"I met this girl and she is awesome!!!"

2015-01-25 - 3:08 a.m.

Time is beating me, it's not a game and there isn't points, neither win nor lose, but it is a push and pull, tui and la. My friend died recently and how relative I have let relationships become in the transgressions with time is the strangest part.

It is a peculiar thing, if I were to try my hardest to spill out my memories of my friend, they would probably be only a handful. I remember riding my bike, sometimes in the rain and sometimes on the dry pavement, through Seattle last March. I flew into Vancouver from Seoul and was berated by a Canadian immigrations officer, in that moment I realized I forget how serious some people take things. My travels back into Vancouver a few weeks later made me realize it wasn't personal, it is because I am American. I was ready and gave detached one word answers just as the officer had seemed to be trained to ask detached questions that would provide such apathetic one word answers.

I tried to climb up and down a construction site of a bridge once in Seattle to save time, but was caught by a single worker on duty.

I went into work to surprise my friend, an easy 40 minute ride or so, I spoke to a middle-aged man, also riding, on my way. I asked him where I was to confirm that I was going on the correct path. He reminded me again not everyone is a Canadian immigrations officer. My friend's co-workers were uneasy and very apparent in unknowing how to act in the combination of my presence and under which the circumstances I had arrived into.

I have been stuck in school for four years too long, then away in Colorado for a year where girls liked me for the first time in my life, losing everything within 24 hours of returning to Indiana for three months, before going to Korea for almost three years. Parts of me are completely different, but the pieces of me I have deliberately kept intact, the fragments your friendship has helped developed, are still there and I want to see my friend. One of my friend's co-workers looks to another one of his co-workers and asks, "Should we tell him?" I wasn't in denial or in shock about what was going on. I still waited patiently for them to provide me with a phone number so I could continue my ride to my friend.

I remember the hospital being hilly to get to, but not terribly hard to find considering there was a river to cross and my limited directions. I walked into the room to see my friend wearing a hospital gown, in bed, and his wife sitting to his left. He was slow and careful when he got up to use the bathroom, but I think that's because it was uncomfortable to move the tubes going in and out of his body.

I remember the night I filled out my card for the state school that accepted me to find a more compatible pot luck roommate for me in one of the campus dorms. I was 18 years old, the season was transitioning from spring to summer, I was happy to be done with high school, I was even more happy to move out of my parents' house, and I sat in their kitchen, with their large sliding glass doors in front of me black from the night, and I wrote next to 'likes', "Anime, like Cowboy Bebop!" and next to 'additional information', " A roommate that doesn't mind bad guitar playing." I even remember Nate telling me at one point he wrote, "I don't mind loud noises..." in the same part of the large flash card assessment.

He also claimed he didn't smoke, even though he did socially at times. I smelled it on him once and had a short interrogation, by short I mean it was one question followed by a rapid confession. I drove him to work once and he told me that I was a good driver because I check more than a few meters in front of me. I remember thinking it was lucky that I looked that far ahead to check the traffic lights to see it turn red and anticipate a stop.

He hung up Dragonball Z wall scrolls in our dorm room and I supported it. He played scrabble with friends and one night spoke of a game he used to play on Nintendo but couldn't remember the title. He said, "You use your shield and attack with it..." I didn't know which game he was referring to, I had missed this one in my childhood I thought. A few days later he had a copy of it and played relentlessly until he completed it, 'Rygar'; and a few weeks later he was just as zealous playing the remake on PS2, which was one of the current consoles at the time. Nate had a girlfriend, still in high school, and I had nocturnal emissions the first six times she stayed over...up in my bunked bed. The running gag of my life.

One night I returned to find a song I was downloading had completed. This was my first time downloading music considering the poor dial-up connection my parents' had at their home and then resistances came from the firewall in the dorms in finding a program that could actually bypass it. Songspy is what worked for a short time; Nate was in bed however it didn't stifle my excitement. I exclaimed that the song was finished and played it. Nate jumped out of bed, started up his computer and we had a back and forth of songs.

He had opinions that were of an older brother. I played guitar in the bottom of the stairwell next to our room often and even went down there to cry once after he had showed me 'Vanilla Sky'. The 90's summed him up well though, listening to Cake and Soul Coughing, watching 'Invader Zim', and he loved the movie 'Hackers' for obvious reasons.

Sitting in the hospital room I asked him if he remembered the text based RPG he played that year, and he said that he still played it. I'm guessing I told him my hack stories of living in Asia, and maybe a few things about my girlfriend. I met his dog a few days later and rode in his car with him to hang out where his wife worked at a coffee/post office/shop. I felt welcome.

It is a bit strange to think, maybe some people are remembered for holding memories so well. I gave up walking that year for Lent and skipped everywhere for forty days, Nate wore a long black coat and had stiff red hair. He turned 21 that year, he held off on starting college for a year and was in his second year at that time.

Sometimes Cancer forces people to play a game, you can die or you can take this poison and endure this radiation and we can see who survives my mutated cells or your body. Time is a bit similar maybe, it will keep going and you get to decide how consumed, observant, willing, welcoming, or zealous you will be.

Nate also told me in the hospital that the animes I introduced him to still hold up, even now.

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