Old Friends (pt. 1)
Like your favorite pair of slippers, which make an accommodation for every bent toe and sore heel and feel perfect as soon as you think about them, seeing old friends again has a very special texture. You know what needs massaging and what needs attention and can take a deep breath and know that it will be understood immediately. A look, a raised eyebrow, a glance is all it takes. You agree about the past and it doesn't seem that far away, even if 30-some years have gone by. Just sitting on a ledge behind the fraternity house brings the sound of Ruler typing his last paper - after the graduation ceremony - from his room overlooking the deck. TBG's big brother in a black fishnet V-neck top, blue jeans shorts, black socks and wing tips - Joe College, he thought - is coming up the steps just as he did years ago to celebrate with classmates now far-flung, dead, divorced but with us in that moment. The years slipped away. We were 20 again, and the world was our oyster. No aneur...