Harried and late, I rushed across Rideau street the other night as I prepared myself for the tension to come in an evening with my friend Lucretia. It had been over a year since we had last seen one another in any way. As nervous as I could ever be, I walked into the mall where we had (for the sake of convenience) arranged to meet. We laid eyes on one another, with that first spark of mutual recognition. We both looked quite different. For instance, I had my hair cut, and bought a brand new shirt just for the occasion. Fittingly, the first thing Lucretia said to me was: "You look like a geek!"
Last spring, Lucretia moved out west, finally settling in Medicine Hat as she sought experience, change, and freedom far away from home. At that point in our friendship, we had more or less been distant if well-intentioned towards one another, busy with our respective lives and still estranged by the bitter fights and subsequent breakup we both endured more than two years previous. Before she left, we only saw one another a few times a year. Lucretia was attending the University of Ottawa, and while you'd think that living in the same city, not more than a few blocks from each other, that we should have been in touch more, there always seemed more time, somewhere in the future, to return that phone call or write that procrastinated letter. Indeed, the spring she left, we saw each other more through chance encounters than we did though any real plans to meet. Lucretia is far more at ease with herself than I am, to be sure, but there was always a tension in place when we saw each other, even if the events of the past had truly been left there for good. I think this made our distant assocation into an easy habit; we had our separate lives, separate friends, separate interests, and it seemed harder and harder to mesh together as two people who had spent the tenure of their friendship growing apart with time. That said, my admiration for Lucretia remained, even as I strained to understand her interest in the forbidden worlds of such scandalous things as tattoos and piercings. Sure, I've become a considerably less repressed on the subject in the past few years, but even though I was a purple-haired freak, I confess to have found the notion of body modification a little personally disquieting and unattractively trendy. But then I've always been tragically judgmental. In any case, Lucretia's declaration that I looked a lot better when my old, normal, hair was starting to make a return on my head actually had a big influence in my decision to stop dyeing my hair purple. In fact, until I did return to a more normal appearance, Lucretia was one of the few people I knew who had ever seen me without purple hair, beyond the friends I'd had from high school. As I said, her opinion counted for a lot, and I was already debating when I would ultimately let it grow out. It wasn't long after that decision that I shaved off most of my hair (granted, that was the unfortunate consequence of the accident I had when I tried to cut my hair reasonably short unaided -- I had no choice but to report to a hairstylist and have her repair the damage, sadly requiring electric cutting implements) and allowed it to grow into a wild, natural state. Of course, "wild and natural" should be read as meaning goofy and shaggily unkempt in a kind of obsessively combed way. My gallery has evidence of this state.
When she announced to me in the spring of 1998 that she was making plans to take a hiatus from school and move out west to see what there was to see, I realized the grave folly I had committed in idly living so much of my life without making a real effort to maintain and encourage the growth of our friendship into a state capable of rivalling that of the distant-seeming past. While a solid friendship indeed requires two people (sometimes even an entire, wacky troupe and all of the delightful antics they somehow get into each week) dedicated to its goodness, the art of staying in touch itself can often require just one person willing to invest a little effort into periodically calling and writing so as to remind the other friend that he still cares and wants to remain an important part of her life. I didn't do that part, and it was only when it was too late (of course) that I realized I really should. Unfortunately, my friend did not have any idea what address she might have when she moved, not truly knowing where she was headed. She told me to send any letters to her parents house, and assured me that they would arrive to her eventually. Given my real grief at the thought of her leaving, I vowed to do just that, and make sure that she knew she would be missed. My friend missed out on the last few things we could have done together, like a Hayden concert and our friend Laura's wedding, and the lack of any real chance to say a sincere 'goodbye' to one another made it increasingly important for me to keep her friendship close to my heart and actually try to keep it alive. The first message in a bottle that I sent to my friend was quite literally a message in a bottle. It was tied with red ribbon, corked, and tossed into a postal system sea in the hopes that it would someday reach its intended recipient. I was delighted to eventually receive a letter from Lucretia in response, who had been informed that it had arrived at her parents house. She figured she would get it when she came home for Christmas, and while we never managed to get together when she came back home for the first time, it still touched my sopping heart greatly to have word from my distant, but well-missed friend. I mean, yes, I am sentimental to the point of melodrama at times, but I do sincerely hope you actually knew this about me after so much time reading these journal entries. While there are certainly times when a shadowy combination of my guilt and nostalgia threaten to trap Lucretia upon a vast, evil pedestal of creepy obsession, for the most part I simply appreciate the fact that my friend is a rare, fascinating, special person of truly unusual brightness, independence and sincerity, and if I ever managed to chase her away with either thoughtless demands or sheer neglect (both of which I am more than capable of), I know I'd likely never find anyone to replace her.
