Past to Future

Ended my birthday bash extravaganza with a small get together and an email about a writing job. I invited all of my friends, well those that I knew were home, got pizza and cheap soda and waited for them to come over. The magazine is for gays and focuses on the entertainment side, writing about having fun and all that shit. I asked if we could turn The Homo Whisperer into a column and he replied back with a lunch date.

Out of the twenty I invited, only four came. There was the Miss Artist, newly single, BBG, and ex-boyfriend number one. We sat around, near the pizza and soda, and chatted about school and everything that’s ever happened since. Miss Artist is talking to a French boy in the filmmaking class. “He’s so sweet, nice and pretty talented,” she told us. She wants to be a location manager for his movies.

“Yeah, so you can locate him to your who-who,” newly single said, eating her third slice of pizza.

As we chatted, I figured that the high school drama never really stopped, we just got good at hiding it. “College has changed us,” BBG said. We all nodded.

“Yeah we become more sexual,” I looked over at newly single.

“Well, some of us…” her first low blow of the night.

“Better partiers.”

“Better liars,” ex-boyfriend number one said. I wondered why he even showed up, like I didn’t invite him. Stupid ass.

“Joe, when you become famous, don’t forgot about us,” newly single said. This wouldn’t be the first time I heard this from her. Or from any of my other friends, both past and current. Or from my family.

“Why would I change?” I asked with no one answering.

“Guys, I have to get famous first. Give me six years.”

The topic drifted off, to a fellow classmate who finally came out as gay after many years of speculation. I knew it from the first time we met, I mean, he had a scarf collection in the back of his car. To a girl we all knew who dropped out of college.

“That must be a thing now… to drop out of college,” Miss Artist said.

“Everyone’s doing it.”

To who just got arrested.

At the end of the night, as I watched them leave, I got to thinking about myself. Could I let go of my past and bring in the future. I wondered what would happen if we don’t see each other in twenty years?  

I’m not the type of person to just leave a friendship. If you put effort in then I’ll put effort in. even if we don’t speak, I know what my friends are up to thanks to Facebook and Twitter. I’m sure nothing will happen, we’ll always be together, always have each other in the back of our minds.

But didn’t we say the same thing in high school? Look how that turned out.