I don't trust my own memory. I write to remember.
It's sadly enough an easy thing to forget in the wash of the day to day.
Los Angeles is like a vortex, a literal haze that sweeps away the prior years of existence so that the years within its valleys feel like centuries.
I'm an adult now. At least that's what I'm told.
But I can't help feeling that whatever adulthood is (the crushing of idealization and naivete?) began in August of 2005.
Real conversation. That's what brought us together or at least that's how I think of it now. I'm sure that we had those conversations that every teenager has but at the time our confessions and observations seemed revelatory. We were smarter than everyone else and could solve the world's problems in your Jeep Cherokee.
Luckily we had gotten the hard part over with. One mismatched fumbling and pressing of lips at a school dance ruled out love so we were free to be friends. Of course that didn't stop you from the occasional seductive look. You seemed to give the entire world that look. Some weaker libidos fell prey for it as they do. They would steal your sweatshirts and never give it it back, probably clutching it at night on their pink sheets, the musky smell of man in their nostrils.
It's amazing how vivid your smell is to me yet I can't remember what I did last Thursday night. The memory is not linear- a chronological organization of what happened when. It's a jumble of sights/smells/feelings/chemicals that somehow make up a you-ness. The remnants of the past sometimes step forward out of the haze and announce themselves like they are tonight in this Ralph's parking lot.
These snatches of you are so clear now but will likely fade into the background once I awake tomorrow.
What I'm trying to say is I'm sorry. What I'm trying to do is not forget.
My goldfish brain is trying, Jon.
