I wrote last time about how I was eagerly awaiting the unexpectedly early opportunity to meet up with my long-lost penpal-turned-friend in Bangkok, 15 years after having met him when I was 13 and he was 21. We’ve been in touch through the internet for the last five years, but I had not seen him for 14 years.

I didn’t know what to expect, and so I went into it with open expectations. I have reunited with a number of figures from my past before, with widely varying and completely unpredictable results. Some that I thought we’d get along great as adults proved to be disappointingly ho-hum, even irritating. Some that I didn’t think I’d ever be friends with have become decent acquaintances, even friends. And this past year, one most unlikely person from my distant past of summer camps gone by became one of my very best friends in the world. So past experiences could be no predictor, and with Kevin, I figured it could go either way. In all honesty, I knew that probably if we’d encountered each other on the street or through a typical means of introduction now as adults, we probably wouldn’t have become friends, owing to different personality types and interests.

But the fact was, we hadn’t met as adults on the street or by a typical means of introduction. Instead we’d met as we did, through letters, distributed by relative chance, when we were 13 and 21. And meeting as we had, we’d found a veritable connection with each other, and became friends. But precocious as I may arguably have been at 13, I was still just 13. It probably wasn’t real terribly difficult to have my respect and admiration, even affection, provided you gave half an effort, and Kevin consistently and reliably did. But now?… I’d maintained a certain soft spot in my heart for him through all these years, but not really for any concrete or justified reason, given our lack of communication and obvious lack of shared time or experience growing together. Putting up a sort of whimsied dream or fantasy that you’ve carried with you since childhood and setting it up against reality as an adult is always a risky thing. In finding it’s not as great as you’d remembered/created it to be, even if as adults we are more apt and able to rationalize and justify things away with things like “well that’s just the way it is” or “well at least now the truth is known, even if it’s not as pretty as the dream” and so on, it’s still a feeling akin to seeing Mickey walking around behind the scenes at Disneyland and it’s some dude carrying Mickey’s mouse-eared head around in one hand and smoking a cigarrette with the other. A little part of your soul dies inside.

So while I went into our 14-year reunion with open expectation, I had to prepare myself for a somewhat devastating blow. I didn’t know if we’d feel like maybe we’d outgrown each other and just didn’t share enough common ground to stand on beyond a polite and semi-formal one-time meeting. He’s a fun-loving, upbeat, energetic sort of guy. When I was younger I had a much goofier sense of humor right off the bat, with the capability of being serious and introspective. Now I think I’m rather more the other way around. Great for long-term friendships that invest enough to go the distance and really learn and grow and become the very best we can be; probably not the greatest match for “One Night in Bangkok” in which our incredibly ambitious plans involved taking advantage of the fact that we are now both well over the age of 21, and eating fried bugs.

So, I was prepared to have a fun and probably somewhat random time in Bangkok, and maybe be a little disappointed about the reality of our bond.

I wasn’t prepared for what actually happened.

The day was great. We both had our fantastic significant others there with us of course and time was short and we had partying to do, so I really hadn’t thought Kevin and I would get any time to talk one on one, which is something that is always important to me. Given that we had so long to catch up on, it was especially a bummer, but I was just going to go with the flow and make myself deal. But as it turned out, Ray needed to go out and take care of our tech issues, and Kevin’s gf wanted an hour or so to herself to rest and recompose after a long night traveling. So we got some time to really catch up after all! It was great. I got to fill in a lot of the gaps of things I didn’t know or didn’t remember, and start reacquainting with my good friend/practical stranger. I was pleased.

