This week’s F5 question is Morgaine‘s.

Well, I’ve been thinking about absent friends – the people you just aren’t in contact with any more, for whatever reason. Maybe it was intentional, on either of your parts, maybe there is something unresolved between you, maybe you just lost a phone number or address and you would be in touch, if only you could! – so:

Who are the five people from your past you would most like to be able to see, speak to or simply communicate with, by whatever means? Why did you lost touch? What would you tell them if only you had the chance – without fear of major repercussions, especially if that’s why you haven’t been in touch already!

Well, mind you, I have a funny definition of out of touch. Some people I don’t have contact with for months or even a year or so, and then we contact again. And those people I don’t consider I’m out of touch with. So these are people I actually miss.

Secondarily, I am on holiday, which is a weird experience in a foreign country, alone. It means you feel out of touch with almost everyone, and you think about your life and the people and places in it in a different way. In some respects, the answer I give now is likely to be something quite unlike what I might say were I typing it in my flat in Jeonju.

But I’ll give it a go, just the same:

1. My grandfather. He died when I was very young. I’d ask him to tell me stories about his life. I remember him vaguely from visits when I was a kid.
2. Mike Babb. He was my best friend in high school, and into Uni; when he came out, and got this life in club-culture, we drifted apart. I never got along too well with his boyfriend, mainly just because we’re such different people; not a case of antagonism—I remember times when Wade was very nice to me—but it made things awkward sometimes. Anyway, I last saw him a about two and a half years ago… on, yes, THE September 11th. We went for sushi in Toronto. If I could talk to him now, well… I have his email on some backup disc of my old emails; he’s a popular DJ so it’s his private email that I have lost, and I’ll have to look it out. It’d just be us catching up on lost time.
3. Someone will probably kick me for this, but I’m missing… should I say her name? Would she be embarrassed? I’ll just say, someone in Seoul. We used to talk almost every day, and she’s close to my heart, and I have called a few times from India, but she’s having a kind of hard time now and I wish I could be more supportive. So if we were in touch, I’d just listen. Well, and of course then eventually talk, and it’d be one of those long conversations. Which is why I’ve only called a few times.

4. I miss my old friend Charlie. We’ve gotten out of touch lately, we have chatted a little but I have no idea what’s going on in his life. Partly the change my schedule in Korea, partly my being a lot busier and home less, and maybe the fact I flaked out on him a few too many times about stupid things, and we are now, well, I feel it keenly. We’re apart in a way that didn’t used to exist despite living on opposite ends of the earth.

   It’s especially sad for me because he fought so hard to help me through some ridiculously bad times. He was patient, he gave me so much, he showed me, really, what a friend can be. I think more than anyone before him, Charlie showed me that. I know I was good for him too in those times, but I feel likeI got so much from him, and now, I’m whole—as whole as anyone ever gets—and more than anything I want to thank him. I want to get him drunk on all the beers I owe him, a debt I accumulated making stupid bets with him; I want to hear his voice across a table; I want to laugh at him demonstrating for me that, yes, his sandwich press is the best invention ever. I want to cheer at a football game beside him. And I guess I want to say thanks to him, even though he doesn’t want to hear it. He knows I miss him. He maybe just doesn’t know why, or how much. Hmmm. Something to make sure he knows, once I get back to Korea.

5. Erin Thurber. She was the girl I was crazy about in 5th grade, and the only thing I want to know is, when she broke up with Ryan Bandet and then she took Carla, Gregg, and Colin aside to tell them as a group, but didn’t include me in that group, why was that? Because I could deal with the girl I liked being someone else’s girlfriend, but I thought we were friends, and she kept me out of that group, even though we always, always cycled around town as a group of five. I didmeet her later and ask her why, once, and she said she’d wanted to tell me herself… but I never clarified whether she meant what what it seemed or, if it was for some other reason she wanted to tell me personally and alone. It’s not really the subject of longing or lingering feelings, just curiosity. One of those weird childhood mysteries… But then again maybe it’s best left that way.

By the way, we have some new F5ers: Mojave Sixty-Six, Roganda, and Spidra. Their links are strewn among the other Friday Fivers on the right. Enjoy!