catch you on the funway.

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dateline: oZleft

22 november 1996 9:31 p.m.

I've got a funny feeling Nate will be back. It just didn't feel right. Waving at him as he walked backwards up the street, blowing kisses, on his way to the next several parts of his Oregon Send-Off. It wasn't a Goodbye goodbye -- just a catch-you-later bye. I don't know. Maybe it just wasn't... somber enough. It was like we'd just gotten together for a snack on any other day. Five years I've known the guy. Captain Gonzo was his high school handle, and he was an incessant and wholly shameless flirt. We traded bits of seamy stories we'd been writing at "The Apple Grove," at the time the only Mac BBS on the island. In that time, he's gone from an afro to dreds to a wispy friz (plus goatee). He's seen me drunk; I've seen him vomit. We've dared eachother to exhibitionism, piercings and assorted misdemeanors. Thanks to him, I can answer "yes" to about fifty of the best questions on purity tests (I scored 49 percent on the 400 question version). I've also known him through four, five girlfriends -- some that made my skin crawl, all of them sucking his brain out in one way or another... and none of them ever having been me. Not for lack of his trying. So much so, it eventually became the central source of wisecracks in our friendship. I'm going to miss him. Oh, and speaking of girlfriends... it turns out his squeeze of almost a year today decided that she wasn't going to Portland with him after all. Of course, she decided to tell him this morning... maybe an hour before the moving company showed up at his place, They were going to pack up their stuff. Now he's confused, and his roommate is left with a living room full of her shit. That's totally dick, if you ask me. I fumed, Jen was cursing a blue streak, Ryan and Ethan kept saying, "Sorry, man." He just didn't want to talk about it. It made our "last skulk" all the more uncomfortable. He said she said she'd come up "after she finishes her degree," but -- and Nate, if you read this, I'm sorry -- it sounds like a load of crap to me. They were supposedly planning to move together all year, valiantly defying the strong opposition from her mommy and daddy (a decision that stunned everyone). If she had the ticket in her hand -- and she did -- and now says, "Love you, I'll see you in two years," I think she might as well have written a Dear John letter in his senior yearbook (which is how one of his other exes dumped him). Uck. I don't know, I'm just biased. Though she's nice, I don't think she knows him -- not the way I do. He's going to wait. Even if she said, "Oh, and I'd also like to cure cancer first, if you don't mind," he'd still leave that second toothbrush in his bathroom. I'll just have to take her word -- which is all anyone really has right now. But. If she wants to break up and is just too chicken to do it now (opting instead to do it by e-mail sometime around Spring 1997), that girl better hope she don't bump into me on campus. (Deep breath.) He'll be freezing his butt off in twenty-four hours, sleeping in a hotel in thirty-six, and answering tech-support calls from Moloka`i in forty-eight. Judging by his plans for the remainder of tonight (drunken debauchery at a friend's house then more imbibing and dollar-stuffing at "Club By Me"), and given his sweetie's sudden change in plans, I don't think he'll have a very good week. Best of luck, Nate. And as always, my couch is yours if you need a place to crash.