Fences

I think I'd already written him off when I drafted that letter. A story told within the walls of my skull before it actually coalesced. I would go to the show with my daughter, Sabina, and our friend from the winery, my eyes scanning the crowds for a familiar face whilst I tried not lash out like a cornered rat at the crush of humanity around me. Years in the mountains has made me more misanthropic than before. The show would end, and with a mei fei tsu into the darkness, I would walk away, silently mourning what was lost.

I am not a creature of blind faith. Perhaps I am cynical. Maybe I'm realistic. it could be it doesn't matter, given my reaction when my phone buzzed with a digital message in a bottle;

Hey, man, it's possible I'll be there...

I loath surprises. Sabina-quite baselessly, I might add-says that, despite my embrace of chaos, I am a closet control freak, when, in fact, I neither like to be ignorant of something or caught off guard. It's my funny little way. Be that as it may, I could not help up smirk, and, perhaps even, yelp excitedly at this unexpected turn of events.

There was a response here, a reply there. Correspondences to the ether, either, and or. Sabina was quite insistent I tell my daughter who might be at the show. She asked me if I was excited.

"If I see him, I see him," I said and I don't think anyone believed me, despite my reptilian tone.

Before the show, we sat at one of my old monkey watching spots along Sixteenth Street. It took me back. Sabina and my daughter made it a point to get closer to the stage, so they could slobber over Roger Clyne, as some girls are wont to do. I chose to hung back, our friend joining me, closer to the adjoining sidewalk, closer to an escape route from the growing crowds, that lynch mob in the making, I was considering murdering one by one, entraining thoughts of razorblades and maggots. My eyes scanned for a familiar face.

It was during Banditos my phone got my attention;

We're here! Over west of the stage...

Being an aberration, of whom, were my spine straight, I'd stand a little over seven feet tall, instead of the almost six and half I am, it could be stated with a fair amount of accuracy that I am indeed head and shoulders above quite a few and people tend to look up to me. Be that as it may, I began to lean up on tip-toes for a very vantage. Seeing someone with tattoos and ballcap was a dime a dozen, but then I saw particular set of tattoos and that certain swagger.

I threw the horns-how punk rock-and he waved back with a beaming grin that more than one girl has lost their inhibitions to...

"There's the the tall lanky bastard!" Lee exclaimed as I came up and we embraced.

I'm sure the rest of the show was fantastic, and I do remember knowing all the songs that were played. However, I was busy. After two years, we needed to play ketchup; he is betrothed and living and tattooing up in Boulder, I'm the father of a recent high school graduate. It was lovely. Brief, but lovely.

We ended how we started, hugs, good-to-see-yous and love-you-brother[s]. So it goes. I promised to swing by his shoppe in the near future, if, for no other reason, a promise to my daughter to get her nose pierced.

"I hope that someday this fence can be mended," someone said to me recently when I more than three-quarters wondered if my friendship with Lee had drifted into that entropy where old friendships go to die.

As I watched him disappear into the city crowds once more I caught myself smirking hopefully. I am not a creature of blind faith, but I caught myself wondering in this context. Perhaps the fence was on its way to being mended, but maybe it was never really broken in the first place.