My good friend from college emailed me about a month ago:

From: "Lauren Abrahams"
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 23:34:37 -0800
To: "Dustin Stephens"
Subject: how

the hell are u????
tell me whats going on or call me.
how ridiculous is all this??? life, i mean...

I was in a weird mood, and what came out is probably the third best letter i have ever written, and probably the best email. I had forgotten about it because it took Lauren a month to write me back (the pressure to try and punch back with, but in rereading it, i feel like it deserves a wider audience.

Oh shit. I don't fuckin' know.

You're question, so open, slighltly silly, a tad existential... It happens to come at one of those times where I can't even find a place to answer it. I guess the beginning is always good.

How ridiculous? Very. Like, just off the top of my head, so ridiculous that the definition doesn't fit and you need the next level word, or you have to Joycefuckit with classic just hipster enough combos like uber or tetra so you're cooler than using super.

I having been breathing eating growing crying sleeping pissing shitting for over a QUARTER of a century. Been talking and walking a bit less than that. Reading and imagining for just a bit less than that. Ive been lying wondering worrying for... You get the picture. I really wanted to do the list faithfully and get to masturbating but I just don't have the patience.

Point is, you blink, and its almost four full fucking YEARS since you graduated a bubble fairytale world. And yes, in three months you’ve acually been out of college longer than you spent there. Officially. Don’t even get me started on the proximity of the high school tenner.

And what do you have to show for yourself? A bit wiser. More technically trained, your resume actually shows a profession. You have your black belt, been down the pink AND the stink. Less drugs, less drinking. The wide net of friends becomes an even wider net of aquantances, real friends slowly paring down, the road towards The Big One And Only Pair beginning to show. More money, some luckily, some from the sweaty brow and jewish tendencies. Some still in the shadows, the weight of a legacy not quite pushing down yet. One heart broken, surprisingly cracking your own more than you thought it would. Maybe another altercation like that currently in play, the dice rolling still, unsure when to mete out their joy, or to allow the house to take it down like always. Days of bliss, days of sadness, days of unrest, days of depresion, days of stress, days of leisure... days and days, mostly, all blending into the puree of memory, the nutritious mix of experience.

...but the aftertaste, that weird feeling that makes you wonder what eating really is... That’s the constant conundrum. For life will be good, and life will be bad, but why we keep glutting ourselves is really the rub. (maybe we have nothing else to do).

Yes you caught me at one of those times of wonder, where the loss of one hour of sleep is cheap compared to the attempt to write something... Je ne se qua... Funny? Smart (and not just for snobs sake, but with some actual substance we hope)? Cool (how it sickens me to be a slave to the cheap thrills of hipness)? Or Worthy? Worthy of me when I actually care and put effort? worthy of a beautiful incredible person with high standards, worthy enough to break her time (and professionally) engrained jadedness, maybe create something to feel that lifepleasurespark that lets you see the schooner inside the flourescent jagged "magic puzzle" that is life.

I saw your profile on friendster a bit back and thought of you. I havent put a testimonial on this one, and even though I no longer really use these social networking sites as much as when their newness was addicting, I felt the urge to write some trashy line like: if you ever have a chance to have a threesome with lauren and a hot N.A.P. (nubian amer. Princess), don't for the life of you, turn it down in a fit self righteousness.

But that was really just a baiting line to get into our sexual tensions conversation... Why did we never hook up? I always feared that the reality of us carnally could never live up to the fantasy, that it would tarnish that beautiful energy that magnetized us into being more interesting around each other. So many oblique chances, each one charging up the battery a bit
more, a bit more, the danger of ruining something good also tinging the mix with the exciting element of danger...

And now. now its too late. 3000 miles and a friendship later, and the energy is just on temporal freeze, too volatile to reawaken. We'll write witty emails, talk about our current lovers, be amazed as time flies, have good food when in the same geographic vicinity, wonder why life is the way it is... Plato would be proud.

Lauren. thank you. for being my friend, for almost being my lover. for giving me the most unique relationship i have with a female. the love that could always be, so hence never really was... a friendship to cherish.

sorry for the weirdness of this rant. to steal a line from wilde, i would have made this shorter, but i just didn't have the time. as i said, you caught me in the precise moment that would expunge this strange letter out of me. made me stay up til 3am, (about last night
alo helped, god, mamet, even when basterized into an 80s date movie, is so good). and now its two days later and i will finally send this.

hope all is well, that you are enjoying the criterion collection, and that the sophomore slump of life isn't hitting you as bas as me.

your friend,

.dustin barnet stephens aguilar alvarez.


i wish i could speak in this calibre of verbiage all the time. or maybe its not even that good and i'm just being a narcissitic A-hole. whatever, life is bigger than what we think of ourselves.