The Creation of the 59th Street Bridge
Once again...the night went on too long, money disentigrated, and I awoke with the unbearable feeling of regret. Not that the night didn't exist as something beautiful and crazy. Friends were there and good stories told. We wandered around, and we all laughed. It was a group of college friends, and I remember thinking how interesting we are were in what we were doing in large American cities.
...no the regret had nothing to do with the night. I did act foolish on the subway repeating and repeating things again and again to the smacking of foreheads of friends, but it was the morning after. I have lost all bodily resistence against hangovers, having apparently washed them all away over the course of four great college years. So I feel every drink the day after, and they all hurt. Here is how I try to survive: I eat greasy food, watch a movie, take a nap, clean my room, wash dishes, take a shower...and everytime I feel regret for having wasted the day. I decided to at least set up plans for the night. I called five people. I got five voice mails.
So I spent the better part of the day in my room, trying shake the headthrobs, until I had enough. I got dressed and headed for 59th street food emporium. We needed paper towels. I exited my apartment into the blue and green of a beautiful Manhattan day. I really do love this place, I thought.
Just as I'm about to enter the food emporium, my phone rings. I'm expecting a call. Five of them, actually, but one is a good start. I start talking to this guy I think is Paul, but he quickly asks me if I know who it is, and I freak out. Jesus, who is this? I think it's Paul, but maybe it's Jake. He laughs. And then it hits, its Austin from high school. It has been a long time. "You sound like my friend Paul." "No," he says "Your friend must sound like me. I've known you for longer."
So prophetic.
We were good friends and he does this. He calls every eight months or so, just so he can update me on what he is doing. He started a band. "we are awesome and play really heavy metal." He has a girlfriend. "She's four years younger, but that's cool. My brother and his wife are five years a part. And so are my parents. I think it's fine."
In some ways it feels nice to think that a past friend cares enough to call. But each one of these calls is unsatisfying, and I can't really figure out why. We are completely different, but have always kind of been. He likes hard rock, lives with his dad in the same town he was born. He didn't go to college. He takes drugs, or did, or kind of does a little bit. He is a hardcore republican. We have never, to my knowledge, agreed on anything.
But he also knows me when I was in high school, when I was completely bored with the small town I grew up in. And we used to have fun. We'd play guitar together for hours, drink at his house and go to parties. Nothing was ever that boring with him.
Not that it was ever that great, and I quickly realized that in college when, like most people who go to college, I got a new group of friends.
But, like he said, he knew me before everyone else. So while I might pretend that I'm living this glorious Manhattan struggling artist life, he can make fun of my singing on some songs I made six years ago.
"Yeah, I just found that CD you made a long time ago, and man, your voice, it's so funny."
I still feel like shit. My head hurts, and I have to listen to mistakes I made in high school with friends I don't talk to anymore. Thanks Austin. It's great to hear from you. For some reason, he can make me feel like this faster than anyone. I shouldn't care what a guy who only watches the Fox Channel and lives with his dad thinks, but I do. It's because, he knew me.
I always wrote this off as being pecular but unimportant. I don't respect him but I spend entirelly too much time constructing devastating politic counterpoints to imaginary conversations with him, just so in my head I could beat him. But what do I have to beat him? There is no contest.
I'm not even the same person that I was in high school. But is this reinvention a evolving of my character or a mask hiding the real me that people once knew. Why do old friends think they know you better than reasonably new ones that you talk to more?
We always make sense to ourselves, complete chronology helps us understand the array of events that have happened to us. And we have all these friends that come in at different points along the way, and they try to understand us through these isolated experiences. So I suppose that older friends are better able to put the experiences in order, to sift through the random encounters and find a truer sense of yourself. But I think that I am just scared by someone that presents a more dumbed-down, TV version of my character that makes complete sense, or at least more than the obscenly intricate one I want to have. He exists as this sort of god over the understanding of my daily life.
That really disturbs me. I really wish he would never call again.
...no the regret had nothing to do with the night. I did act foolish on the subway repeating and repeating things again and again to the smacking of foreheads of friends, but it was the morning after. I have lost all bodily resistence against hangovers, having apparently washed them all away over the course of four great college years. So I feel every drink the day after, and they all hurt. Here is how I try to survive: I eat greasy food, watch a movie, take a nap, clean my room, wash dishes, take a shower...and everytime I feel regret for having wasted the day. I decided to at least set up plans for the night. I called five people. I got five voice mails.
So I spent the better part of the day in my room, trying shake the headthrobs, until I had enough. I got dressed and headed for 59th street food emporium. We needed paper towels. I exited my apartment into the blue and green of a beautiful Manhattan day. I really do love this place, I thought.
Just as I'm about to enter the food emporium, my phone rings. I'm expecting a call. Five of them, actually, but one is a good start. I start talking to this guy I think is Paul, but he quickly asks me if I know who it is, and I freak out. Jesus, who is this? I think it's Paul, but maybe it's Jake. He laughs. And then it hits, its Austin from high school. It has been a long time. "You sound like my friend Paul." "No," he says "Your friend must sound like me. I've known you for longer."
So prophetic.
We were good friends and he does this. He calls every eight months or so, just so he can update me on what he is doing. He started a band. "we are awesome and play really heavy metal." He has a girlfriend. "She's four years younger, but that's cool. My brother and his wife are five years a part. And so are my parents. I think it's fine."
In some ways it feels nice to think that a past friend cares enough to call. But each one of these calls is unsatisfying, and I can't really figure out why. We are completely different, but have always kind of been. He likes hard rock, lives with his dad in the same town he was born. He didn't go to college. He takes drugs, or did, or kind of does a little bit. He is a hardcore republican. We have never, to my knowledge, agreed on anything.
But he also knows me when I was in high school, when I was completely bored with the small town I grew up in. And we used to have fun. We'd play guitar together for hours, drink at his house and go to parties. Nothing was ever that boring with him.
Not that it was ever that great, and I quickly realized that in college when, like most people who go to college, I got a new group of friends.
But, like he said, he knew me before everyone else. So while I might pretend that I'm living this glorious Manhattan struggling artist life, he can make fun of my singing on some songs I made six years ago.
"Yeah, I just found that CD you made a long time ago, and man, your voice, it's so funny."
I still feel like shit. My head hurts, and I have to listen to mistakes I made in high school with friends I don't talk to anymore. Thanks Austin. It's great to hear from you. For some reason, he can make me feel like this faster than anyone. I shouldn't care what a guy who only watches the Fox Channel and lives with his dad thinks, but I do. It's because, he knew me.
I always wrote this off as being pecular but unimportant. I don't respect him but I spend entirelly too much time constructing devastating politic counterpoints to imaginary conversations with him, just so in my head I could beat him. But what do I have to beat him? There is no contest.
I'm not even the same person that I was in high school. But is this reinvention a evolving of my character or a mask hiding the real me that people once knew. Why do old friends think they know you better than reasonably new ones that you talk to more?
We always make sense to ourselves, complete chronology helps us understand the array of events that have happened to us. And we have all these friends that come in at different points along the way, and they try to understand us through these isolated experiences. So I suppose that older friends are better able to put the experiences in order, to sift through the random encounters and find a truer sense of yourself. But I think that I am just scared by someone that presents a more dumbed-down, TV version of my character that makes complete sense, or at least more than the obscenly intricate one I want to have. He exists as this sort of god over the understanding of my daily life.
That really disturbs me. I really wish he would never call again.
posted by Nick at 9:14 PM
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