Last October, on the fourth anniversary of the night of our chance meeting at a friend's party, I made an indulgent pilgrimage to Kingston, Ontario, to the park where we spent much of our first night as friends swinging, talking, and exploring the tentative boundaries of a very fresh and unusual friendship. We tended to spend time together on this anniversary, and with my friend gone and silent last year, I needed to find some means of personal closure and contact. I'd only ever returned once, by chance, when I went for a walk for the purposes of securing some more Jolt cola while at a New Year's party at a friend's house (for reference: at a previous party hosted by the same friend in a different house, I met Lucretia), and came across the park, with a little searching, in the dead of winter. It touched me greatly, but the park was dead and quiet and buried in snow, and not at all like the place where two fast friends discovered each other on a Saturday night in the middle of October. For me, a lot of mystery surrounds this night. Imagine having one, perfect night, where even as you were in the middle of it, you knew it was happening exactly as it was meant to, despite any obstacles seemingly in the way. I don't truly believe in fate, or souls, but if I did I would be able to explain that night, because two souls did touch; two people who just were meant to come together at that time, in that place, no matter what. At any rate, I very much wanted to return to that park on the anniversary of our meeting, to experience some of the emotions I felt then all over again, and capture on film some scenery and imagery quite precious to me. I brought two cameras and five rolls of film, and that's how I spent my very long day in Kingston. I walked the path I took on the way to my friend's house from Queen's university, took pictures of anything which reminded me of that night, and eventually found Friendship Park, as it is called, where I spent a lot of time reflecting. Well, you can read more about that adventure in this chapter of the Classic Snivel, for the entries spanning October 15 - 17. When I finally returned to Ottawa late that night, I was exhausted, emotional, and smelly, but I had easily a hundred fabulous pictures of a place very important to me, the best of which I was going to have enlarged considerably and sent to Lucretia.
I'm trying, at this point in my life, to be the friend I could never be before to Lucretia. While I always cared about her and wanted to make her happy (as any friend would), there has always been some tension in our friendship sparked by my lingering feelings for her, and her reaction to them. The physical passion in our relationships was very strong; sometimes it brought us together despite the unavoidably angry end results sparked by the chafing my brand of obsessive affection can cause. So much time has gone by now since those stormy days that we have the luxury of perspective and the wisdom only our greatly advanced ages can bring. I let Lucretia know I was still thinking about her this year during her birthday by sending her an unexpected book I knew she had always wanted (which, unbeknownst to me, she once bought for herself but then lost, making the acquisition of another quite welcome indeed), and she sent me a letter in response that touched my heart by showing me how much she appreciated that thought, and giving me a peek into her life and the very good day I'd helped her have. It is nice to be able to think of one another from time to time -- to know that now she probably thinks of me as fondly (if not as often) as I think of her. I got a call from Lucretia a couple of weeks ago -- while I was in Ohio -- and she told me of her plans to visit. She left a message with her phone number so that we could choreograph some kind of chance to hang out, and after I'd moved I made sure to leave messages with her updating her on my situation. Our propensity for letters, notes, and voice mail messages means that Lucretia and I hadn't really had a direct conversation of any kind since she left, and it was only when she called to tell me that we should get together in the days ahead that we had to properly deal with one another interactively.
