Hangover

I set up these two friends of mine from high school who both live—unbeknownst to each other—in Manhattan now, both happily married and long removed from our days of pulling over to the side of the road during a disagreement and settling it with a beauty bark wrestling match at twilight in front of the junior high school or pitching cans of ravioli down 14 stories to the street late night at the Art Institute on the Seattle waterfront.

I sent them each other’s phone numbers, encouraging them to catch up. With a 15-year gap separating their last meeting they agreed to meet for a drink somewhere in Harlem like the respectable husbands that life has molded them into.

The first call came at 4pm HST from Dale Pittman, co-founder of the Mukilteo, WA fight club circa 1990, the only member of his family to escape the clutches of the Pacific Northwest now firmly entrenched like a root weevil teaching in the Bronx. I screened him without a second thought to catch the new south swell. But the voicemail was from Mark Rhonemus former bassist for our high school band Pure Tons of Love who had once woken me in the Royal Kuhio room 1221 from a solid coma with repeated blows to the face at the request of Michelle Murray, a strange Chinese girl who I blamed entirely for the bruising and never spoke to again.

His message was calm and collected. “Dale and I are having a beer. Looking forward to seeing you out here…”

Three hours later at sunset, the text messages had started to pile up:

MARK: Left you a VM. We know you are screening. Please send bail money.
MARK: Tell me something. How can Dale take a piss so fast? I’ll hold.
ME: He has an inhumanly wide urethra
MARK: He should be in labor
DALE: Holy shit that boy can party need backup to continue assault on ronomus(sic)
ME: Stop being a pussy. Or do some kegel exercises.
DALE: Going to hard liquor I am taking ronomos down

The last message came roughly after 1am and I’ve heard nothing from either of them since.

But fifteen years of memory lane is a hard surface to just casually skip down on a Thursday with a mixed belly of alcohol. Especially for a pair of small-town boys on the horrible precipice of middle age, bound to the grave reality of the 5am alarm clock. I’m sure this morning they regret not only answering their own respective phone calls, but most likely any and all circumstances leading up to their ever meeting in the first place. Though time heals all things...