Gabe’s 40th birthday is next week. I remember the first time we met, and he was one of those people you’re [i]sure[/i] are making fun of you because they’re undoubtedly “cooler” than you but they still seem to take an interest in you, but he wasn’t, and I was a wreck. We hugged. I’m fairly sure I was a wreck most days, back then. I’m not so sure I have my shit together even now, eight years his junior but still a full-blown adult with no idea where the time has gone, no measure of my accomplishments besides historical music charts and streaming numbers. I haven’t made music in... well, I haven’t publicly made music in years. At this point I’m not sure that I will again.

But I can imagine seventeen year old me hearing that idea, the seventeen year old me who had just released a hit, who was blinded by the incoming spotlight, overcome with the idea of fame. I wish, so strongly, for an imaginary interview with this old picture of myself, an enigmatic figure who still lives in the grainy and color-warped house that I grew up in, who may well spend a lot of his day wondering where I am and what I’m doing now, like an old grandma whose kids live far away and don’t call much anymore. I didn’t see myself like this, washed up and obscure. I’m not so sure he’d like me.

My thoughts don’t always drift to these unsavory, self-deprecating places, but they do when I’m faced with the possibility of revisiting old friends like Gabe, people who remind me of where I’ve been and what I’m doing with myself now. There’s talk of a party, and Gabe’s turning [i]fourty,[/i] everyone is coming. Everyone.

I think of him, and there’s a spark of transcendence that punctuates the flatlining banality of everyday life. It’s a healthy kind of ache - like the ache in your muscles after unrelenting exercise - that reminds you that your body exists. None of this is necessarily good. It’s just a unique strain of nausea. I think of Brendon, and I’m sick to my goddamn stomach.

It’s dread, and guilt, and I suppose to some extent [i]shame,[/i] though I’d always thought that the whole ‘gay panic’ I experienced in the 2000’s died out by the time I hit my mid-twenties. I’m afraid of what his memory does to me, therefore I keep every reminder of him out of sight, out of mind. My old awards and records and DVDs are kept in a storage unit a 35-minute drive from my house. I don’t check the charts because he manages to stay within the top 50, top 25, top 10. I barely keep in touch with our old bandmates and it’s all polite conversation anyway. I’m safe, pretending there’s nothing there and never was. To think I could see him in person again frightens me and... excites me, beyond explanation. 

It’s not like we haven’t seen each other since the split. At one point in my life, I would catch his eye and experience this surge of energy - the kind of thrill that starts in your stomach, arcs up through your lungs and flashes into a spontaneous smile - scrambling every ungrounded circuit, keeping me hooked enough to chase the feeling. The kind of thing we never talked about, of course, and definitely never made known to anyone else. Since then, I have seen him at random events, even once or twice spotted him randomly in public, and it’s. Jarring. He is the missed connection I can’t get out of my head, the one I thought had faded long ago with the split but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the potential to start a forest fire. He’s got some kind of power over me, I swear.

You know when your playlist is on shuffle, and you hear the first few notes to a song you haven’t heard in a while but was and will always be so dear to you, and you feel an emotion you haven’t felt in years, an emotion you completely forgot about? Brendon must have learned that opening riff. I see him, and I’m a teenager again, confused and leading some painful double life.

I think of the fleeting moments where we forgot to be guarded, and we’d smile at some shared secret, some inside joke, and what we had was the most intimate thing I’ve ever had in my life. I’m telling Gabe that I can be there before I can truly consider every possible outcome of my attendance.

I was just confused - I had girlfriends who didn’t satisfy me, emotionally or otherwise. I thought he was beautiful, and different, and I appreciated him too much to be a friend, but it was easier to say we were just friends. It was easier to keep things under wraps, and Brendon never made me talk about it, as I suppose he didn’t know how to, either. That was a big plus. It felt like he understood. But - we didn’t understand each other. I still don’t think I know what he felt, what he wanted, if anything, and there’s a huge open door in my life, taunting me. This is why I cannot think about it, because we could have amounted to something, or we couldn’t have. He could have been the best thing that ever happened to me - or I let the best thing that ever happened to me go.

I wear a white button-up, a long black coat, black pants. It’s definitely not casual, but if I do see him, I don’t want to seem like I’m dressing up for him. Maybe this is overthinking it. Maybe I should be drinking, but I don’t.

When I walk through the door and see an already sizeable gathering of unfamiliar faces, with no Gabe in sight, I automatically turn to go back out where I can use my phone in peace, and. There he is. For some reason, I don’t expect to see him as he looks now. My instinct is to see him as I knew him in his youth, this burned-in image of an amateur makeup-stained face, drawn-on Converse, horrendous haircuts superimposed on an adult with a multimillion dollar net worth. The memory of him is still developing in my emotional darkroom, but this close up, the illusion is broken, the door open and the reality exposed. 

I forgot how good of a performer he is. There’s a flash of real emotion on his face, like I’m peeking backstage through a gap in the curtains, watching stagehands holding their ropes at the ready, actors in costume mouthing their lines, fragments of bizarre sets waiting for some other production. And then he has it under wraps, and we don’t know each other again, and he’s talking while my whole conscious has lost composure. [i]Hey! Dude, was that your fucking car outside? It’s [/i]dope. I’m staring at him like he just spoke Russian to me. Really, we should’ve had a ‘previously on...’ recap moment, because I’d forgotten exactly how important he was to me, but apparently we were going to talk about everything mundane.

[b]”It’s the Trans Am, yeah,”[/b] I say, stunned, and glance past him through the doorway at it if only to break eye contact for a moment. The only movement out there is a car at the curb, the telltale glowing Uber sign in their windshield, only just pulling away. [b]”Looks like you took an Uber. Planning on drinking tonight?”[/b] I smile bittersweetly, because I still do know him well, I think. I stupidly wonder if he’s nervous about the same thing - but, yeah, of course he is. We both hate crowds like this, though, so I pretend that’s the main thing that has us both on edge. [b]”Maybe I should join you. Knowing Gabe, he’s invited, like, 400 people. Not great.”[/b]