Facebook sends me little daily invitations to see my “Facebook Memories” for that particular day. And I usually dive in to see what I was up to one, two, three, as many years back as I have posts for that day. Some go back as far as the year I joined. This morning, this post from exactly one year ago came up…

I remember this. It was one of those times I didn’t actually say to him I was coming down. Whenever I just appeared and it hadn’t been previously discussed in email, he would be delighted to see me and we’d chat for over an hour after the restaurant closed. But when I said I was coming I always got the cold shoulder. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. And I began to feel suffocated. When you have to self censor everything you say just to hold a superficial conversation for the privilege of being held at arm’s length except when it was safe to actually treat me as a friend and classmate, it’s time to move on. So I pressed the nuclear button. Because sometimes nuclear war can be a beautiful thing.  Just ask General Sherman…

And it was. Fuckinn’ Beautiful. However my target wasn’t Dallas. I have no beef with Dallas, other than it takes forever to drive past it.

Thank you for the memory Facebook. Now I can remember all of it and not wonder if I was just imagining things. He said I was creeping him out. And I fired back with nearly ten years of letters, emails and the memories of all those hours long phone conversations we had back when phone conversations were allowed, and every time that I stood at his threshold and he smiled into my eyes, and all the times we spent together, back in high school, and then thirty three years later, and it seemed like only yesterday, to throw back into the fireball, laughing, laughing breathlessly.

I said things we’d spoken of Many Times before, back when our conversations were private. But now they weren’t and that was a line I was told not to cross. So I did. Almost ten years we would chat by email, and for a brief while by letter and phone, and I would come visit now and then, and he could have sent me away at any time if it was creeping him out and he didn’t. He was the one who insisted I come down there. We were chatting on the phone and I said I was taking a road trip and he asked me why I wasn’t visiting that part of America because it was my heritage and all that. So I did. And we met in person for the first time in thirty three years and that was after we’d been chatting by letter and phone and then email about everything he said creeped him out. And all the times he asked me to stay a little while longer.

And then it’s I creep him out is it?

Always laugh when you press the nuclear button. Total annihilation of a relationship can be Fuckinn’ Beautiful if you do it right.

Everything burns…