The other day I called a childhood friend I’d located on the internet. I left a message at his work. The first day, after I left the message, I imagined a lot of scenarios. He’d call me back or he wouldn’t, he’d say this, I’d say that, this or that would happen down the line… I busied my mind with possibilities for awhile in my excitement to have found him. Doing so, I began to wrack my brain to remember how and why we had lost touch with each other. Then I was overtaken with a sickening feeling as all that emerged from my memory was a big black hole around the middle of high school. Now the imaginary scenarios shifted from the future to the past. What had happened?

The first-day scenarios ranged all the way from I’d called the wrong man to we end up lovers for life. I admit I called him partly because his resume, which was one of two things I’d located online, stated his marital status as single. And one reason I’d been thinking of him was that I’d been examining my life, my own marital status, my current relationships, and some unproductive behavior patterns. I’m not happy with myself right now, for a lot of reasons. One is, I’m finally lonely. Or, I’m finally admitting that I’m lonely, that might be more accurate. But I have serious trust issues (some might say “intimacy issues”). And in reflecting on the nature and origins of these issues, I fell to pondering men in my life that I have trusted, with whom I have felt completely at ease. There aren’t many. Out of the depths of memory swept this scene of a bike ride, and then a flood of feeling for that boy who was once my best friend.

Let’s call him Paul. Paul was one of my best friends in junior high. My first reaction when I found the link to his bio was pure delight. Only long after I’d left the message did I begin to ponder what had happened. My second-day scenarios took an uncomfortable twist as I wondered: Did we slide out of each other’s lives simply from the passage of time? Or, and here’s where it got really sickening, had I hurt him? Had I done something that ended our friendship? Had he become interested in me in a way that I did not reciprocate and I broke his heart? (This speculation tells you a lot more about the subsequent course of my life than it does about who I was at the time.) Or, had he hurt me? Had he chosen another girl and broken my heart?

If he should ask me today why I called I’d have to say I’m making amends. I’ve been rash and heartless with a few friends, I’ve been thoughtless or careless with many more. I wanted even more to reconnect because, when I realized there was a big blank at the end of our childhood friendship I feared I had hurt him – rejected him, judged him, in some way severed the friendship of my own volition. I’ve done it before and since and usually regretted my haste. Since my mother’s death from a rare brain disease, I have been noticing my own memory lapses with a different perspective. There’s no time to keep making clumsy mistakes with people. If I have hurt people in my past or present and I can apologize now is the time to start. If I’ve done damage of any kind and I can make it right, now is the time to start. I don’t know how much time I have.

I have remembered all along the sense of being with Paul. He has come to the forefront of my thoughts from time to time, though through many years he never occurred to me. But when he does occur to me, always, it is with regret that I do not know what happened to him, that somehow that innocent, trusting friendship we had as children has disappeared. Vanished into the vast past, even the memory of our friendship has drowned in the flood of experiences that came on top of whatever we were in that long-ago slice of time. We rode bikes sometimes, saw each other outside of school even though we lived a long way apart and our parents had to shuttle us to play with each other. I remember one bike ride in particular, coasting down the paved bike path of Four Mile Run, trees arching over the path, and Paul and me laughing, a lot. I can see him laughing now, clear as day.

But what prompted me to call? I’ve been thinking lately, wondering at my aloneness, in this hermitage I’ve set up for myself on this mesa, in this forest, in this mud hut where I live with lots of animals and which I rarely leave. Why indeed would a big city professional want or need a friendship with me? Why would a man who was once a boy I knew bother to call back to see who I am now? On one level, I am simply curious about how he has grown up, who he has become. Is that arrogant of me? And on the other end of that spectrum lives the romantic fantasy of childhood sweethearts hooking up again at their 50^th high school reunion. I’ll never get a reunion with Paul, we went to different high schools. If I was to ever know anything about him I had to track him down myself.

I keep avoiding the real issue, though. Which is why did I really call him? It was impulse, to be sure, under some influence beyond my control. Here is the truth of it. I have known a lot of men since I was friends with Paul. And from this vantage point, in that span of time, I have never been as comfortable with any of them as I was when I was a child, riding bikes and laughing with my friend. I remember his happiness during those short young years we were friends. I have pictures of him at parties at my house. I do not recall too many specifics, but I remember feeling safe with him to be myself. People and relationships are fraught with tensions and threats, but in that happy young friendship I remember neither.

