KIT

2009-06-23 5:42 p.m.

Last night, Don messaged me for the first time in maybe six months.

I used to get defensive of our friendship and hide the fact that it was fast fading. It's been a long time since I've considered us best friends, though. I'm trying hard to remember what qualified us as best friends. Anything I've done with him, I've done with others, so it's not much difference to make him a bigger/better friend than others.

Mostly I just remember that it wasn't supposed to be this way. Us, on opposite poles of the state. A conversation being just four or five words off the cuff, the usual "Oh, how are you? We need to get dinner sometime..." We only ran into each other a couple of times a quarter, usually when I parked in Stanford Apartments, where he lives, because I wouldn't begrudge the $7 parking fee. We didn't even have any classes together all of last year.

He applied to all the same colleges under the same major as me, so that we'd be together. I didn't ask him to, he just did. I suppose that makes me feel better, considering I used to think affections were uneven. We used to stay up until 5 or 6 am, depending on who fell asleep first. We'd wake up with the phone stuck with sweat to our cheeks in the morning, the line still going. It sounds romantic, but it wasn't at all. I'd yell at him for letting me fall asleep and he'd yell at me for falling asleep without a "good night". This wasn't the sort of flirtatious banter, either. I'd always get mad whenever people were convinced that I was in love with him, or rarely, vice versa. Patricia Bui always told us that we'd end up married, and I really shudder at the thought - not to be dramatic.

There are few people who understand when I say "really, just friends!" So many people, i.e. Tom Bunny, everyone I've described the situation to... don't believe that I and Julie just wanted to be best friends with Tim Or. Look at him. How could he have any groupies?

We used to talk about married life in the future. How my kids would kick his kids' asses; how he would force his kids into music; how we would take our kids to church together Sundays. Separate lives, you see.

I forget the purpose of this entry. Certainly I've had enough nostalgia lately to make me sick, what with going through all the pictures of college life with Ryan and Christina.

It was just strange last night, when he messaged me. Asked me how I was. Asked me what classes I'm taking. Asking me when I'm graduating. Three years ago, he would have known all this without asking. I would have been bored, in the same classes with him, and we would have been graduating together. Isn't that what the point of applying to all the same colleges under the same major was? He's graduating a quarter later, something about mixed up language requirements.

I don't mean to be mean, but I don't think he's going anywhere. I don't doubt that I'll run into him a couple of times a year around Milpitas, when I'm home visiting my parents from wherever the State department sends me.

"Oh! How are you?"
"We should get dinner sometime."

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