Then eventually all four of us gathered into one cohesive unit, introductions were made, beers were caught up on, and we moved the party to their hotel’s rooftop pool. I’ve wanted to frolic in a pool for 8 months now and it was a hot day in Thailand, so this was excellent. When the pool closed up at sun-down (lame sauce), we hung out in their room for a little bit, strange things happened with sunscreen getting smeared all over Kevin for reasons unknown (ok maybe a few reasons known: Chang, Tiger, and Singha come to mind), and at about 8pm (now that Kevin was thoroughly ready for a big day out in the sun), Ray and I parted ways with them so they could take care of some shopping they still needed to do. We made plans to meet up two hours later, where we got back together out on ol’ legendary Khao San Road and had a legendary “fkn awesome bucket”. They had an early flight out the next morning and there had been talk of them pulling an all-nighter. But they were understandably fatigued after their week of vacation down south and then the long day-and-a-night bus back up to Bangkok. For our part, we had a flight the next day too, not early (quite purposely), but to a new country wherein we didn’t yet have a place to stay or knowledge of what to expect and preferred to have our wits about us.

But still…

Now, I’m nothing if not grievously in tune with and on top of my emotions to the point of it being obnoxious (one can only sit around singing Kumbayah with one’s self for so long, after all). So for me to be blind-sided by some major flooding, rushing river of feelings that I never saw coming is pretty much unheard of. But when it came time to part with my long-lost friend, it just happened. Right there on Khao frickin San Road, and nope I never saw it comin, but I knew immediately that it was that kind of piercing feeling that needed two things: just a few more minutes together with just me and my old friend, and the chance to wish a proper goodbye to him in the face of uncertainty. I had to act fast lest I collapse into a piteous blubbering mess on Khao frickin San Road, which if you haven’t been there, with its milling insanities set to the thump of ear-imploding bass and the tap-taps of lady-boy heels treading the well-worn path towards the hotels with hourly room rates…well it’s just not an appropriate place to be staring at one’s own imminent fate as a puddle of emotional mush on the streetside. So attempting to stem the leakage long enough to step over to Chelsea while Ray and Kevin bid adieu, I did a terrible job of feigning composure and maintaining any semblance of not being a disgrace to hockey players everywhere, and asked if she would mind if I walked him home in just a few minutes. Sniff, wipe, sniff, blubber. Lady boy walks by. Oh, life.

Fortunately dear Chelsea was completely understanding, Ray is well-versed in my sentimentalities when it comes to my best of friends, Kevin was up for another beer and the chat to go with it (words being the vehicle, not the point), and I was glad to have another few minutes to compose myself back into some shape resembling something with some dignity. As another lady boy walked by. Oh, LIFE!!!

The others wished each other and us farewell and went in their different directions. Kev and I walked down Khao San, found a nice spot, pulled up a chair, and talked about whatever, until the bucket-tender of that spot decided our little intimate space where we could actually sort of hear each other was way better suited to be a deafening outdoor nightclub after all, pleaseandthankyou. We tried to bear it for a moment longer, then threw in the towel, gathered our respective bottles and ambled on towards somewhere we might be able to pretend to think. We ended up back right around the area near their hotel, where we’d sat talking that morning. O morning! That promising thing that spoke of the greatness that was yet to come, a friend not seen in an age and a lifetime…now on the brink of stepping back once more into the ether, and we had come so close to toppling already into that great beyond, there on Khao San Road. But not yet. Please, not just yet.

You see, it had come to my attention earlier that day that mine and Ray’s Japan plans might not mesh with Kevin’s after all, and we might not see him when we’re there at all – let alone actually get to maybe spend some kick-ass “Ok now I get to ACTUALLY get to know you and do stuff with you and see what you’re like, what you’re all about, and the many ways in which you are awesome” time together. Suddenly I was looking down the barrel of a gun that pre-empted this meeting as not a serendipitous early quick chance to reacquaint and then later on solidify the bonds with more time and experience to pass together at our disposal as true Friends (!!!), those kinds of people who get to hang out and interact and get to actually know each other on a regular and extended basis. Rather…this could be It. Til who knows when? Even the time in Japan that we might pass together would be limited in duration, but still relatively it would have been lovely aeons. I’d looked forward to it ever since Ray and I set our sights on Asia. But now, that…gone?

