i've very tired today. last night, at around 1:15 a.m. the phone rang. mrs. noz and i were both asleep and both woke up totally disoriented. mrs. noz turned off the alarm clock to stop the ringing, but it didn't work. eventually, the answering machine picked up and we realized it was the telephone. we could hear the caller's voice as he left a message and my wife decided it sounded like my brother. "get the phone, it's your brother" she said. conveniently, she got to stay in bed.
so i jumped out of bed and for some reason ran across the apartment to pick up the phone. never mind that there is another phone right by our bed. i was still half-asleep and because the answering machine was what was making the noise that seemed to be the place to go to stop it. i picked up and it was JL, a real voice from my past.
[cue wavy flashback lines]
JL and i were extremely close friends for about a decade during our childhood. there was a period of time when virtually every day after school i went straight for his house to watch starblazers and play dungeons and dragons. during the summer i would spend the entire day at his place. he and his brother would be home alone while his parents worked and they weren't supposed to have friends over. sometimes his parents would come home for lunch and when the car pulled up i would go down to their basement to hide. i remember sitting in a box in their basement, waiting for the voice of their father to leave so i could re-emerge. sometimes JL or his brother would sneak food down to me as i hid.
anyway, for a long time we were very close. our friendship even survived when i switched to a different school in 5th grade and moved out of the neighborhood in 8th grade. in 9th grade however, we had a big fight. while i remember the fight pretty well, the passion behind it makes little sense to me looking back. from my perspective now it seems strange that i would throw away such a well-established friendship over something so stupid. then again, we were 15 at the time. i didn't see JL again for several years.
but then i did. by coincidence, we ended up going to the same college. in fact, JL was the only other person from my home town in my entire graduating class. during the first week, when neither of us knew anyone else, we hung around together a little bit, but soon we each assembled our own separate groups of friends. by the end we were friendly enough when we ran into each other, but only called when we were looking for a ride home after exams or for spring break. the last time i saw him was graduation day in 1992.
over the past few years, i've occasionally wondered what happened to JL. on november 13, 1999 i was walking into a friends apartment in brooklyn when someone mentioned the date. it was JL's 30th birthday and i suddenly remembered this pact we made when we were kids. my birthday is exactly 15 days after JLs and so JL made me swear that, no matter where we were in our lives, we would meet in paris when JL turned 30 and spend the two weeks until my birthday in the city. we even set a meeting place: a cafe. so anyway, as my friend utter the date, i realized i had stood JL up. later i wrote a birthday card/apology letter and sent it to his parent's old address. then i completely forgot about it.
[cue end-of-flashback wavy lines]
so last night, out of the blue, i heard JL's voice again over the phone. i guess the conversation was awkward, i was still semi-conscious. i somehow managed to hold together some semblence of a conversation. JL said "i got your birthday card" and told me a little about himself. in his attempts to find me, he managed to find and read this site, and a profile of my wife in the alumni magazine at the school where she teaches. the rest of our conversation is a dreamlike haze. i'm not sure how long we spoke, but JL probably noticed that i wasn't all that coherent. we agreed to continue our conversation by email and i went back to bed.
meanwhile, mrs. noz had noticed that i was on the phone long enough to establish that it wasn't a wrong number. and because she thought it was my brother on the phone and the only reason my brother would call us at 1:15 in the morning is if someone died, she had developed a nice sense of dread for what news i would bring back to her. i told her it was JL and at first she didn't believe me.
it was an odd night. strangely, it was only after the phone call had ended that i finally wide awake, just as i wanted to go back to sleep again. eventually i did. when i woke up i wondered if i had dreamed the whole thing. but it was real. a half-recorded message on the answering machine proves it. as does JL's email i got when i arrived at work.
i guess one reason for this post is one long explanation why i was so weird on the phone last night and why i am so tired this morning.
in other news, someone found this site by searching for "studded codpiece". yet another unexpected surprise
