Selective Memory

Had a most animated conversation last night with my old Ohio chum Texas Liberal, after we had barely spoken over the past 20 years for some asinine reasons that he remembered much more of than I did. I had not a clue, but certainly knew I had been mad. And that it was probably his fault.

Memories are interesting stuff: He did not remember calling me at home in SF in about 1996, or contacting me again right after 9/11 when I was quoted in his now-hometown Houston Chronicle, but clearly remembered me spurning a mutual friend of ours at age 19; I forgot he went to Xavier for 7 years, only hanging out in UC's student center for socializing reasons, and why I stopped speaking to him. Yet I vividly remembered his job running the lottery machine, and his predilection for curly-headed women with large breasts. He married one, in fact.

The NYC streets do this to me on a regular basis. Recently, I've been walking through Washington Square Park regularly for the first time in a couple years after my class twice a week at NYU. My Irish ex-boyfriend used to live on Thompson and Bleeker, and I still associate that area of the West Village with him. With the smell and feel of NYC's almost-summer air, I'm recalling the times we pulled ourselves out of our mutual self-destruction to sit in the park in the late evenings and people watch. I haven't forgotten that that there was a lot of heartache then due to the recent loss of my dad and nearly 2-yrs of back-and-forth with said bf, but the light in the park this May only makes me remember the good, and how crazy we once were about each other.

At any rate, I am told that I am officially back on TL's A-List. Ah yes, the internets, bringing people together.