Her weekends were spent in the library or in the bedroom, buried in textbooks.
My weekends were free, but I still wasn’t used to that. Truth be told, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. Throughout my college years, I’d either had a part-time job or, like Jane, I’d done schoolwork when I wasn’t in class. Now, having two days with nothing at all to do left me at loose ends. There was only so much work that needed to be done around the apartment, only so much TV I could watch, only so much time I could spend reading. Everything grew old fast, and I was conscious of the weight of all this free time. Occasionally on weekends, Jane and I would go grocery shopping or hit a movie matinee, but more often than not she was doing her school stuff and I was left to my own devices.
It was on one such Saturday that I found myself in Brea Mall, checking out Music Plus, buying tapes I didn’t really want because I had nothing else to do. I’d just stopped by Hickory Farms for some free samples when I saw Craig Miller coming out of an electronics store. I felt a sudden lift in my spirits. I hadn’t seen Craig since before graduation, and I hurried toward him, smiling and waving as I approached.
He obviously didn’t see me and continued walking straight ahead.
“Craig!” I called.
He stopped, frowned, and looked over at me. The expression on his face was blank for a second, as if he didn’t recognize me, then he returned my smile. “Hey,” he said. “Long time no see.” He held out his hand and we shook, though that seemed like kind of a weird and formal thing to do.
“So what are you doing now?” I asked.
“Still going to school. I’m going for my master’s in poly sci.”
I grinned. “Still hanging out at the Erogenous Zone?”
He reddened. That was a surprise. I’d never seen Craig embarrassed by anything. “You saw me there?”
“You took me there, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.”
There was a moment of silence, and it was awkward because I didn’t know what to say and it was obvious Craig didn’t either. Strange. Craig was a natural motor-mouth and had never been one to let silences remain unfilled. As long as I’d known him, he’d never been without a comment or a reply. He’d always had something to say.
“Well,” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I better get going. I’m supposed to be home now. Jenny’ll kill me if I’m late.”
“How is Jenny?” I asked.
“Oh, fine, fine.”
He nodded. I nodded. He looked at his watch. “Well, hey, I’d better be going. Nice seeing you again, uh — ” He looked at me, caught, instantly aware of his mistake.
I met his eyes and I knew.
He didn’t recognize me.
He didn’t know who I was.
I felt as though I’d been slapped in the face. I felt like I’d been… betrayed. I watched him trying to come up with my name.
“Bob,” I prompted.
“Yeah, Bob. I’m sorry. I just forgot for a second.” He shook his head, tried to laugh it off. “Alzheimer’s.”
I merely looked at him. Forgot? We’d hung out together for two years. He was the closest thing to a friend I’d had at UC Brea. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of months, but you didn’t completely forget the name of a buddy in less than half a year.
I understood now why he’d been so awkward and formal with me. He hadn’t known who I was and had been trying to bluff his way through the conversation.
I thought he’d try to make up for it now. He knew me. He remembered me. I figured he’d loosen up a little, stop acting so stiff and distant, start a real conversation, a personal conversation. But he looked again at his watch, said, “Sorry, I really do have to go. Good to see you.” Then he was off, giving me a quick impersonal wave, heading briskly through the crowd, away from me.
I watched him disappear, still stunned. What the hell had happened here? I looked to my left. On the bank of televisions in the window of the electronics store I saw a familiar beer commercial. A group of college chums was getting together with beer and potato chips to watch a Sunday afternoon football game. The young men were all good-looking and good-natured, comfortable enough with themselves and each other to pat one another’s shoulders and slap one another’s backs.
My college life had not been like that.
The scene of the men laughing as they sat around the television faded into a close-up of an overflowing glass of beer, overlaid with the beer company’s logo.
I had not had a group of friends in college, a gang with whom I hung out. I had not had any real friends at all. I’d had Craig and Jane, and that had been it. My Sunday afternoons had been spent not with a group of pals, watching football, but alone in my bedroom, studying. I stared at the TVs as another commercial came on. I had not realized until now how solitarily I had spent the four years I’d attended UC Brea. Those media images of close camaraderie and lasting friendships had been only that for me — images. Their reality had never materialized. I had not known my classmates in college the way I’d known my classmates in grammar school, junior high, and high school. College had been a much colder, much more impersonal experience.
I thought back on my college classes, and I suddenly realized that I’d gone through my entire academic career having had no personal contact with any of my instructors. I had known them, of course, but I’d known them in the same way I knew characters on TV, from observation not interaction. I doubted that a single one would remember me. They’d known me only for a semester and even then only as a number on a roll sheet. I never asked questions, never stayed after for extra help, always sat in the middle of the room. I had been completely anonymous.
I had been planning to hang around the mall a little longer, check out a few other stores, but I no longer felt like doing so. I wanted to be home. All of a sudden I felt strange wandering from shop to shop alone, anonymously, not noticed or known by anybody. I felt uncomfortable, and I wanted to be with Jane. She might be busy studying, she might not have time to do anything with me right now, but at least she knew who I was, and that alone was a comforting thought, incentive enough to make me leave.
I found myself thinking about my meeting with Craig as I drove back to the apartment. I tried to explain it, tried to rationalize it, tried to play it off, but I couldn’t. He had not been a mere acquaintance, someone I saw only in class. We had gone places together. We had done things together. Craig was not stupid, and unless he’d had some sort of brain tumor or mental illness or drug problem, there was no way he could have forgotten who I was.
Maybe the problem wasn’t with him. Maybe the problem was with me.
That seemed the most likely answer, and it frightened me to think about it. I knew I was not the most interesting person in the world, but was I so hopelessly boring that even a friend could forget who I was within the space of a couple months? It was a terrifying idea, and an almost unbearably depressing one. I was not an egomaniac, and I certainly didn’t harbor any illusions about my making a significant mark on the world, but it nonetheless unnerved me to think my existence was so meaningless that it passed entirely unnoticed.
Jane was on the phone when I arrived home, talking to some girl from work, but she looked up when I entered, smiled at me, and that made me feel good.