After half of a decade, the first time I see him again is at a bus stop in a dream, sitting on the curb in the shade of an overhanging tree, absently pushing a skateboard back and forth with one foot.

Behind him is a bench, dominated by a pale man with a patchy goatee, black Cordobés hat with white edges, sunglasses and a t-shirt showing a blue wolf with sunglasses playing an upright bass.  The man is sitting in the centre of the bench with his arms spread across the top as though he planned to sneak a cuddle out of anyone who dared sit beside him.  I would have chosen the curb too.

My former friend has changed very little, still skinny and unshaven with a Beavis-style haircut, dressed as a strange mix of metalhead, skater and engineer.  I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect him to be different, considering the circumstances.  He recognizes me at the same time I recognize him.

“Hey, asshole,” he greets me, in the joking tone you use when you’re serious.

“Shithead,” I reply, as though he were a coworker I’d greeted the same way for years.

Apparently there’s still some ill will here.  A few awkward moments pass before anyone speaks.

“So, what happened?” I ask, “Best friends for three years and then suddenly you disappear.”

As soon as I say it, I remember how this largely wasn’t true.  We’d been friends based on a taste for math jokes, drinking, listening to obscure and unpalatable music, and being bitter about our failures with women, or to be more accurate, their failures with us, their failures to see us as the fun, smart, caring people we thought we were.  Great catches.

At one point near the end of our friendship I simultaneously had my heart broken and was introduced to the local party scene.  I discovered music that made me want to move, although I was scared to, because there were women watching, many of them shockingly attractive.  What was the raver equivalent of James Dean?  Whatever it was, it clearly didn’t involve an impressive knowledge of Mahavishnu Orchestra’s body of work.  I started to realize that I was complicit in my loneliness, and started taking action to fix it.

On his end, he continued cultivating his knowledge of ever more obscure progressive rock and jazz.  When I invited him out to parties he would decline in favour of spending time playing pool with a subtly condescending computing science guy who managed to have attractive girlfriends while still listening to Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci: proof positive that there’s life after prog.  The guy never sat well with me; his speech was full of subtle barbs to leave you feeling inadequate, and it reminded me of tips from sleazy pick-up manuals.  I never saw him with the same girlfriend more than three times.

Finally, as I started grad school and he finished his last term of undergrad, I received an email telling me that I was a shitty friend and that I was never there for him.  I replied asking when I should have known to be there, and he replied, “Fuck you.”  Then, mutual silence.  I wondered what he was up to a few times in the intervening years and sent quick emails, which were ignored.

“Well,” he says, “you turned into a dick.  With all your indie rock and that shitty electronica.  Absolutely no redeeming value, it’s all crap.”

“This coming from the guy with the complete works of Pain of Salvation.”

Jazz wolf’s ears perk up.  He gauges the tone of the conversation and decides against interjecting.

“Besides,” I say, “it’s pretty narrow to call someone’s expression worthless based on your perception of how difficult it is to play.”

“It’s not just that, jackass, it’s about soul.”

“Or maybe you just don’t appreciate the soul of musicians that aren’t relentlessly focused and self-indulgent.”

Jazz wolf wants to speak up so badly that he’s squirming.

“Or maybe I’m not willing to change myself to get laid.”

“Are you saying that you’re unwilling to leave your intellectualized music bunker or that you’re still a virgin?”

He laughs.  “Me, unwilling to leave my bunker, eh?  How much of your three month-long iTunes library have most people heard of?”

I have to admit that he has a point.  “How do you know how big my library is?”

“This is a dream, remember?  I’m just the most convenient face to put on the parts of yourself that you’re ashamed of, that you tried to bury and need to confront.  The part of you that pursues the esoteric fringes of things to avoid connecting with anyone as an equal and confronting your fear of rejection, the shame and anger you feel because of it, and the way you funnel that into harsh judgements of yourself and others.”

“But how can I confront that?”

“Well, in some ways you have.  You haven’t forgiven yourself though.  You still think you wasted all those years.”

I can’t think of anything to say.  Jazz wolf has stopped shifting too, and looks introspective.  “Who’s he?” I ask.

The image of my old friend stands up and puts a foot on his skateboard.  “Probably your habit of interrupting and correcting people.  I have a feeling you’ll deal with him eventually.”  He pushes twice and glides down the road without looking back.

When I look back at the bench, Jazz wolf has become a magpie, retaining only the hat.  He takes off, and I sit down to wait for the bus.

Tuesday morning is possibly the worst morning of a standard working week.  Monday mornings slide by relatively painlessly, because we’re too coated in the frost of the weekend to feel them.  It will be nearly noon before we realize what we’ve been suckered into.  Tuesday morning is the first one that requires conscious effort.  By Wednesday we’ll remember how to do it, and on Thursday we’ll be thinking about the weekend.

Of course, this is arbitrary.  I could probably come up with an explanation for every morning of the week that would sound convincing, except Saturday.  Saturday morning is always awesome, even if you have a hangover (you think, “man, I’m glad I can take it easy this morning”).