Sure we have technology that we didn’t have in ’97 to “Have a great summer, K.I.T.!”, and we have obviously managed to make good enough of it to get to this point, meeting in Bangkok. And Kevin had cared enough about me once to seek ME out after so many years of lost contact (usually my role in such things); I’m pretty sure we’ll never lose contact with each other again. But while for a person like me or apparently also like Kevin it is pertinent to build bridges and bridge gaps in time, distance, or circumstance with other people, and CARE about them, for a LONG ASS TIME, no matter what the odds…in the end, there is no substitute for in-the-flesh, eye-to-eye, One Day, One Room, precious seconds with a person. I had gone into this meeting as I said, without expectation, or even hope. I still cared about Kevin from our early days enough to maintain the contact once re-established even if it lagged on his end sometimes, or to drop a hello his way once in awhile. But I didn’t know him well enough to know if I cared enough to hope that we’d hit it off. If we didn’t, so what? Nothing really vastly would be changed in our lives, after all. Worst case scenario, we’d just kind of dry up. It happens sometimes (“that’s the way it is”, “well at least the truth is known now” and all that). For once, with this person, owing to the distance that had kept us apart all this time, I had the luxury of moderate indifference.

But after we’d talked another hour or two outside his hotel, just sharing the time-space for a bit longer and spilling out whatever either of us had in there that might enable us to for now go our separate ways once more and at least know that we had “caught up” with each other… We stood up from our bench on the side of the (lady boy-free) road, and stepped to the edge of that critical juncture, where he’d go forward and I’d turn around and go back, down that long infamous road to my own hotel.

Down to moments now.

It had been a short time, sure, but with that last hour or two, I knew…it had been Enough time. I realized standing there with him, knowing this was it, knowing this might be It, for if not part of this trip, for Ray and I it’s practically an eternity, as we live lifetimes in a week, every week, on this journey, and what may lie beyond that for now is inconceivable…and anyway there are never guarantees. Standing there now with Kevin, I stood next to him, taking in the incredible fact that there we were, after 14 long years, mere inches apart rather than the miles and lifetimes it had been for so long and was about to become again, and I realized, I know this guy inside out. Of course there are still so many details to be filled in and that would be so fun to do so, new stories that could be written with both of us in it, shared life experiences (I had so looked forward to snowboarding with him in Japan!), more hours spent talking and getting to know each other better.

But for me and precious few in my life, and I’m pretty damn sure by now they know definitively who they are, those (marvelous) details are just that: details. If you look at me and the ten people I consider my closest friends, it’s a pretty ridiculous and awesome mix. None of them really make sense in relation to another. They don’t all run in the same circles. In fact, none of them do. A few of them I spend a large portion of my life trying to figure out if they even LIKE me, let alone LOVE me! But that’s ok, because even that to me is just details. What’s big then? What’s bigger to me than *gasp* maybe not being loved in return?

It’s who people Are.

It’s that people get it. It’s that people carry around all this stuff, they harbor all these fears or uncertainties or insecurities or imperfections or shortcomings…but they still get it. They still get it, even if they fight it. They still get it, even if they’re crap at showing it. They still commit, they still give. I may have to drag it out of them, for YEARS on end (cough Ray cough), and I may have to show some serious initiative and heart to stay in the game. But they get it. When I ask it of them, they are the ones who always share themselves with me, as much and as deeply as they can, and sometimes a lot more than what is comfortable to them. What’s more important to me than being liked, or even loved by other people? Other people. Period. If a person can sit beside me and have the guts to turn him or herself inside out and be honest and FEEL, in a world that beats honesty and feeling out of people every day, then what more could a person ask? The rest is just details. What matters is that that connection is made between two people. What matters is that they know how to care, deeply.

