Now is the time in sprockets when we say our goodbyes.

The most difficult goodbye (as if I need to tell you this) is going to be saying goodbye to Matt. Maybe we'll see each other again, but who knows when, or if, or under what circumstances, it will really happen.  So, man, that'll pretty much suck.

Luckily, I am not faced with that goodbye quite yet. I'll be doing another quick round trip to pick up my stuff, when I move into my new place. That's two weekends from now.  That's when the real heartbreak happens. In the meantime, I'm going to go with denial. That's working well for me.

I have been saying goodbye to the other people in my life, though, and as you know, last night we had a party. The party was at Tim's friend Mark's house.  Matt and I emptied out the contents of our liquor cabinet, picked up Tim, and hauled the whole lot over to Mark's place. 

A few of Mark's friends were already there, and I was happy to see them. Very few of my friends were coming to the party, especially since I didn't invite anyone until the last minute. But there were four guys already there, all friendly, and we had plenty of liquor to keep us entertained. Matt made me a Purple Hooter with 100 proof vodka.

The rest is a blur.

Okay, that's not quite true. But by the time Abby, Ash, Lucy, Charlotte, Bruno and Joan showed up, I was at least three sheets to the wind. Maybe more. I remember everyone casting votes on my hair (two people didn't like it, everyone else said they did, Tim stared for a while, then said it's freaking him out, but he likes it). 

I remember writing Mark's e-mail address on HIS dry erase board so I wouldn't forget it. I remember collapsing with laughter more than once, especially when Tim was on the phone with Danielle for 20 minutes and wouldn't let her talk to me.

I don't remember how the whole thing ended, but I never did get the phone, that much I know.

Today, I had a message on my machine from the party. Someone said something funny and I made them leave it on my answering machine. Now it makes absolutely no sense. ("It's stupid, it's ugly, and it smells like YOU.") You know how it goes. Drunken revelry is always fun.

I feel sort of bad for all my friends. Matt was the designated driver, and it must have been boring as hell to be sober among all these strange drunk people.  I don't think I really talked too much to anyone else, and I know they thought Mark and his friends were kind of odd. They are, but in a good way. Man, I had a blast.

Mark also threw a beer on Tim. I wish I had been sober for that. As it was, it just happened in super-slow motion. Everyone sat around staring at each other in disbelief, and I kept asking people, "Hey, is everything tense right now?  What's this like, from a sober perspective?" We still can't believe Mark did it. We all got over it, of course, and Mark gave Tim a new shirt out of his hamper. Strange. It was a full beer, too.

So, that's it, really. I had an incredibly fun time, got drunker than I have been in a long time, and don't remember a whole lot. Apparently, I staggered back to the apartment: I have no memory of anything after we left the party. I'm still hungover, I kid you not.

More good news is that Mark is going to be in Oakland at the end of the month (for work) and we're hopefully going to hook up (not in a homosexual way). It's nice to know that he wants to be friends; I always considered him sort of standoffish. I just assumed he wasn't as charmed by me as the rest of the world. But based on his current enthusiasm for me, I guess I was wrong.

I told Abby about my web site a long time ago, and last week, I had the chance to show it to her. She seemed to enjoy reading my entries, especially the ones about Grandma's illness and death. She didn't even mind my representation of her, and I mentioned her penchant for drama more than once.

Of course, at the party, she leaned over to me and asked loudly, "Hey, where's your web site?" If I had been a few more sheets to the wind, I could have blurted out the (easily memorized) URL in front of a whole group of people, including Tim and Charlotte and Danielle.  Instead, I said, "Later" and hoped nobody would notice.

Tonight, Lucy asked me for the URL, while Tim was sitting right there. Tim is certainly not an idiot, and I have no doubt that he caught every word. I looked at her meaningfully and said we'd talk about it later. She then made some comment about my movie reviews in an effort to make it sound like she was talking about that.

It seemed to work, actually, but it was a close call. I almost slipped up myself and showed Tim a poem Shmuel wrote for me, calling me a "diarist" right there in it. Man, I'm bad at this secret-keeping thing.

Anyway, I gave Lucy the URL (and impressed upon her the secrecy of the site), so this is my little shout-out to her. Hi, Lucy! I promise not to talk about the plot of your show!

Tim and Lucy were over because tonight, I went out for one last dinner with a bunch of people. After dinner, those two came back over here, and we watched the finale of Survivor again. I read the new script for Lucy's show, and we basically sat around chatting for a while. Lucy left first, and we said goodbye, and promised to visit, and all that stuff.

I had no idea it would be so traumatic to say goodbye to Tim. He said that he was going to head home, and then he said, "So, you're like, moving. Wow."  We just looked at each other for a long time. I can't say what he was thinking, but I thought about how we've been best friends for nine years, and we've never been apart. It's going to be strange, that's for sure.

So we stood up, and I looked at him again. He looked away and smiled and said, "Stop looking at me like that."  (I bet it was the big blue eyes that did it.)  We hugged each other tightly. All of a sudden, I felt my throat constrict. Tim's not an emotional guy, so I didn't want to embarrass myself by crying in front of him. 

Uh oh, this is sad. I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry...  I opened the door and said lightly, "You better go. I wouldn't want to get all choked up." He hugged me again, reminded me to give him my new phone number, and then started to walk away. He turned back to smile at me one last time before he disappeared around the corner.

His eyes were glistening with tears. 

I can’t seem to get my ass in gear about things like graduate school, for example. So I’m going to try this and see what happens.