2001:October:5
2001
I can't tell you enough how both nostalgic and happy-to-be-where-I-am that I am right now. Kent brought over some video that he made of his weekend with the old crowd of boys (my old crowd that I'm not friends with anymore). It was nine hours of footage, and the boys soon learned to deal with/ignore the camera. Aiiieeeeey what a keening sense of place I felt watching them be how they really are (it has been a long long long time sense I have -in my own relations with "the boys" - seen them not fake, tense, polite, or distant). They acted JUST THE SAME as they used to [editor's note: from the time that I first started this paragraph to now, my mood has changed SLIGHTLY. There was a mini-crisis at work that is probably my fault, but I shall sally forth]. I was telling Mark that it was like hearing my native tongue again - not like I'm unhappy in my life now, but I am unhappy in my friendships now. It was so indescribably heady to see the joking, the camaraderie, the psycho-analyzation (and so sad to compare it with what I have now, but not crazy sad). It was like watching a slice of my Athen's/ early Wilmington life (back when things didn't matter so much and no one EVEN THOUGHT of pressuring anyone to have a baby or get married - god the idea!) Stephen talking like he doesn't ever do anymore, Chuck and Frank bantering in a totally "intelligent friends who have known each other and been in the "cool" crowd since high school" way, Bob all growsed up and grousing, Greg being sensitive and insightful with an edge.....ahhhhh. I totally realized how much I DON'T have those sort of friends anymore, and how much I missed it. But, much as I adored it, I can't go back again. (And I can't deny that I RARELY RARELY appreciated what I had whilst living it)
I now have a husband who ,if I had to choose between having "deep, funny, bantering, doomish, musical" lifelong friends or Mark, I would choose Mark no question. I mean, I have the great soulmate husband who makes me laugh and feel completely understood, but I don't have the Chuck, Bob, Steven, Frank, Greg, Detlef band fun anymore (and it is really hard to say how I feel as it's so hard to explain). I am completely fulfilled by Mark, but it sometimes sux that he and Kent and Mike are the only ones who really have some claim in knowing me (oh besides you, gentle reader). Mark hates it too. We just don't have uncomplicated, fun & deep friends anymore. We have a bunch of nice people around us who are busy acting like the grownups they feel they should be - or rebelling from the grown-ups they think they should be. Mark and I sometimes think we are the only people we know who want to be the "ultimate teens" and not be smug and smarmy at saying "wife" and "husband" and thinking about having kids...oh it's annoying. You know how I'm always going on about how I wish I had a group of people that I could have in my life who Mark and I would feel so comfortable with and could talk and be real and laugh and feel alive with? These boys were quite close to that. I fervently wish I could have both, but as Mark has not gone to high school with them nor does he play in a band, it would be very hard for him to be "accepted" by them (and by this I mean they would be uncomfortable around him essentially). Anyway, I'm the bitch who slept with one of the best friends and fell in love with two of them and put one on a strangely weird pedestal, cruelly tortured one who was in love with me, was saved and then drowned by one, etc. etc. So, I don't think it's really a factor.
It's funny because I was about to say that I always liked these boys (felt intensely connected to them) except for the annoying "gods of music" part (i.e. I was annoyed when they would talk about how great they were musically and would jam like it was god's gift - although they are pretty good, it's more the passion and camaraderie and humour that I liked). In my astrological profile, it says that some thing I have makes it an almost certainty that I play a musical instrument because I'm so into music. I don't, but I have realized that I'm intensely intrigued by music. I LOVE music where you can just hear the truth peak out ("the truth just sounds different"). I love watching friends of mine rock and have that band camaraderie that I feel I will never have. It is soooooo amazing to see the looks and the communication through playing live, electric music. (again, hard to describe). I haven't seen friends of mine play good music in years. The "boys" aren't friends of mine anymore. I'm not really someone they think about or anything, but I think of them (and I do KNOW that I must cross at least some of their minds once). Losing that network of friendship (and the reason that I did lose them involves timing, egos, an inner breakdown on my part, and different levels of growth) still haunts me. I still miss having witty banter, talking deep while drinking beer, feeling TOTALLY comfortable in anything I do around my friends. I'm adrift. Nothing has replaced this emptiness I have friend-wise, and I didn't realize it until I saw Kent's video footage of what I had. And I'm not being melodramatic or anything. I'm not going to cry or rail. It's just slightly smilingly poignant. I'm just glad that I DID have that rocknroll time of my life. I really really loved those guys - as bizarre and nuts as it became. In fact, I even realize that me being friends with them would mess up what they have. I also don't rule out that they'll mature and grow enough to allow me to be in on they're next "reunion" in 2004 (if they have one then and if I/they even care then). I'm still a young, growing person who is still adjusting to how to make friends in today's situation.
Anyway, enough of all that. Today (after watching some of the footage of my Athen's friends last night), I was driving in Mark's car and he had "reckoning" in the cd player. At first, I was going to eject it for being too "oldies", but I then really listened to it. BOY how it took me back. There is no way that it's not absolutely AMAZING to go to college in Athens, GA in the late 80's/early 90's (although the heyday was acknowledged as early 80's of course). None of us Georgia people (as Bob coined us when we first moved to Wilmington) listen to R.E.M. the same way you do. We've eaten at Wilson's (automatic for the people), seen the church where they lived as strugglers, seen Michael Stipe's house, etc. Oh I've stories to tell you, but not today. Today, I'm just going to smile thinking about the good times (it's true that as you get older, you don't get hurt by the bad so much).
I must tell you that while I was living this life that I think was sooooo grand in retrospect, I HATED it mostly and couldn't wait to move on to the next "swingin party down the line". I wonder if that's how life is for people like me - although hmmmmm friends are very important to someone like me and the crop in Wilmington doesn't seem to fit me a bit - except for Mark, Mike, Kent (although they don't really count), Gulas to an extent, Jungle when he's in a rare mood, Craig Roger's on a blue moon, Young Tim (b.m.), Val and Sandie (maybe - although the prospect is dimmer and dimmer), Karen (maybe), and many other slight fits. I'm not saying that people in Wilmington suck or make awful friends. I'm just saying that they don't fit what I want in a friend that well, (and this would be very hard to do since it's harder and harder to know people as you get older I think). I shudder to think if one day I look back on this point in my life and realize THESE were the better friend years that what I have currently. (And I must also say that there are sooooooo many wonderful aspects of my life as a whole now that make it incomparable - literally- to the whole of my life in my early 20's). It sounds like I'm singing "and I don't blame him...and I don't blame herrrrrrrrrrrr.. "
