Dear God, take him, take them, take anyone:The stillborn,the newborn,the infirmed,take anyone,take people from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Just spare me

I was thinking after reading what I wrote yesterday, and I think I’ve strayed from keeping in touch with friends of mine that don’t live in Pittsburgh.

And here is the irony – I complain about a friend of mine, Brad, who has done the same thing, though he takes it to an extreme. But I complain about him all the time, and I think I recently think I am slowly turning in to him.

Brad is a college friend, and has been my friend since once chilly evening in October 1988 when we officially met each other. We’d been in a few classes together, and I needed something out of one class that I missed, so I went to his room to get the information. And from that long night, we’ve been friends. He is straight, I am gay. He went to Korea to work after grad school (Teaching English as a second language) and I stayed in Pittsburgh. We kept in touch, first by regular mail and then, as e-mail became popular in those crazy days of the 90’s, we started doing regular e-mails. He came back and started teaching at our undergrad alma mater, ESL again. We went on a trip to Edmonton for the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, as he had a friend, Eltee, that he’d worked with in Korea who lived in Edmonton. To this day, I go to Edmonton every August for the Folk Music Festival, and stay with Eltee. (I also went to Thailand and Eltee was my tour guide as he winters in Thailand.)

In some weird twist, around the year 2000, Brad stopped talking to Eltee. No reason was ever given. By that time, it was only an e-mail friendship, but we’d all gone to Edmonton (by this time Holly had joined us in our yearly runs to the folk fest) for 3 years in a row. And Brad just stopped e-mailing Eltee. No word why, nothing like a fight or an argument had ever broken out. Brad just stopped.

Where Brad was working was about 90 minutes of my place, so once a month I used to visit and do dinner with him and a few of our former professors from the college. Well, slowly it became every other month as Brad wasn’t always available. Then it became every few months. And then, one time in early 2001 I went up and Brad could not be bothered to set aside 2 hours for dinner. He was running around and doing things and even Gary had stopped to join us for dinner (Gary was also a former college roommate of Brad’s, and he worked near the college, but we were roommates at this time in Pittsburgh area.) and after a half an hour, Gary left as he explained to me later that Brad was treating him like a child.

Now we were such good friends that at one point in time in summer 2001, I bought tickets for his parents to come down to PNC Park and see the Pirates play the Indians (his family is from the Cleveland area) for 2 nights and even got them a great rate on a open apartment at my apartment complex (the complex would rent out fully furnished apartments on a nightly basis, really good deal). I remember it quite well because the Pirates whooped up on the Indians for 3 games, very good time had by me (if not his family.)

Fast forward and I realize that correspondence with Brad has slowed to…nothing, really. An occasional phone call and e-mail. Then, in November 2003, I was in Berlin visiting my friend Christian and I got an e-mail from Brad, saying that he was hoping this was my e-mail address as he’d lost it, blah blah blah. I answer back, saying I was going to have some free time in December as my Thailand trip was pushed from the end of December to the end of Thailand but I still had 2 weeks off at Christmastime. I hear from Brad again in early February 2004 with the “I am so busy now, but we can get together at the end of February” line. I answer back that it sounded like a plan if he wanted to meet me in Kanchanaburi for dinner, except it is over 8,000 miles distance to go for dinner for him, so maybe after I get back.

I then got a phone call in October, out of the blue. I don’t even know why I answered, but I did. Then, when I was buying my house, I sent out some e-mails announcing this to friends, give new address and information. He sent something back saying that he has been so busy buying his home that he hasn’t had time to correspond. First I’d heard that he was a home owner. I wrote back saying that I’d love to see his place and he could see my new place. That was a year ago, and nothing since then. My cell phone number hasn’t changed since last I talked to him, and I have had the same 2 e-mail addresses for years.

So the other day, I got an e-mail from another childhood friend asking if I was still alive, and I realized that it has been 9 months since I last sent an e-mail to him (though I did talk to him in October when I went to DC to see Paul McCartney in concert.) I went onto my sent e-mails, and realized that I hadn’t even sent a response to Christian in Berlin when he wrote back asking about my new house IN JUNE!!

I am now going to work a bit harder to talk to more friends, at least send e-mails out to say “Hi” and stuff more often. I like having my friends. And I like hearing from my friends, so I have to be more responsible.