Song 10: Again (Lenny Kravitz, Greatest Hits)
Lately, I've been thinking about someone I will never see again.
I met M in 1996, in class at UT. It was a small class, and the first night we went around the room introducing ourselves. During his introduction, he mentioned his "partner," who was living and working out of state. Later, a few folks from the class--strangers until that evening--decided to get drinks at nearby bar. I went, and M was part of the group. Someone in the group mentioned that they thought it must be difficult for M to have a long-distance relationship, and what did his partner do? How long had he lived out of state? Would M be joining him there after graduation at the end of the semester? Turns out M's partner was a woman with a man's name, and we all laughed and laughed over our assumptions.
I got to know a few people in the class, and our small group of 5 or so became close. We'd regularly go drinking on Wednesday nights after class, and end up hanging out most other nights of the week, too. Slowly, through conversations about everything from math (his major, my lack of advanced skills) to roommates (my crazy one, his cute one I was crushing on), we became best friends.
Of course we flirted a little, sometimes. He liked to announce that he was certain we'd been married in another life, and I liked to tease him about how all the girls in our class were jealous that he wasn't spending time with them. I almost never thought about being attracted to him in a romantic way--not that he wasn't handsome. He was exactly my height, with flaming red hair that he liked to rake his hands through when he was tired or exasperated. But he had his on/off girlfriend living out of state, and I was dazzled by his roommate who was tall and ignored me.
Our small group started celebrating the end of the semester early. Actually, since we were out of class, we just started drinking before the sun went down. One night, we'd been drinking mint juleps for a couple of hours and decided we needed to put our feet in the ocean. Our buddy S was the most sober of the crew, and he volunteered to drive. Four of us piled into his car with bottles of wine and a cooler of beer and set off into the night. I sat in the back with C, my only girlfriend in the group, and we giggled and gossiped while the boys up front had their own conversation. It was dark by then, and the windows were down. I had no idea where we were going, or what time we'd get there. The world beyond the car didn't exist for me. We passed the bottles of wine around, with only S abstaining. M asked C to switch seats with him; he told her that he wanted to talk with me for a while.
The car was loud with the wind streaming in off the highway. M and I sat with our heads close together, laughing about our crazy adventure. We were probably telling jokes and refusing to hand the wine bottle up to the front seat. C kept turning around to try and join in our conversation, but we refused to shout so she could hear us. Eventually, we ignored her and she gave up.
M got quiet not long after that. He stared at me like he was trying to see through me. I started to ask him what was wrong, but he cut me off with a kiss. I kissed him back without thinking--a long, passionate kiss. When our faces broke apart, my shocked look must have mirrored his own. He started quietly apologizing and we scooted apart to seperate corners of the back seat.
My mind was reeling. M was my best friend! Holy crap the kiss was amazing! But. . .the girlfriend? And how very drunk am I! Was our friendship over? What was he thinking? What was he thinking NOW?
We stopped at a gas station to fill up, and C and I went to the ladies room. She quizzed me about what was going on in the back seat--she'd seen us kiss. She asked many of the same questions I'd asked myself, finally realizing neither of us had answers. When we went back to the car, M was already sitting in the front seat. So that's how it is now, I thought. I began to consider that I may have lost him.
But not long after we got back on the highway, M asked C to switch again. She told him she'd switch for a kiss. He looked at me, turned to her, and kissed her on cheek. They climbed over the seats again, and he settled in next to me just like before. I wanted to talk to him about what had happened, but all I could manage was "hey."
And then he was kissing me again. We kissed the rest of the way to the beach. We kissed standing in the pitch black ocean, stumbling in the uneven sand as we tried to find our way in the dark back to the car. We kissed in the car until we passed out just before sunrise. We only ever kissed.
Back in the real world, we never talked about what happened. We started to drift apart and talk less now that we didn't see each other in class. The girlfriend was on again, and moving back to Austin. Eventually, we didn't talk at all.
I saw him a couple of times over the next few years. I was friends with his brother, who was with me the night I met my future husband. I heard that M married the girlfriend and moved back to where she'd lived on her own for a year. I kept up with our mutual friends, meeting up for drinks occasionally. I heard that M and the wife moved back to Austin, and I saw and talked to him a couple of times when we accidentally ended up in the same places.
Then M died in 2001. By then, I'd fallen out of touch with the entire group from class. Except S, whose name I'd run across a few months earlier. We'd emailed a few times and met for drinks a once or twice. We never really talked about that semester, though. S was the one who told me. He'd left me a couple of voicemails one day while I was at work, asking me to call him as soon as I could. He told me that M killed himself. I didn't believe him, and he didn't believe it, either. He thought that M may have accidentally OD'd. I never knew M to take anything stronger than asprin. The M I knew loved his life.
I didn't attend the funeral, or the wake. I never heard from S again, and I didn't pursue contact with him, either. I'd called C after S told me the news, because he asked me to. I hadn't talked to her in at least a year and we simply didn't talk again after the call.
Earlier this week, I was in the cafeteria of the building next door pouring my usual afternoon iced tea. On my way out, a fella in a brown suit caught the door in front of me and held it open. As I looked up to say "thanks" I recognized S. But I just kept walking.
Song 14: Ramble On/Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Lisa Tingle, Hidden Track on Live at the Lucky Lounge)
