message on my machine from none other than...yep. He's in town for a festival for a few days. He tells me where he's staying, which happens to be TWO AND A HALF BLOCKS from my house. I smartly act like the grownup I have become and I actually pick up the phone and call him back. (Wonders, they never cease, you know?) So I go pick him up at a cafe and he's wearing the same goddamn shirt he was wearing when I saw him in NYC. And I'm wearing the "Nueva York" shirt I bought on that trip, probably on the very day I saw him, because apparently that's how this creepy stuff works. I was on my way to take Teddy to the airport, so we picked him up and went for ice cream (yam-flavored!), and some hyper French lady driving by saw us standing on the side of road and stopped her car right there in the middle of the street and insisted on taking our picture because, according to her, we were just then the embodiment of "what life is supposed to be like."

After he and Teddy covered quantum physics and the history of civilization and the construction of the Other in pseudoscientific literature on the way to the airport, the two of us--me and one of my oldest and dearest and bestest friends--spent the remainder of the night driving around San Francisco under exploding fireworks, discussing in depth everything that's ever really mattered to either one of us.

The things we said are a tale for another time, lads and lassies. Maybe when you're older.

Posted by Leah at July 6, 2005 11:05 PM