Suffice it to say, I was very keen to make a good impression on my friend after so long. My hair, which had grown quite unfortunately shaggy with the past year's unruly lack of maintenance and discipline, was subjected to the barber's shears for the first time since I'd shaved most of it off. I tend to avoid professional haircuts as the result of once having bright purple hair, you see. Hairstylists always found it fascinating, and I had to answer the usual questions ("how did you dye it?" and "why did you dye it?") an irritating number of times when I found myself swarmed by curious hair care professionals. When my hair required cutting, I did it myself, with mixed (if even) results. I could maintain it in more or less the state I wanted it, but any alteration of style ended tragically, as I discovered the day I mangled it in the attempt to make it shorter (and you know how that ended). Lester, however, is a man who was made to cut hair, and having discovered his shop I am assured a place where I can get a wonderful haircut. I think I look really good right now; the style I have suits me well, being crisp and subtle along the back and sides, but with my now-trademarked soft, wavy bangs. I also, narcisistically, bought a new shirt which can confidently be declared as "my comfiest shirt yet." It is soft and dark gray, hangs about me quite loosely, and is ideal for the cool autumnal days ahead (whether I'm stylishly lounging about my university campus, or snuggling up with a good friend and a couple of blankets). It smells like me and my sandalwood cologne quite pleasantly, as has been soundly declared by people either snuggling up against it or borrowing it for themselves.
I'm not sure whether I'm advertising the shirt, or how I look in it, but at any rate, it's comfy as heck, and I decided to wear it out when I met Lucretia.
Of course, events never quite turn out as planned. I had given Lucretia a reasonable estimate of when I might be able to meet her downtown, which (with the assistance of OC Transpo, Ottawa's much hated mass transit company) turned out to be naïvely inaccurate. As it was, I was late in hitting the Byward Market, and in a terrible mood because of this. The last thing I wanted to do was keep my friend waiting after an absence of more than a year -- and worse still, our time was limited that evening. She was waiting for me inside the Rideau Centre, a tremendous downtown shopping mall, pacing and displaying so many textbook signs of impatience. So, smelling yummy and dressed exceedingly well, I stormed across the street with a cloud of black shame above my head to meet my destiny. I opened the door, stepped inside, smiled expansively at my long-departed friend, and drank in her first words to me in over a year's time. Those words, of course, were "You look like a geek!" My smile kind of melted away the way a snowman's smile would, with little black stones dropping off one by one, accompanied by the trickle of cold water and a fluid progression from cheerful beaming to an expressionless puddle. Suddenly, I felt very, very self-conscious indeed, and my famous proclivity for hurt feelings did not at all disappoint the eager crowds. Evidently, those hurt feelings were plain on my face, because Lucretia had to backtrack a bit with all my gulping and blinking to demonstrate that I had been insulted. Of course, my friend is very blunt and frank with her remarks, and never intends to be deliberately cruel or hurtful, but suddenly I was horrified and wounded all the same, despite her reassurances. Lucretia quickly clarified, explaining that the last time she had seen me, I was sporting bright purple hair in an entirely different style, and wearing brightly coloured clothing -- and in contrast, my present state was shocking. She never did reach a verdict on whether or not I looked "good" -- still hurting and self-conscious, I asked her if I had at least managed not to be a hideous monster -- and I confess her exclamation stayed with me for the rest of the night, and the rest of the week.
