Gu-logy

The heat today, behind my sunglasses, looks like how I imagine the 1970s. It’s sort of sepia and mean. I’ve been trying to feel (or explain what it is I feel) for a few days now. Insides like a low tumble dry.
Somebody who always looked like he was going to die young did. I think. It’s hard to tell. It’s a rumor. I no longer know him and my only real contact is Facebook, but a google search of his name doesn’t produce any useful results.
He is a person I can remember a lot about, in some ways:
-a very distinct leathery smell, mixed with some kind of soap or unassuming cologne.
-the sound of the same leather, rubbing the way leather does against angular bodies
-rogue-isms. This person was a bona fide rogue. Gentle swaying fingers that knew a lot of things and moved together, long hugs, sleepy eyes, winks.
I grew out of this person. He was one of very few people I think of this way. I watched him (as much as ‘watched’ is ‘knew for a while, left for a while, came back and knew for a while again‘) shrink into jackets that weren’t actually getting bigger. The second time I knew him he was honest, and older, and vulnerable. He told me a lot of secrets I didn’t really want to know but liked hearing anyways. He had a chip in his tooth from a drinking accident, and textbook addictions. He was taking classes at a community college and getting jazzed about philosophy. We talked about the meaning of life like only very naïve people can once, on the phone, for hours into the night. Now I’m going to make up something that happened between us. I say ‘make up’ because I want it to be understood that I’m already warping what was, and it’s important you know this because my friend is dead and so can’t defend himself:
“How long are you going to be away for?” (Him)
“Well, a semester, probably.”
“But New York’s not that far away.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, it’s not that hard to visit.”
“Yup, that’s true.”
“Aww, you sound so cute.”
“Whaaaaaat?”
“Oh no.”
‘Whaaaaaat?”
“Well I’m a little worried now. I really like you, and the last time I really liked someone I got really hurt.”
“Well, we’re friends!”
“Yeah.”
Something something, something something. And maybe I should feel even worse about that call. Maybe once I figure out just how he went I’ll comb memory again to look for ‘signs’. Every mistake is fatal, eventually.
We went on a date, that second time around. Saw a movie. Had a meal. I was hyperconscious of how we looked together (of that, I am ashamed) and he could tell. Leaving the theatre I can’t recall if he said he wanted to see me again or drive me home or what, but I remember what I said:
“Look [it began….] -- I’m in a really weird place right now, so we’re going to have to take this really, really slow. You know?” When I said this, I did not know what I meant. He did. He smiled a very wise smile, and said:
“Okay. I just like you. That’s all.”
And we hugged. And I didn’t watch him walk away, because I was too relieved.

The first time around.
I had the biggest crush.
And I was jealous.
I was high on suddenly being pretty and talented and ogled in the drama department. He was one of those bizarre aberrations in high school theatre, the Dude technically too cool for these shenanigans with the face and Friday Night History of someone ten years graduated. He was a legend, and a presumed whore, and a flirt. He used to give joke ‘butt massages’ to another friend of mine (with whom he also flirted) and all the freshmen and sophomore girls hovered around him like gnats. He liked me, and I loved that he liked me. There were a few cast parties in memory when he’d be near by during all the PG fun, and I’d smell his leather, and we’d make eyes. I sat on his lap for the entire duration of the movie “This is Spinal Tap” once, reclined kind of awkwardly. He gave me a rose that night but I left it on the hostess’ piano. By accident.
He was still sleazing around a lot after his own graduation, and though there were two years between us he still seemed to show up at all the drama functions when I was gone, too. But for all the time he seemed to be around, there was a lot people seemed not to know about him. Once I overheard him mention that he and his Dad had lived in this other girls’ basement for a while. I asked why. He shrugged.
“They had a basement,” he said.

Gu Khalsa was a good guy. He had heart and soul and genuine-seeming interest in other people.
I worry about taking responsibility for commemorating someone I feel I was cruel to, someone I haven’t spoken to in a long while. This was the friend who de-friended me on Facebook at some point in the recent past, and from that small thing I have read in fifty larger images. They are all deeply narcissistic so I won’t write them down.
I think what your memory elects to preserve intact is important by default; I think what we remember makes us metaphorically enormous. And I’d like to think that by nature of being so far detached but still so concerned this “eulogy” is proof that people don’t die when they’ve had friends, at least not immediately. Now you know, is the idea. Tell sad stories of the deaths of kings. High-school greasers.
It’s not that I would change the past, necessarily, given the opportunity. I’m not sure we were meant to sail out beyond a mediocre date and an odd-shaped love or neurotic freak-isms in common, I’m not sure we were. Let me try a little harder to articulate what I feel about this thing that was put down and deserted, this thing to which I cannot return to. Every day I walk around thinking I haven’t made choices, thinking my real life will start any minute and It will be better than even the pale, interesting goodness of the times before because It will explode like a star with opportunities to be strong, and honest, and loved, most of all.
But on earth, you were right, Gu. New York isn’t that far away.
And I did choose.