Thinking about a friend...

Perhaps it's my lack of sleep and or my tendency for introspection lately, but I've been thinking about my friends. Specifically how I don't get to see them often enough. There's one male friend of mine that I hope that I never lose contact with. For the sake of anonymity I'll call him Mike. For some reason, he's been on my mind a lot lately.

I met him my junior year of college at a meeting for a certain extracurricular club I was up to my eyeballs in. Whatever made him join my table, I'm glad for it. It seemed like immediately we were just good friends. I got very close with Mike and his roommates, to the point where I actually more or less lived with them. I never brought a bag over, or left anything of mine there but somehow I ended up staying there at least 4 nights a week. My roommate pretty much got a free single that semester.

Mike found out that I am terrified of gory movies. I have no stomach for them, so he decided that he'd be the one to help me get used to the violence. Those guys sat with me and watched tons of slasher flicks and horror movies-- and rarely even laughed as I hid behind a pillow, shouting at the idiot bimbos onscreen (I maintain, if you are blonde and have sex in a horror movie-- you may as well just run AT the machete/gun/chainsaw.) We ate tons of pizza and I never felt more comfortable than when I was there. Mike and his roommates saw me right when I woke up, at 4 am, dressed up and in my busted up sweats. In fact, it was such a comfortable environment that I slept in Mike's bed (he was in an extra bed, there was no hanky-panky,) but I wore less to sleep in his bed than I did in my own room-- since I can't sleep in jeans. I could have just kept a bag there, but I didn't want to be a pain (although they told me every time to do it anyway.) Oh well, his t-shirts were comfortable.

We joked around that we would write a movie together. It would be a horror spoof of chick flicks. We wanted to make a major hollywood guy get leprosy in a movie, and the title would be "I Love You To Pieces." I call intellectual property rights on that, since we still plan to write it. We were up very, very late one night and he made some crack about how we were half-assed. I pointed out that if we were both half-assed, together we made a whole ass. We still laugh about that now.

Then it got a bit weird. I started to kind of like Mike. It was strange because I knew that it was stupid. He was my best friend and that Never works out. Soon it was like everyone and their cousin knew, but we were still friends. To this day I am SO grateful that he never called me out on that. We've since joked about it a little, but it's mostly just part of the past.

Despite all that dramatic bullshit, I still look back on that year with the rose-colored glasses. I even managed to get a 3.33 gpa then somehow. I don't know how-- I never studied and I may has well could have been majoring in weed and pizza, with a minor in B-movies.

He graduated a semester ahead of me, due to my piss poor academic planning that caused me to need a 9th semester. I missed him like an amputated leg.

Last year I ended up in a situation that left me feeling totally SOL and alone. I called Mike and he talked me out of my hysteria. I'll always be grateful he listened to me and calmed me down.

Then, all of a sudden he seemed to drop off the face of the planet. He lives several hours away, so we kept in contact via email and phone. He wasn't returning my calls and I didn't hear from him for over 3 months. I was worried that he had been mugged and was lying undiscovered in a ditch somewhere (so sue me, I watch too much CSI.) Then one night I got an email from him out of the blue. It was really long and it started with an apology and he admitted he'd been avoiding me. Then he told me why-- he'd come out. He didn't know how to tell me that he was gay. I had no clue, and I was just blown away. But I didn't give a damn about his preferences, I was just glad to see he was ok. I know it's probably lame, but I kept his email. I read it when I feel low.

I have no clue why he's been in the forefront of my thoughts lately, but I know he's been going through a tough time right now, so I want to give him a call tomorrow. I just want to make sure he's ok.