It took me a few minutes to patch together my will to live sufficiently to carry on, but before long we were walking through endless streets and talking about ourselves and our perceptions of the world, like we'd done so many times over so many years in our friendship. Lucretia and I were both hungry, so I offered to take her out for dinner. I really didn't want to sit down for a snack at a fast food outlet, which was the first option to turn up. I had something... well, "fancy" in mind, though I had no idea particularly where this "fancy" place would turn out to be. Still, we hadn't seen each other in so long that as Lucretia and I wandered the streets of the Market in search of a suitable restaurant, we quickly fell into excited, merry conversation about our respective adventures -- stories filled with anecdotes and background descriptions and the two of us laughing like loons. The tension we'd known in the past was remarkably absent this night, and instead we got along like real, old friends (as opposed to getting along like real old friends who used to perform oral sex on one another in between bitter fights and emotionally complicated breakups spurred by her emotional distance and my neurotic co-dependence). This was wonderful and refreshing, an elegant feeling made possible by the unusual simplicity of the moment. Besides my bruised self-esteem, the heavy emotions were all banished, the tender and taboo topics of conversation had been eased, the pain sticks abandoned somewhere in the past. She showed me her new tattoo, which she'd gotten only the day before, of a very beautiful stylized heart on the small of her back. I don't remember it well enough to describe it beyond that, but I recall thinking that it was very beautiful, bandages and ointment and all. I deliberately did not bring my camera out with me that night to avoid awkward moments of picture-taking, though I wish I had (and I knew I would wish I had). She also happened to look wonderful, and as Lucretia is one person I have no photos of, I really wish I'd bothered her for one picture, awkward as the focus-pause-flash process tends to be. Normally her hair is tremendously long (down to her bum), but she'd cut it short at the shoulders and donated the hair to a cancer organisation. As a result her hair had wavy curls it normally lacked, which she loathed but I found truly cute. Her face, with the glittering, dark, almost black eyes I've always loved and endearing, mischievous dimples, was accentuated by the odd strategically placed piercing, and as much as I've been known to sniff at piercings in the past, she looked gorgeous.
We settled upon the Silk Roads Cafe, which is a fancy but excellent restaurant hidden away in the Market (and I recommend it should you ever come to Ottawa -- particularly the desserts. Yum!), and ate our way through some really exquisite food. I get self-conscious when I eat in public, and I'm also a big blabbermouth, so by the time Lucretia was finished and no longer interested in food, I had made only a slight impact upon my plate. It didn't really matter, though. She told me some fascinating and hilarious stories of her adventures in Medicine Hat; of her encounters with pernicious underwear thieves, and Mormons, and drunken locals. I babbled about my life, offered insights -- particularly the grim observation there are probably at least two people in Medicine Hat who periodically masturbate with her fancy, departed, underwear, because so far as I know that would be what one does with expensive undies stolen from laundry rooms. Underwear is one of those things that would seem really difficult to consciously share, being so personal, and stealing it seems to suggest that one really, really wants it in a way above and beyond just running out of a clean pair of panties of your own. As much as I have changed over the past five years or so, I've never lost my fascination with human behaviour.
Tragically, our evening only lasted a few hours, and after dinner we were soon forced to part ways. Lucretia had promised to meet some friends at a club so that she could hook up with a friend offering her space to crash, and it was there (at Zaphod Beeblebrox) we said goodbye. It was sweet. She put her hand on my tummy and thanked me for dinner, and we made promises to stay in touch -- and as she was about to leave, thought better of it and gave me a big hug. Then Lucretia vanished into the dense, smokey air and dense, sweaty crowds of the club, and I wandered back towards home, suddenly sad and dazed, left with the realization that it might be another year (or very possibly more) before I saw her again. It was unexpected but wonderful that we would get along the way we did. I knew we would have fun, but I expected more awkward moments, and there really were none. I wish we'd had more time to talk, and I wished I'd done a better job of staying in touch while she was still living here. I vowed to write more letters and make myself a closer friend, but none of that can change the past, which is a messy and mismanaged thing indeed. I did a lot of that kind of thinking as I continued home. To illustrate my state of mind, let me say that I found myself so very glum that even the sight of naked breasts did nothing to shake my glumness. I was riding home on the bus, looking out onto the streets, and while I admit that I'm a sucker for lit windows at night (peering into the lives of others being the fascinating thing that it is for me -- hey, don't knock it, you're peering into my life...), I was astonished to casually glance upwards at a naked young woman at her window. And, as I said, the sight of naked breasts in no way particularly startled, titillated, or de-glumified me. When I was offered sympathetic coffee by Broken and our upstairs neighbor (my older brother's sweetie) when I got home, I had to decline on the grounds that apparently nothing would stimulate me, not even caffeine or -- apparently -- glistening, naked breasts. I was simply profoundly affected by this not-so strange night with an old friend, as we further tested the status of our timeworn friendship.
Anyway, now you know the rest of the story. I'll wrap all this up later on -- I promise.
Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.