So why write about it?  I haven’t started any sort of habit that will give me a backlog of topics to attempt, and I want to get myself writing something every day.  I suspect the best way to get the word wheels spinning with torque is to just keep them going.  To this end I plan to start blogging almost every day, and keeping a notebook on hand to keep track of every idea even tangentially worth thinking about writing about.  And in the worst case, I have five mornings left to bitch about.

You’re sitting in the sun with your back against the concrete sign in front of your old high school, with your arms resting on your knees, head slightly forward so you don’t mess up your mohawk.  Your clothing is down to a ratty red and black flannel shirt (open), white gonch, wool socks and 20-hole docs.  A dozen feet away your girlfriend aims her camera, taking shot after shot from different angles.  Beyond that is an arc of maybe a dozen counterculturish teens, afraid to come closer but too piqued to leave, radiating that unique mixture of sexuality and uncertainty that only counterculturish teens can manage; some plans to lock up in stalls in the bathroom come through as clearly as a radio station.  They’ll probably blog about it too.

Your girlfriend has been dreaming about this camera for a year.  She quickly grew out of the tiny point-and-shoot her parents gave her for her birthday, and started saving for this new one.  She even quit smoking to save faster, only putting a bit into photography mags that she devoured like a starving man with a lamb shank, leaving a clean bone and even eating a bit of that.  She cut out ads for photography schools and visits the websites of local ones compulsively.  Finally she bought the camera, some shiny black thing with a couple of lenses and a flash that connected to the top with a cord.  It’s a Nikon, and she’s explained why this is awesome dozens of times but you don’t really give a shit about cameras except that they make her happy.  In her excitement she wanted to take every picture in the world at once and was bouncing around with an open mouth grin, completely unable to choose where to start, so you volunteered.

The location was the first decision, and the undressing part came naturally because it’s fucking hot out.  On the walk over from your apartment you hashed out some details.  She talked about how when you were younger and going there, you started dressing like punks so you could have an identity, and now all these years later it’s seeped into your bones so far that you don’t even need the fucking clothes, you just are punk.  It’s like returning to your birthplace without your cocoon or some shit, you replied.

There is a shuffle in the outer arc, and a fat guy comes strutting up, ham legs pumping spastically, flanked by two skinny teachers in ugly sweaters.  “What do you think you’re doing here?” he demands.

“I think I’m sitting in the sun, and maybe I’ll take my shirt off.  Maybe have a beer later.”

He keeps walking at you.  The teacher on his left breaks off to sass your girlfriend.  He comes to a stop in front of you and puts his hands on his hips, pulling back his cheap sport coat to reveal his shirt straining under the sphere of his belly and glowing in the light like a terrible fuschia star.  “Are you going to think about leaving?” he asks as though he’s ten seconds from ordering you to detention.

You stand up to escape the belly of authority and now your eyes are level with the hairless top of his head.  You look down into his eyes and realize that he is fighting a sudden urge to shit himself.  Your girlfriend swats the arm of the teacher reaching for her camera and gives him the finger.  He steps back like he’s dodging a rattlesnake.  Fuck, she is so hot.

“Why would I do that?  It’s a lovely day.  I was thinking of calling up some friends, having a picnic.  Maybe getting out the ghetto blaster.”

The thought of it clearly terrifies him.  You realize you’re the antithesis of his life of one hour periods, bells, and gratuitous displays of authority.  He’s powerless now and he can’t handle it.  You remember your high school days, with a different principal, getting busted for every little thing, sometimes for nothing but some teacher’s mood.  It seems incredibly distant, like a mostly forgotten dream.

“We might have to call the police, then,” he says.  Now all the kids watching have seen their principal crumble and resort to the “I have big friends” line against a man with no pants on.  They’ll never look at him the same again.  You win.

“That’d be a pretty fucking unsporting thing to do when you haven’t even told us to leave.”

“Well, now I’m telling you to leave.”  There’s a waver in his voice when he says “telling.”

“Go ahead, tell us.”

He stammers for a second.  “Please leave.”

“Sure, give us ten minutes to wrap up and put pants on.”

After a short pause he nods, turns around and starts pumping back to the school.  “Get to class,” he barks at the onlookers, who start shuffling towards the school as well, looking back with a mix of admiration and awe.

Your girlfriend pokes at her camera and turns it off.  “OK, that was stupid.”

You look towards the entrance, where the fat guy is turning sideways to fit through the school door and several teens are waiting behind him for the maneuver to complete.  You wonder what kind of life you would have to have had to turn into such a dick.  Maybe overly strict parents.  Being spanked too much.  You have no idea, and it feels like too much to think about.

“I’m hungry,” you say.

“Ditto.” Your girlfriend walks over and kisses you on the cheek. “Let’s go see how these turned out.”

You put your pants on, she packs up her lenses, and you leave.