I can hardly even wrap my head around the pain it was to say goodbye to him. Not just goodbye, but goodbye for how long. It had been 14 years this time…would it be 14 years again? Would it be ever again? I put my hand on his shoulder, appreciating how awesome it was that for just that last moment I could do so, and I knew we both felt how incredible it was, after all this time, after so much time and so much distance and so much passed under our respective bridges. I’d become an adult, he’d had so many years of life experience, so much pain, so much challenge. But here he was still, my friend, my Kevin, as upbeat and beautiful and wonderful as he’s always been. And to my great surprise and supreme pleasure…loved me more than ever.

We’d never exchanged “I love you”s before, or anything remotely physical. Maybe we’d hugged in greeting when we met the once or twice before, but it was inconsequential. Yet now there was no doubt, no question. When we said goodbye, he hugged me tight and told me he loved me, without hesitation, without second thought. I’d not even thought about whether I would or would not say it to him, did I or did I not feel it for him; I went into this with no expectation, nor even hope or reservation that it would go great or fear that it would not. And so all we had was raw what-it-is, and what it was was real, intense, deep, lasting, beautiful, and unabashedly caring. That is what friendship is to me; that is who I bring into me to count as my closest friends. The people who get that.

And as I stood there with Kevin, that bitch of emotion absolutely bowled me over again, just as unexpectedly as earlier if not moreso, since you know, I thought it would have worked its way out of my system by now. But it wasn’t just the sadness of departure this time. It was just utter appreciation for this guy standing right there with me, who had spent the last twenty minutes (and many years, in a number of ways both vocal and tacit) regaling me with encouragements and praises, and more than even the kind words he used, what I recognized most in him above all that night: he gets me. He always has. 87 other kids never even got acknowledged when we sent those letters. He not only acknowledged me, but he respected me, he appreciated me, even back then. I didn’t know and didn’t even dare to think that the bond we had back then was something that could transfer into adulthood, not when we didn’t cross those seas together, in each others’ lives.

But I remember as I hugged him goodbye, I don’t think I’ve ever been so overcome by emotion that I didn’t CARE what the rules were or weren’t about acceptable degrees of caring about a person that you supposedly barely know; I knew him dammit, and well. And it had been so many years since I’d seen him, and there are no guarantees in life: who knows when, or If?, I’ll see him again, now without a working plan. The future now was a question mark for us, and we would just have to wait and see how it played out. But I had him for that one last moment, at least. And so to hell with it. I put my hands on his shoulders and my forehead against his, and I just cried. How it hurt to say goodbye! I pressed my watering eyes against his shoulder and just took in the moment of holding the back of his head in my hand, so close, so precious. What a wrenching moment, knowing that when you step away, you will have to walk away. Have I ever been so sad to say goodbye, to let go? I think not since Sjoerd first left, and that was a given. Who would have thought I’d feel so much for this?

But I did. I did, and for as much as it hurt, it was wonderful. I am so glad to have felt so much, so much pain to hold him once then hold him when again?, ever?, but so much pleasure to have him within my grasp but for a moment, and to know that even as adults we didn’t just “get along” in person, but were truly real friends, who loved each other. How had we grown together over so many years in a life where we’d grown up first not knowing each other, and then not growing together in time? By all rights, we should have grown apart, far apart. But we didn’t. We grew together, and our care for each other had grown proportionally to the 15 years we’ve known each other, somehow. I hugged him once more and held onto his hands as I stepped away, taking in his face, his eyes his arms his shoulders one more time…I’ll never stop marveling at how incredible the opportunity is to have such a luxury with a person! I squeezed his hands and he squeezed mine back; touch – that invaluable smallest but biggest communication afforded to us as humans, friends, when we’re not too shy or stand-offish to use it!

I felt it as his fingertips separated from mine, both a tearing of the soul and a cementing of it. We had it; I knew now that this friendship would always be this deep and kind and caring with him, and I felt rich.

I smiled through the tears as I took one last look at him, told him I loved him, then turned and walked back into the night, down along the length of the legendary Khao San Road.