5/23- The Beginnings of a BBQ Weekend

The morning brought Gus needing to run out of the house again. He had a weekend with Aenea and we two slobs weren't going to hold him up on it. Piling back into his truck he gave us a lift to a park within long walking distance of Longmeadow and then was off. Todd was feeling excruciatingly hung over in that weighted down sort of way. I wasn't exactly spry, but I wouldn't say hung over either. The park was nice, so we decided to take advantage of some of its trees where we layed out for about two hours.

In this time I put some calls out to friends I hadn't seen yet. The night before Gus had given me the number of my ex-girlfriend, Stacey, who I hadn't seen since we broke up in '95. The ex-girlfriend tour would continue into Mass. I also called Dave about a barbeque he was having for Memorial Day weekend that night that I thought was going to be at his mother's house, which was in Longmeadow and the reason for us heading there. As it would turn out it was nearby where we were in Springfield, but he said he'd pick us up where ever we were just before hand. Never the less, these were the actions undertaken during our lay out in the park.

After a while we decided to get some coffee. Not far from where we were was an area called The X, which is where I had my first apartment back in the summer of '94. It had a nostalgic call to me, and I could remember there were some diners there to hang out in, so we made that our next destination. On our way, however, we would have a very random and strange interception.

While shuffling down the street I heard someone ahead of us call out "well, what're the chances of this?" In my drifting gaze upward to see who was talking I first passed over Todd's face which had a look of "who the fuck is this?" Looking at who the fuck it was I had a similar feeling until it belatedly dawned on me that I knew this guy, and I knew him quite well. It was Gus' old best friend from kindergarten who was also among my sister's crowd of friends back in her high school days, Jackie.

Jackie, however, was not top on my list of people I wanted to run into. The hazards of returning to your long distant home town dwelling. I'm not sure how much of this is my business to be putting on a website blog, but I'll just say currently Jackie is living in a relationship with Gus' ex-wife in Gus' old home that he was compelled to move out of just five months after buying it with her. Gus is now divorced and sees little Aenea as often as he can. Being a close friend of Gus' I wasn't quite sure where to go with this run in for a few reasons.

On one hand, Gus holds no grudge against Jackie and will simply say that he wishes them the best. On the other hand, he has no desire to associate with Jackie anymore. Suddenly Jackie rolls up on me all friendly-like chatting like old friends. I fell to Gus' lead of being oddly civil, its my general nature to do so anyway, but its hard when its your close friend, and not you, whose been slighted. The other side is that it is none of my business, and though I don't really want to associate with the guy either, I will talk with him at arm's length.

Todd was standing there to the side just observing all of this. He knew the story of what had happened, but didn't know who it was. For some reason I thought he was tuning into this being that guy, but as it later turned out he was just tuning into the strange vibe I was suddenly putting out to this guy who just appeared. On top of it Jackie offered us a ride anywhere we needed to go. I looked to Todd thinking, I don't want anything to do with him, but then found myself accepting it having him take us to an Ihop for coffee. The whole thing was just odd. The icing on the cake was that Jackie and Kate's new baby was in the car as well.

The ride over had me telling Jackie strange censored versions of what I was up to. Very short summaries of what I'd normally dive into at length about. Often I would turn it around to him asking how Kate is, how Aenea's doing with everything going on, and Emily, Kate's eldest daughter. When we got out in the Ihop parking lot he kept going on about how we should hang out, and that if I'm hear for a while I should call him. I thanked him for the ride and sent him away. Once inside I debriefed Todd on what that weirdness was all about.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Ihop eating breakfast, but mostly drinking coffee. We left about an hour or so before Dave was going to come and get us to go hang out on the beach of a pond behind the back lot. By 5pm, however, we were in the backyard of on of Dave's friend's house meeting an assortment of new people again.

It was a good evening munching burgers and eating hot dogs playing the occasional bocci ball. Here I also got to meet a kid I haven't seen since he was about 8, Dave's little brother Addison. Now he was a straight Beam drinking grissled 23 year old who had the family genius in him. I talked a bit with him as well as Tool, a kid who was among my wider circle of friends back in high school. Didn't recognize him one bit, but I had a great time catching up with him. It turns out he and Addison, and possibly Dave, are taking a trip to the Northwest around the time we hope to be getting there. It seems a gathering is forming.

Stacey had called back at some point in the day as well so I'd arranged to meet up with her at the BBQ. She showed up around 9 and after a wide armed "how've you been?" hug she spotted another friend of hers that she hadn't seen in almost just as long. Excusing herself, she sat down with her for a while catching up while I returned to my burger. Soon enough, though, we jumped into her car and found ourselves back at her adorable little house by the Wilbraham line.

It was a good night of catching up with each other. She was a bit like my visit with Marion where I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but different in the that Gus had been hanging out with her, so I had a bit more of an idea of what she'd be like now. It turns out she and I haven't lead lives too far apart in many ways. She too had spent the past years rambling around exploring the country. She'd lived a while in New Mexico as well which tied Todd nicely into the reacquainting. It had just been recent years that she decided to buy a house and nest, and the house was quite suitably nested and homey.

We sat out on her side deck where she had a pile of sticks and one of those New Mexican styled stoves. Her dog, Lucy, kept us company as we fed the fire and revisited ourselves. Todd and I then retreated to the backyard for a campout to wrap up the night.

Click here for Todd's perspective.