I have felt safe a few times with some of my lovers, but that feeling has never lasted. I have subsequently molded myself to the needs and desires of whatever man I’ve been with, giving up my self to be a couple. I’ve been verbally abused by my father, my brother and most of my lovers. The one lover who did not abuse me with his words was the cop who cheated on me. I do not trust men. I’ve made a string of bad choices. I’ve learned a lot of lessons, most of them more than once. I know I’ll never make some mistakes again. I think from time to time of that boy Paul that I knew and I remember a boy who was kind and funny and smart, with whom I could let my imagination, my laughter, my intellect, simply be. We were friends when we were children, untarnished by life’s deceptions, intrigues and betrayals. Before we knew we had issues. I wonder what kind of man he has become.

What happened? Why is there a big blank? Did I hurt him? Did he hurt me and I’ve forgotten? Either way, if it was a bad scene it’s a good sign that I can’t remember: I’m famous for holding grudges, but thirty years would be a little long even for me. It’s possible I misremember. It’s possible in the years of high school and beyond, whatever happened that we fell apart or grew apart, I made up some story about how we’d been such good friends. Maybe I was never anything to him. I’ve hardly been anything to myself. And now we’re down to the real nitty gritty. As usual. Who am I? Who am I that he would want to be my friend, some boy I knew 35 years ago who has had lifetimes to forget me, to forget that boy, to build his own rich and fascinating story woven full of women and men, joys and griefs and experiences uniquely his own. Who am I to such a one?

I’m someone new each day. I don’t have a steady job, so I am not defined by my career. I don’t have a husband or a lover so I’m not defined by a partnership. I have no claim to fame. What is the essence of me that I have to offer? In another scenario, I congratulate Paul on his accomplishments in the medical field, and I am forced to confess I have not lived up to my own expectations of my intellect. I may have satisfied my soul, but I certainly did not live up to potential in anyone’s eyes who knew me as a child. For crying out loud, I live in a mud hut in the woods with a bunch of dogs and I rarely leave home. I wallow in introspection, I tell Paul in this scenario, so I guess that makes me a poet.

But now it’s after nine on the third day, and he has not called. Perhaps he is out of town and he will call another day. Or, he will not call. He does not remember me or he does not wish to reconnect with me. I’m sure he has his reasons. And I’ve lost nothing with the venture. Imagining Paul has given me all I could ask for from him, a jumping off point to once again attempt to get to the root of the question that plagues me daily: Who am I?

Now, a week after leaving the message, I sit down at the computer today to polish off this meditation on speculation, memory and identity, with more unsaid in it than said, having concluded, once again, the usual conclusions: the past is gone and the future unknown, and neither is worth too much attention. I may never know the present of my old friend Paul, or if he remembers me, or what transpired in our past, and these mysteries I must let be. Whoever I am in this present moment, let me be present and kind and unattached to outcome. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There’s the phone, let me get that – well!

It is Paul. The Paul? I ask. The Paul who was my friend when I was a child? And he says: Still is. My heart fills with joy to hear these two words. I feel wildly happy. His voice has grown up but the warmth and humor remain. He remembers me well. We fall to talking and he tells me he lives with a gentleman, has for years. Damn! It figures. The most comfortable man I can remember in my life and he turns out to be gay. No wonder I never felt threatened. My enthusiasm shifts, my voice falters. A fleeting disappointment dissolves in recognition, relief. There is no sordid past to rectify. There is no other woman to object or be jealous – we are free to rekindle our friendship. My delight at having found him burgeons. Of course he is gay. I have known this somewhere all along. There is so much to say. But he’s at work. He gives me his home number. We exchange promises to talk more and get together, and these promises feel true and happy to me. I have found my friend again, and these 35 years have all but disappeared.

Still I am left with questions. Whatever happened, I did not understand it at the time. There was something, some scene, some uncomfortable conversation, I feel sure of it. The sickening feeling returns. Did I have feelings for him that were not reciprocated? Did I press him? Did I judge him? Did he tell me he was gay and I walked away from the friendship? Or did he not tell me, did he not know, could he not say, and I just didn’t get it? The end of our childhood relationship remains a blank. Perhaps these questions can be answered now that I’ve found him. Perhaps they don’t matter. And, knowing better than to anticipate outcome, I (whoever I am) imagine welcoming him and his partner to my home, can see them arriving through the gate, can feel me wrapping them both in hugs with a heart wide open to a new, grownup friendship.