Loosing Ends

[unzeugmatic]

Facebook continues to throw me into the occasional memory tailspin. I'm starting to think that the emotions of your past (particularly your youthful past) do not fade away from lack of use (like, say, remembering the quadratic formula). Instead they just get buried under newer emotions that have actual relevance to your current life. But you can

Comments

[rsc]

Quite apart from the main theme(s) here (I can imagine a similar reaction if I came across certain people from my past), I'll note two things about these pictures: (1) The guy looks a bit like MOTW, wouldn't you agree? (2) His companion (boyfriend?) is delicious.

[unzeugmatic]

Hmmm.. I can certainly see what you mean about MOTW in the current pictures, but for me what's completely burned into my retinas is what he looked like at 17 (when there wouldn't be such a resemblance) so that's what seems to fill the memory register for him I hold in my head.

Facebook identifies handsome companion as "in a relationship with".

You know, I am going to send Butch the link to this article, with some trepidation. In a day or so.

[mrdreamjeans]

Though you didn't know him well, his presence was important to your developing identity. I'm glad you reached out! I should post my photo from 1972, though we weren't allowed to have mustaches in high school:)

Hope you're doing well. I think I've seen you once in the 18 months I've live in Minneapolis!

HUG!

[unzeugmatic]

Well, he certainly wasn't the only person (by a long shot) for whom I had this response -- but how many of the others appear in my purview 4 decades later as daddy bears, that's really the startling thing to me here.

I used to be a regular at Lee's, so perhaps I should at least drop by again to see what that feels like these days.

[fj]

Imprints run deep.

The worst is when dreams trigger it. Random neural stroms triggering not the memory of the subject, but the memory of the longing, and I wake up 14 years old, looking back at a story I never got to read, an adventure of the heart I never got to have, and never will now that I am so old and rational, and I feel so, so cheated.

[unzeugmatic]

Yes, yes -- not the memory of the subject, the memory of the longing. That's what I was getting at here. That's the unburied emotion.

[slyvermont]

Catching up on old LJ posts.

Just wanted to say, thanks for sharing this.

[erstexman]

You and I have mutual friends on here and on Facebook (adding you as a friend here as soon as i post this comment - I like your writing!). Anyway, for me, Facebook has been a great way to reconnect with old friends and even bare acquaintances from my past. My HS boycrush is married with kids now, and has not responded to my friend request, which is just fine. However, some of my my friends from that era have turned somewhat into bear daddies too, though I think I am the only one who is gay. That being said, I am very happy to reconnect with my past there. I know it does not work out well for everyone. Glad it has for you and if nothing else, perhaps you have a new friendship develop from an old acquaintance...