how do we get here from there?

we walk into the party. only a handful of people are there. we have showed up unfashionably early, but it doesn't matter. we are dressed to the nines, and our friends compliment us on our choice of attire.

"you want a shot?" m asks, and we accept. sublime plays on the stereo. we stand in the kitchen after downing our alcohol, listening to someone i don't know tell a story.

then i think i might know him. then i know i do. the more he talks, the more i know this is a friend of mine from church when i was 16.

"are you ------?" i ask him.

"yes."

"i'm darth, darth sardonic. i hung out with the jam boys, wayne and garth."

"was he the one i stole alcohol from that year after scout camp?"

"no, that was robert."

we pass these tidbits of unrecorded history back and forth like poorly served tennis balls, doing little to return them, preferring instead to let them fall just over the net and serving up a new smidgen of unimportant trivia.

he doesn't remember me. even after a few minutes of swapping frozen moments viewed askew, as it were, tainted by our own editorials. he doesn't go by that name anymore. he doesn't do as many drugs as he did back then. i don't talk to my stepmom anymore. i haven't been to church for years, even though i was very involved back then. i can't believe how much he has changed without changing at all. i am nothing like i was back then, looks-wise, nor in how i live my life.

he is leaving soon, but we both insist we will swap phone numbers and call. we don't. though i might still get his from m. and i might call. but i wonder what might be gained from that.

funny, how two lives can intersect, pass on, squiggle like lines drawn in crayon by toddlers, and again bisect nearly ten years later. funny how these intersections matter so much and so little in the same moment.

darth sardonic