People I Used to Know

The quote starts that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Sometimes hindsight makes it crystal clear which one it is. I’ve always been fascinated by the people who disappear from our lives. People we were so close to at one time and now we don’t speak, don’t follow each other on social media, maybe don’t even think about at all. A 40-year life means a lot of people who come in and out for one reason or another. I was recently thinking about three.

Me doing something I'm not supposed to at the best job I had and the backdrop for two stories.

I was volunteering at a friend’s event and one of the guests he was interviewing came up to say hi. He knew my name. It took me a second to place him: we’d lived in the same building for a year and hooked up shortly after we both moved out. My friend used his name a few times during the interview, and I’d only known one person to use that variation of the name. But I was still surprised when he approached me. At the event, he was promoting his mead company (I was helping distribute samples). But when we lived in the same building, I thought he was in software or accounting or something way less interesting than mead. I mean, he was on the older side and had a one-bedroom, so he must have had a real job. Twenty-four year-old me thought he was sophisticated, especially compared to the other residents who made the building feel like a 20s and 30s dorm. But he also had a corner bar in his apartment and a keg, which was the height of coolness in 2009. (He was also easily the most attractive guy in the building, helping cement my fondness for glasses.) One day I came home with a headache from a particularly bad day at work to a party in the courtyard, including a DJ directly outside my window blasting obnoxious music. I thought I had the best place in the building because I could easily see when friends were hanging out and go join them. But that day I was in no mood, so I shut the window and closed the blinds. Except my apartment absolutely reeked of yeast. I looked for the source of the smell and discovered a brown sludge running down the insides of my cupboard. Turns out the keg in cute-upstairs-neighbor’s apartment leaked. I soured on him for a couple weeks, until the smell dissipated. Looking back, maybe he was home brewing, and that led him to mead making. Our hookup was months after we both moved away from the building (the only time I ever cried leaving a place, I loved the weirdness of my studio and the freedom it gave me). I didn’t enjoy it and we didn’t see each other again until my friend’s event. Part of me felt good that he recognized me without any context or introduction, because it meant I must not have visibly changed much in 16 years. But would I have recognized him? Since he was older than me back then, he’s probably close to 50 now and looking more like it. I’m also terrible at recognizing people out of context: I’d had no idea he was a brewer so even after hearing his name a few times I still didn’t make the connection other than it was a reminder that this person existed.

Some of my neighbors in the courtyard at the infamous Halloween party in 2009.

There was another time someone approached me completely out of context after not seeing each other for a very long time. Right around that same time in my life, when I was living in my studio, I got close to someone from work. He was a giant mess and basically homeless, but nice to me so I let him crash on my itty bitty couch for a while. This was a person who was obviously in my life for a very specific reason: I’d broken up with my long-term boyfriend while working at this job, but the break wasn’t clean. My ex came to a Halloween party I helped throw in my building courtyard dressed as Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. But not like a jackass in a suit, wearing a poncho and wielding an ax. I found out the next day that it was a real fucking ax. That he brought to a Halloween party. The break got very clean after that, but not before the party moved to a hotel bar a few blocks away, where my ex got in my face and said some awful things. When my friend came to my defense, my ex got in his face. Well, my friend was not the type to let that happen and he slugged my ex in the face, knocking him down. Truth be told, my ex needed to get punched. He was pompous and thought he was above reproach, better than anyone else and no one would dare. He learned he was wrong that night and I guarantee it changed how he acted in certain situations. We scattered from the bar, my friend discarding his costume and jumping in a cab and my other incredible friends talking my ex down from calling the cops. I was surprised when our friendship started to fizzle a few months after that, until I realized that I could no longer provide him the support he needed and he was moving on to others who could. He was still a giant mess, and still basically homeless, and had his own ex problems that were getting far worse than mine ever were. When I left that job I didn’t see him for seven years, until he came up to me in a brewery. I was there with husband (boyfriend, then), celebrating our dog’s 10th birthday. We had a dog cake for the dogs and cookies for the people. In the middle of talking and laughing with friends, he suddenly appeared inches from my face. I was taken aback by the invasion of my space more than anything, then I recognized him. He offered me the booth that he and his friends were about to leave. A couple years after that I saw his name on one of the beers at that brewery. Guess he knew the owners. A couple years after that, the brewery was named of the beer #metoo movement. Honestly, I wasn’t that surprised. He had a lot of strong words but I never knew where his true morals or loyalties would lie. Like most men, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear if he defended a man against sexual harassment hearsay. Most don’t believe women.

Argo with his birthday cake on his 10th birthday.

Perhaps most jarring was the first boy I ever loved. Many years after it ended, I wondered whether I’d recognize him if I saw him, or even if I’d ever see him. We didn’t have social media so I had no idea if he still live in our hometown or what he did for work. Our relationship, probably like most high school relationships, was intense. We were convinced, just like everyone else, that we’d last forever. The time I felt that most powerfully was when my mom forbid us from seeing each other because we went stargazing at the park literally across the street from my house and she thought… who even knows. I was determined to show her that our love was even stronger (do parents know anything? you never forbid love). But I had plenty of doubts. He’d started getting into drinking (not that unusual) and some harder drugs (a little unusual). I didn’t like it and told him. He wanted to stop but wanted me to be his anchor and motivation. Even at 17 I knew he needed to do it for himself. But he was also hinting at getting engaged soon. I didn’t have a lot figured out then but I knew two things for sure: I did not want to be married young and I did not want to be anyone’s sole purpose for existing or having a good life. For a while after we broke up his mom (and probably lots of other people, he was popular) blamed me for his turn into darker and riskier behaviors. I felt bad about how I handled the breakup but I was naive and inexperienced. Then a year ago my sister called to tell me she and some friends were telling high school stories and he came up. They looked him up on Facebook and found out he died a few years earlier from a drug overdose after being clean for a while. I hadn’t spoken to him in 19 years, so all I felt was weird. This person was so close to me at one time, and when they died I didn’t even know. I wonder how often that’s happened with other people I used to know. I knew how unlikely it was that I’d ever run into him, even when I visited my hometown, but now I know it’s impossible. And that’s still weird.

There have been a lot of other people who have exited my life, including parents, people I might have called best friends, relatives, work friends, and relationships that burned bright for a short time. It will always fascinate and sometimes sadden me when this happens.