In Twenty Years....

You turn up at my front door with a bottle of Bombay Sapphire in hand and a smirk. Twenty years after college and I still only grudgingly drink gin in your company. I get two glasses, lots of ice, a little tonic. For the duration of our night-long conversation, every time I take a sip I grimace, every time I grimace you smile, and every time you smile I need to take another sip. This vicious circle is probably the most benign one we've seen during our long friendship.

Our eyes drift to the newer pictures plastered across my walls. The ones from our younger days are still my favorite - of us laughing at each other and all the sublime qualities of the city we both fell in love with. There are photos from my travels. You ask for the stories lurking behind the more startling images. I start by retelling an event in graphic detail, say crashing an inglorious motorbike - nothing like the ones I compulsively photograph - off a dirt path in central Asia. I quickly lose myself in describing the more memorable people I encountered - faces, accents, attitudes, idiosyncrasies. The days and years since college swiftly slipped away, we conclude after pouring over hundreds of photos together.

Now we're a little drunk, which inevitably leads us to playfully argue about how and why we first met. We skirt around some sensitive ground. You wield your trademark eye-locking glance and Cheshire cat smile; I stay silent for a moment longer than makes you comfortable. Somethings never change, we think to ourselves.

We begin to scrutinize each other for alterations. I wear a pair of 1950s black-rimmed glasses now, because after forty years my vision finally began to blur. I remind you, to rob you of your satiated look, that my sight will never approach legally blind like yours. It's impossible to pinpoint what exactly has changed about you with age; you always reinvented yourself on a monthly basis. But your eyes, thankfully, haven't lost a degree of intensity.

The rising sun dyes the sky blue with streaks of pink. We decide to grab coffee to sober up for the day. Though it is a trek, there is only one place our feet will take us, only one place worthy of capping off another classic night of catching up, only one place where our friendship began. I make sure to bring my camera, and I take what must be my 10,000th photo of you as you saunter down the cascading steps.

From Black Sand Journal