He was the kind of guy who name dropped authors and bands needlessly into conversation. He was constantly letting you know indirectly that the books you’d read were the wrong ones and that the music you sang along with was not the obscure, important cds in his cd player. No, rather, not the albums on his record player.
His bookshelves were filled with small press run work that guys like him all had, as if some list had been sent out to them early on. Each volume had spines creased from being flipped open and referenced to, used to underline his important thoughts.
I’d gotten cds from him over the years and found the bulk of them unlistenable. The mixes weren’t pretentious, they were too sure of themselves to be called that. They were pompous, professors with perfectly groomed salt and pepper bears, all too assured of their own rightness as they bent leather patched elbows to place thumb on chin and finger on mouth while they considered your silly opinion.
Now, suddenly, he was telling me how he’d always had me in the back of his head, a dark horse possibility. Were the timing different I might have played along for a while, play acting for the experience, my heart securely tucked away uninvolved.
For a few months we would have been the images from his book: late nights with roaming hands and plans that we’d never see through. I’d find a part of myself in those days but it would be a piece that didn’t fit, something not meant to be lived out but only remembered later through a haze of dust as a step on the journey to somewhere else, a reminder of what I’d managed to avoid.
To be fair, it wasn’t that it was such a bad life in this vision. It was just one lacking depth or possessing only the wrong kind of depth. It wouldn’t be equal or shared. I’d be his apprentice, his protégé. Just as my heart would be elsewhere so would his. It made the whole image only as interesting as a scene in a movie you aren’t watching – curious but un-involving. So I deflected his comment in my way that made it seem I didn’t really understand his point but only thought him to be making conversation, as emotionally relevant as remarking on the weather to a stranger.
I didn’t know what else might be out there or if my picture of things was all wrong and unfair. But it seemed to be the result of a momentary loneliness and I didn’t want to be anyone’s lonely choice anymore.
(Copied from journal, date unknown.)
