Brent's House: Catching Up

So before leaving my hometown yet again, I really wanted to see Brent's house.

Brent is an old friend of mine. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement... "old friend" doesn't fully express it. Brent was my best friend for seven years! He was also my lover for most of that time (with a few breaks here and there), and we lived together in three different cities. Brent was also the person in my life who broke my heart the worst: he and a mutual friend secretly started a romance together when I still thought we were "lifers"! The suffering I went through at that time (and created for myself, partly) was one of the most difficult, painful, and dangerous episodes of myself I have seen.

Of course, time passes. My debts are paid off, my heart is no longer broken, and Brent is still a great guy. Our mutal friend (who I didn't know quite so well at the time) must be great too, because she is now his wife and they just bought a new house!

My mom thougth I was crazy to want to visit them, and wondered why I wanted to see them at all, as if it would be like re-opening an old wound. I didn't talk to Mark about it but from things he has said in the past, he probably would have said "Ugh, you don't need those jerks!" Seb, ever the balanced perspective, said, "Hmmm, sounds awkward."

I don't know why I didn't see it that way myself. I just wanted to see Brent's house! I wanted to meet his dog, Astro, whose legendary cuteness I'd so far only witnessed in pictures. It seemed so exciting to me that he had a house and a dog and a wife. I mean, how different can you get from the path I've taken? And I wanted to see Kaisha too, because even though I never knew her very well, I did really like her at first. Plus, I have kept in touch with her over the years and I've enjoyed how both of us have deepened our involvement with yoga over time. So I thought it would be a nice way to spend a couple of hours, a fun thing to do. I thought I would feel glad to see them.

"Glad" is not a strong enough term!

I felt like I was over the moon as soon as Kaisha opened the door. She was the one I remembered, the super nice one from when I first met her, and not the kind-of-mean one from later when (I now realize) she was probably just uncomfortable with me because of her desire for my at-the-time partner. She was smiley and sweet, the same girl who invited me to an Easter Egg Hunt and took me to her stitch-n-bitch group and went to see Nardwuar with me and introduced me to her vegan celebrity friend and played badminton with me at the beach and just CARED about me all those years ago.

Brent is still the same soft-spoken, kind, unassuming, intelligent, great conversationalist he was when I first met him. A bit tubbier now, and not as shy, but overall, he's the same nice guy I was best friends with for such a long time. I think he might have been a little bit shy of me from not seeing me in so long, because I ended up exchanging more words with Kaisha than with him - but then again, Kaisha (like me) talks a lot, while Brent has always been a man of few words. When he does speak, it's like Silent Bob: meaningful and to the point! I'd really like to hang out with Brent again when I go back to Victoria, maybe one-on-one, so we can have the kind of rational-mind-on-overdrive philosophical conversations about life he's so good for, as opposed to one of the stoned philosophical conversations about life I'm good for!

Their son (oops I mean dog) Astro is as I expected. Brent and Kaisha are both serious dog lovers, and Brent in particular has an amazing affinity for animals. He is able to understand dogs' thoughts and feelings and communicate effectively with them. In fact, Brent's interactions with humans are often guided by what he has learned from interacting with dogs. (When I first met him, he modeled his interactions with me after his interactions with his childhood dog, Amber. "I could rub your tummy all night" was one of the things he said our first night together. I didn't bark.) So I was sure his dog would be well-trained... and he is. Astro did tricks casually that are far beyond other dogs' mastery. And I heard, but have yet to see, that he is an almost Olympic-calibre frisbee catcher. Apparently Brent plays frisbee with Astro every day... just like he used to do with me!

And their house is perfect. It's a cute small fixer-upper in Fernwood and they are doing a great job with the renovations, aided of course by Brian (Brent's handyman dad who I've often missed, even more than I've missed Brent). Their plans for the house sound great to me.

It was a real trip to hear their updates on people once familiar to me but now strangers: Tom Godfrey, a guy I dated briefly in first year and Brent's great friend since elementary school, is now married to a Chinese girl. Wesley has a baby. Brent's mom Gabi's MS has acted up and she uses a scooter now. All the news brought tears to my eyes, either of joy or of sadness.

Now, as if the house, dog, and wife weren't enough... Brent offered me a ride to the bus stop in his car! These people are real adults, man, they even have a car! The way he casually offered made my jaw drop. "You have a drivers' license?" I asked, incredulous. Brent had failed his drivers' test multiple times back when he and I were together. Brent laughed. He still hasn't passed! Kaisha drove.

Overall, I felt like I was reconnecting with my great friends. It felt SO GOOD to be with Brent and Kaisha again! It has been years, and I don't think I really knew how much I missed them in a just-hanging-out way until I went to their house. I feel so much love for those two people and I was almost overwhelmed by the warmth of my emotions when I realized that I was reunited with people who are still, after everything, my friends. Yes, that's just what it was - I felt like I was seeing my dear and much-missed close friends after a seperation of years.

Thanks for the visit Brent and Kaisha! I won't be back in Victoria until April but when I come back, I sure hope to see you again. Let's not be strangers anymore!