There's a number of people I wonder about, wondering where they are and stuff. Many of them are from online, like the telnet "talkers" or the halcyon dawn of my first email account up at St. Cloud State University, MN. A few are from my IRL past, real meat-relationships with people I could see and touch and smell. I have a few of those.

Anyway. I lose touch with some people because we get into an argument and stop speaking. You've no idea how many friends I've lost to marriage. Or maybe you do: ain't that a bitch, when a formerly great friend gets married, and suddenly they're all, "I have nothing interesting to say, I'm all domesticated now," or "Why do you think you want to be friends with me? What did we ever have in common? I'm a completely different person now." Something heartwarming and human like that. Still others... mostly my meat-friendships, I lost them when I moved away, and I've moved around all my life, so I've lost very many friendships to the vagaries of job promotions and divorce. Thus, today I am a complete social fucking retard and have no idea how to act around other people.

But I digress. This is a short list of people I miss and would like to get in touch with. I compile it in the vain hope that some of them have turned out web-savvy and curious enough to think to search for their own names online, or some of my old names (my name has changed slightly less often than the number of moves in my checkered past). Hopefully they'll be directed here and see that I'm still keeping the candles lit for them, and they'll be touched and not stricken with defensive paranoia that this aging Minneapolitan freak still dwells upon them and what in gods' green earth could he want with them after all this time. And then there's the even more remote possibility that they would think to look for me someday. If so, here I am.

UPDATE: I'm getting back in touch with my friends! Aimee Hester found me by a Google search and contacted me; I dug out some old address books and found Vanessa Campbell and Mary-Anne Parker. I'm very excited to be back in touch with them!

My childhood sweetheart, the first crush in my entire life (among chronological peers - I won't elaborate upon that crush upon my teacher in Addis Ababa). Once in a while I do a name search for her over various online White Pages directories, but it usually yields several dozen hits so it's an exercise in futility. Mind you, I only use the free programs so they never research old addresses or ask for age parameters. I think I'd still recognize her if I saw her, though, she had very distinctive features which was why I was attracted to her in the first place. She, technically, was my first kiss, though that was from her onto the back of my hand as I held the door open for her in first grade. I used to write poetry for her, but I was too shy to express it so I'd have my friend Scott McNaught say it, usually a stupid little couplet or a conceptual play on words. What do you expect? I was a young spaz in love. I tried writing her - I think I wrote her exactly one letter, and that was even before I moved out of Chehalis, WA. She showed it to her friends who teased me about it but at the time I felt no shame about it. I don't think she did it out of meanness, I think it was just a confusing, spazzy circumstance and she wasn't sure how to react to it, but I could just be putting a rose-colored spin on the whole process. I want to get back in touch with her and see who she is now, see if we have any kind of connection or rapport three decades after that initial spark. Not to seek a relationship, that would be freaky. Just to see if what all the pop-psych/women's-journal magazines say is true about first love and all that. Who knows.

I met Janne while going to school at SCSU. I don't know why she started talking to me. We must've had some mutual friends or something and I just kinda weaseled my way closer to her. She hung out with me and I can't figure that one out either, since she was very wild and fetishized insanity. She wasn't herself crazy, really, she was fully in control but she chose to lapse that control most of the time. And though she would resent my saying so, she was an original gothchick, way back before it could be purchased in a fucking store. It's no wonder I had such a furious crush on her - and, of course, the stupidest thing I could've done would be to confess that to her, and when I did our friendship ended. She left me notes once or twice after that, though, so I'm guessing if I found her she wouldn't be averse to me saying "hi", as long as I conveyed the impression that it meant absolutely nothing and bore no significance. Why do guys fall for women like this... We used to get all dressed up to provoke fights at bar close, and wouldn't you know that was the one time no one fucked with us. They'd harass us when we were just having fun, they'd yell at us when we ate dinner or walked down the street, but as soon as we wanted to return the favor they were all on their best behavior. Fucking hypocrites.

Karen's is a tragic story, during my brief experience with her, so I won't go into that. She was just a good friend during the short span I attended Our Lady of Lourdes/St. James in Vancouver, WA. I wonder what she's up to now, though I have no idea how to begin to look for her.

This was one of the strangest acquaintances I'd ever had in my life. And now, looking back on it, I know exactly what was going on and what I should've done to maintain it, but back then I was naive and unworldly and way too unconfident to play her little game. This was a young woman I know nothing about, borrowing her friend's email account. Her friend is named "Anna Gade", and she would borrow Anna's email account to chat people, like me. Again, she probably found one of my wordy, self-aggrandizing penpal solicitations, except she got my attention by being even more brilliant and culturally allusive, perhaps alluding to things that didn't really exist but with such cohesiveness and consistency that I believed they were real. She made herself out to be sitting on some straw mat, waiting painfully but patiently for my attention, as I breezed past her without any acknowledgement. Right there she had some pretty overblown perceptions about who I was - I must've totally misrepresented myself, for her to immediately portray herself in the vulnerable position of an inferior, longing for some icon's attention. And she played the victim card by advertising how intensely brilliant she herself was, and wasn't it a tragedy that I just never noticed. Meanwhile, I really thought this was someone in my physical environment, someone on campus, expressing a crush on me and, being as love-starved as I always am, have been, and will be, I ate it up. Here was a brilliant, cultured, literate woman singing her song for me and I was completely at a loss. Who was she? Where was she? You bet I kept my eyes open the following weeks. And again, I chased her off by needing to know too much about her, until one day she told me maybe two or three facts about herself (like being Anna's friend) and I never heard from her again. She just wanted to speak in allusions, she just wanted to tell a story with me. And once I knew that I wanted to tell the story too but for her the spell was broken, I was a wretched, mundane waste of carbon and she could have no more to do with me. I'm sure if she found this entry for her she would not consider saying a word to me, though she may be very distantly flattered to know she has not stopped running through my mind since our first contact. Hope that keeps you warm at night, Anna-Gade's-friend. Bitch. On the other hand, and this would be entirely in keeping with her character, she's probably forgotten about the whole mindfucking experience, doesn't remember me, doesn't remember talking to me at all, and wouldn't remember even if she found this page and read her entry. Wouldn't have any idea it applied to any segment or era of her life. I can see that happening too.