Today I visited Joey twice. I ‘m thinking about Joey. He’s my second-oldest Chicago friend. I met him ten years ago at a place that no longer exists, The Halsted Street Cafe. It was where Circuit is now. I ended up there one evening because it was the last stop on a solo pilgrimage I was making of all the coffeehouses in Boystown. You do that kind of thing when you’re 20 years old, and alone, and bored.

I was already wired to the gills with caffeine when I got to the cafe. It was a big open room with a beverage counter, racks of used CDs for sale, and a few bookshelves. There were tables and chairs here and there and a few couches I think. I bought my coffee and sat down, scoped out the place. Joey was somewhere across the room, sitting with a few people. I was immediately attracted to him but I kept my distance. Just kept my eye on him. I had a mini-book that Penguin was putting out that year in conjunction with their anniversary, and it was a novella by Paul Theroux called The Greenest Island. I had to do something with myself, so I sat there and read the whole thing. Cover-to-cover. Joey was still there with his friends, I don’t know what they were doing. Just hanging out, goofing off I guess.

Finally I finished the book, then I set it aside and got out my spiral notebook. I started writing a poem I guess, a poem about Joey ostensibly, kind of watching him across the room. And then when it was finished I tore the page out of the notebook and walked over to Joey and said, “I wrote this about you.” We must have chatted for awhile, him sitting and me standing, and then he came over to my table. And we wrote things back and forth.

It was getting late. I wanted to go home with him, or to take him home, but his friends were still hanging around and someone suggested The Melrose. So we all walked to the diner and sat in a booth together. I was so annoyed that his friends weren’t getting the clue to leave us alone, and sort of annoyed that Joey wasn’t sending them away. I sat across from him and the stupid conversation among everyone else seemed endless, I wasn’t paying any attention. Joey and I played footsie. Finally after awhile his friends caught on. It was really late. I began to make not-so-subtle comments. We kept smiling at each other from across the table, flirting.

He took me to his tiny shoebox apartment on Oakdale. It was so small that we slept on the floor. The sex was odd, but oddly comfortable. Actually I don’t remember the sex itself; I remember how it made me feel. I didn’t want to leave afterwards. I wanted to be close together. I spent the night.

I’m sure we got hardly any sleep, and there was more sex in the morning. There was no coffee. We had orange juice. He turned on his computer and we logged onto the internet at 28K. It was thrilling. We literally spent hours on a BBS he was familiar with, and then he showed me irc. Internet relay chat: the first chatrooms online. You had to log in with a screen name. I thought about it and chose randomchance. Joey typed it in, but when we got into the room I noticed that it had cut off part of the end. There was a 9-character limit. So, for the first time ever, I was randomcha.

I fell for Joey; at that time in my life I fell for everyone. And he was so ahead of me. He’d already had a boyfriend, had already tried a long-distance relationship, had already broken up. I didn’t know the first thing about what it was like to be in love. He liked me too but he really just wanted to be friends with me. A bit later I realized that’s what I wanted too. I caught up with him Back then, I got over things as quickly as I fell into them. So we were friends.

There have been periods where we’ve been completely out of touch with each other, and periods where we’ve been quite close. But what means the most to me is that there is a real continuity between us. We’ve known each other so long that we can’t help but read between each other’s lines. Somehow, I know, there are moments when we’ve both felt each other for who we really are: the invisible ghosts of our pasts that are visible when you’re face to face with someone you’ve known over time.

Like a time machine of the flesh, holding his hand as I stood by the bed today. The same hand and different. We carry ourselves through space and time. I held his hand, and though he was unconscious and I could not feel him move, he carried me back ten years. I saw him both ways. I wish it didn’t have to take something like this.