1999

This past weekend I was back in Delaware, driving around Newark with my nephew in the back blasting some Jawbreaker out the speakers of my brother's car. It felt like it was 1995, if you didn't think about the fact that none of my friends were around and pretty much every Main Street mainstay is gone to the yuppies save for a few survivors like Bing's Bakery, the National 5&10, Wonderland, the Newark Paper Store, and Al at Newark Camera. The diner is turned into some kind of condo/fancy restaurant with a parking garage, the Stone Balloon is now a wine house and condo, Bert's got bought out by that Gelato dude, Rainbow is still there but it's been sucking since it moved the first time, the bank wall and the parking lot are all either gone to the yuppies or cordoned off by the city to generate a few more bucks from charging for every kind of parking imaginable in a three block radius of Main Street. I'm usually glad I don't live there anymore, but occasionally it's nice to visit.

I got to hang out with Sarah today, which was really good since I haven't seen her since her daughter's birthday in March. We are best friends, but don't get to see or talk to each other often enough since I'm in New York and she has a family with two little kids in Delaware. I must have met Sarah when I was 16 or 17. I remember thinking she was a snobby bitch when I first saw her in Newark Shopping Center one summer night because she looked so cool and I was so dorky and she seemed to know everyone and I was just meeting people like I'd just moved to town, even though I'd lived there my whole life. Anyhow she seemed like one of the popular punk girls and I pretty much thought everyone looked down on me and thought I was ugly so I usually reacted to this ridiculous self-consciousness by being a dick and thinking every girl was a snobby bitch, and otherwise not talking to people, which usually pretty much fulfilled my own prophecy. I guess sometimes I still do this, to my own detriment.

Not with Sarah though. She somehow kicked down the door I left half closed and it seemed like only one day before we were talking all the time, laughing at pretty much everything we said, and arguing in epic clashes that reminisce an alcoholic couple married for 30 years. Only her husband may have experienced more wrath, but mine was probably worse since he'll usually quickly give in, but I would dig in for the long haul like I was preparing to take a hill in the Pacific Theater. I'm just as stubborn and hardheaded as her which would draw out our fights for months in my vain attempt to win the argument. Even during these times we would still call each other every day and start talking like nothing was wrong, until inevitably our conversations would quickly degenerate into full-blown screaming fests over the phone. Sometimes we'd do this a couple times a day, and it would go on like this until I finally admitted she was right and I was wrong.

But I can't begin to count the great times and experiences we've had together for the last 16 or 17 years. Our relationship has never been sexual in nature, so it's always been like we were high school kids on the first days of summer vacation. Today we sat in a park eating fruit and talking shit like always and it's always so easy to talk about everything that we've missed in our lives no matter how long it's been since we last talked. A ferocious storm blew in with gale-force winds and hail so we ran back to her car, and when we saw it was raining too hard to drive we sat around listening to emo-hardcore tapes old friends had made her in 1995 or 1997. She'd just seen Cap'N Jazz the night before, and I laugh because that time period is funnily awful to me and I'm a little embarrassed at myself about it. Talking with her in the car, listening to those tapes, watching the rain and hail blow sideways down this little green valley in the park, made me really glad some things don't change. When the shit hits the fan in my life, Sarah is the first person I need to talk to. She's my best friend.

I took this photo on our first trip to New York City in 1999 outside a bubble tea place on Mott Street. I was going to visit with Pat Tsai and Samantha, who was visiting from Yale. I met Samantha through Pat the previous summer in LA. Sarah and I were super late as usual, and I remember we didn't bring a map because we thought we'd find the street address by driving around, which we did, 2 hours after crossing the Lincoln Tunnel. I ended up making out with a girl under a sleeping bag that night on Pat's kitchen floor, with Sarah sleeping on a couch a mere 10 feet away. She didn't know then, but I think she would have understood what I was going through had she known.