Austin, TEXAS, January 21, 2006 — Something made me think about my high school classmates today and I looked at the site they have up with the locator page showing who has a verified address, who is lost and who is deceased. It kind of bugs me that two people are missing. One was a good friend in elementary (a 'boyfriend' as much as that applies to ten- or eleven-year-old kids) and then went to a different junior high and then actually moved away to graduate somewhere else. At the twentieth reunion, he showed up to be with us (saying he was unhappy at his actual school) and was one of the more interesting people there. He had gotten a PhD in math and then went to medical school and did a specialty in psychiatry. I think that was the story. FFP

and I spent some time driving around the little town of my youth and talking to him. After he came back to the reunion and we had his address I sent a holiday card for a few years. He came to town once and brought a wife (he'd married in the interim I think) and we had lunch. One year the card came back. And none arrived from him. His life seemed so interesting that it seemed a shame that he and his ongoing story was lost to me. I may be mistaken but I think I stumbled on a post card he and his wife sent from somewhere a few days ago. (While searching for the sample material from the wrapped Reichstag.) I couldn't find it again. I didn't try too hard, though. Today I tried using what I knew of where he was when he disappeared and so forth to locate him on the Internet. No luck. Oh, I'm sure that he could be located, perhaps with a few phone calls or payment to some info sites. But I wasn't that curious.

I also tried to locate the other missing person. He had been (one of the few) boyfriends I had in high school. He was at that twentieth reunion, too. He had become a photographer and, if I remember correctly, had married or been involved with multiple airline attendants. Well, now he's lost from the class list, too. I tried briefly to find him on the Internet using my limited knowledge of where he was twenty years ago and what he was doing. No dice on that either.

I've been feeling a little over-exposed myself lately. Writing this journal, publishing the occasional byline in our neighborhood weekly, being in the low-level 'social circle' of Austin, just being out there and, you know, found. Not only is my info on that class list but, since I never changed my name, just about anyone who ever knew me and is curious can find me. And, of course, I've lived in the same house with the same phone number for (gulp) twenty-eight years. (FFP and I actually worried enough about losing this phone number that we did some battle and then conceded to SBC over an issue I won't elaborate on.)

Maybe everyone deserves a chance to get lost or at least have a lower profile. Forever. For a while. Even me. It's not going to happen for me. But for my classmates. Let 'em be lost. More power to them. I'm curious but in a way but it's satisfying to see them slip away in some odd way. I'm sure wherever they are they are fine and doing what they please and feel they are plenty exposed. Or they're dead and we don't know it. Or, you know, they are miserable or in prison.

One other classmate who didn't make the twentieth and wasn't located the, I don't think, was a dear friend in high school. He was an accomplished musician, he dated my best friend and he went off to New York. He's shown now with an address in Australia. I'd like to know what happened to that guy. But you know, not that much. I doubt he will come from Australia next summer to come to a reunion of the class.

Today I was thinking, for a second, "I won't go to that reunion." Then I thought, "No, I'll go but I will be sorry." That's probably not true either. There are a few people who are going that I would have a pleasant visit and 'reunion' with. But that hesitation...it's all part of this schizophrenic desire to be open and out there and tell my boring story and the desire to get lost. Maybe the desire to get lost is part of the embarrassment that my life has so little meaning or accomplishment.

Today I was sitting and staring at something I turned up in cleaning out a drawer. It is a hand-forged piece of iron with a hook at the end, designed to be screwed to a wall or door (black-finished screws included). It was given to me by someone who is not lost but who has left my life unilaterally. But she left behind all these little gifts and things in the house and yard. I have no place to put this coat hook up or desire to do so. You hate to throw something someone made by hand into the thrift bag or Freecycle stack or the potential 'garage sale' pile (for the garage sale I know I'm never actually going to have). I wonder briefly about the people who made it. My ex-friend and her husband. Are they still together? I consult the new phone book. Numbers and addresses the same. With a bit of curiosity I check the Internet. I find pages of my own, the wife's resume. (She was laid off last year I believe.) These people aren't lost. They are easily found. But they are lost to me. I have done that to people, I suppose. A bit more subtlety perhaps not that it makes it better. Pushing them away somehow.

Burning every bridge that I cross
To find some beautiful place to get lost
To find some beautiful place to get lost
I don't know where I'll go now
And I don't really care who follows me there
But I'll burn every bridge that I cross
To find some beautiful place to get lost
To find some beautiful place to get lost

Some of Elliott Smith's lyrics for "Let's Get Lost" made famous by Chet Baker.

I don't think I'm going to get lost. It isn't possible anyway. But sometimes I think it might be interesting. People's stories as individuals are the most interesting tales there are. I often wish I could peek in on everyone the way I can do for those who have journals.