XROADS

It's almost the end of the year? Are you effing kidding me?

I'm hard pressed to summarize '07, because so much happened and didn’t happen. I got a lot accomplished, I wasted a lot of time, I grew up, I stayed the exact same, I moved on, I got stuck, I was rewarded and punished, devastated and overjoyed. Mother has lived...

Looking back at some posts from a year ago, I'm struck by a couple things. I was at Love (the club) not long ago ago...right around the same time I told you guys about last year.

Then there was Thanksgiving. Went home. Enjoyed the fam and friends. Had pretty much the identical routine that I had Thanksgiving '06...travel on Thursday, get home at dinner time, making a pit stop at the liquor store. The crew gets together to cook tacos and drink and ponder our places in the world. Old School party at the one grown and sexy club in town. Face off with him...

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In Tha Club, Thanksgiving '07...

My cousin and I walk over to the bar and immediately see a few folks. My camera's out and the smiles light up the dark dance floor. Then I see Best Friend Guy across the way, with his girl in tow. I sneak over, lurk behind their backs, turn the lens to me, reach my arms in front of them and snap a picture of the three of us. They turn around confused and erupt in excited 'Oh Shit!s'. I'm only slightly buzzed at the moment, and yet it doesn’t occur to me that Best Friend Guy's BBF (him) is probably also in the building. When it does, I order two drinks.

This year, today, he exists in my life only in memory and hidden photos, exponentially more miles apart than his city is from mine. And while I let go of him in '07, the weight of '05 and '06 float to the surface like the ice in my drink. Like the bodies always do.

When one of my BFFs arrives at the club, he's drunker than I care to mention (let's just say he got kicked out of the party 3 times, and each time managed to find his way back in), and he wants me to be where he is.

I oblige. And no sooner than I do (to the tune of back to back to back Gooses), someone stalks over to where I'm dancing. The presence is familiar... and annoying. He reaches for the tight hug, and I respond with the knuckle tap, unable to make eye contact.

"Wise & Him!" Before I can retract, my boy has his lanky, drunken arms around both of our shoulders, announcing our names as the title it once was. My face gets hot, and I walk, almost stomp away, embarrassed as hell.

The rest of the night I'm extra aware of being watched. And when he finally walks up on me for a dance, I know without turning that it's him. His body still fits on mine the way it always did.

But what's different is that it no longer matches. It's so... last season. Outdated. Unwanted. Old.

As '08 looms, I'm thinking I need to change up my routine. I need to be in different places with different people, instead of always with the familiar ones running into familiarly unfamiliar folks. I can say that judging solely by what is documented on this blog, something's changed with me in '07. As so many of you have commented, I write different. I don't talk nearly as much shit. Who the eff AM I?

I vow that in '08 there will be more of the same... only different.

Hollerrrrrr!