  Summer 2003 - The Amazingly Amazing Tour Intermission - Austin, TX I didn't expect a warm welcome, mostly because I let few people know I was coming through. A 36 hour layover in your home city doesn't allow mounds of time to grab beers with friends and other fellows. I made the calls I thought were manditory, and left the rest to my post-Florida presence...the long haul. But from those friends, at least I would have enjoyed a phone call back. I can forgive them...no reason not to. I've flaked on my share of ceremonies, things I'm never proud of and rarely wish to think about. Spring Break, 1998: For any school vacation, the trip from Shreveport always left me a layover in Conway, as my roommate lived in Morrilton, and his family would take me to Conway and drop me off at Hendrix or UCA, from where I would latch onto a Rogers High School Class of '97 cadet, and we'd hit McAllester's or some other chain eatery, and go up to Rogers on Friday. I did this four times during my freshman year, so the trips blur together. Three of those times, I visited Daniel Harr, the fourth coming when I only stopped for an hour to pick up Sarah Kent because she needed a ride to Rogers, and Daniel was in Rogers anyway, taking Mellisa (spelled correctly) Falk to the prom as a "favor to the family.
" This trip was one of the ones where I saw Daniel. Just not for long. And not in the situation I hoped to find him in. I don't remember what I did in Rogers that week...grabass most likely, because I don't think I spent more than the weekend there, and I went somewhere else in Shreveport for the week proper. Regardless, UCA was still in class for my break, while Hendrix wasn't. So I went to Rogers with Mark Holland, and planned to come back from Rogers with Cameron Clausing...Cameron was the better friend of the two, but Mark held the intellectual mindset that I noticed in myself, and we had such a great car trip going to Rogers, that I balked on Cameron and drove back with Mark. I gave Cameron some excuse, and he laughed it off as he always did, and from that point on my communication with Cameron Clausing was severly limited. I didn't mean any harm...I don't talk to Mark or Cameron anymore, and I probably miss Cameron more...but at that point, I was 18, I was experiencing newness for the first time, and Mark Holland was a mix of old-home comfort and new-wave thought...we were enjoying ourselves, so I saw no point to end that.
Cameron was going to drive me to UCA, where I would stay with Daniel Harr, and then he'd take me to Little Rock the next afternoon where Lisa Jackson and Laura Jimerson would pick me up and we'd be back to Shreveport. This was Easter Break...I don't remember for life what I did over Spring Break, but this was one of those four-day fests for private college, but not even a long weekend for public schools...there's a great Josh Dorne story in this (which Heath might remember, because Josh and I visited him, and I haven't seen Heath since) as well, but for later. I was having fun. Life was full of possibilities, my mind was constantly engaged, and I suffered from consistent permagrin.
Mark and I drove 540 to 40, discussing art, politics, religion, and girl situations, as both of us had continued to date Rogers students when we went to college, and both relationships fizzled. We listened to Ravi Shankar or some other sitar-wielding trio, pleased that we took the close familial friendships from Rogers, but could distance ourselves from its great unwashed populus. I never got ahold of Daniel Harr regarding staying with him. I maybe made a halfhearted effort...somewhere in my mind I remember a pay phone in Morrilton or Clarksville or East Russellville.
Even if I did call, it was only in show...I was still enjoying the conversation with Mark, and while Daniel was a better friend than Mark, I knew I'd see Daniel a long more...with the world at my grasp, I knew Mark and many other Rogers friends would slip away. We got into town late, threw my shit in the Hendrix dorm room, and then hit the Subway/Texaco near campus...Mark wanted a veggie sub or something. I recognized the car outside, but only in passing. We walked through the double doors, and the cold jet of air-conditioning slammed me backwards. Daniel Harr sat in a plastic booth with his roommate Travis and several other friends. He looked up at me and his face fell. I tried to play it off... I called you! Where were you! but he had been in his room, waiting for the call.
He finally realized I was giving him the old fuckeroo and hit the Subway. To remember what happened next makes me glad that I am no longer that same 18 year old. Daniel wanted to mend fences, forget I hadn't called, and I'd go stay with him that night. And I told him no. Even though my stuff was just minutes away, I said it would probably be easier if I just stayed at Hendrix that night.
Looking at Daniel's spread of friends at that moment, I knew I would intellectually enjoy a night with Cameron Clausing and Mark Holland more than I would with Daniel Harr, Travis, Keeley, and April. Daniel wouldn't take no for an answer, a testament to his character and motivation to move past my folly. He decreed that I would come eat lunch with him at McDonald's that afternoon, before I was shuttled to Centenary.
So I did. Awkward, yes. Him, me, and April, a friend of his who was engaged to a guy in the military...cool girl with a huge crush on him who wanted him to swoop in and take her so she didn't have to go with the second-best option. Since she was there, the conversation floated mostly in superfluousness, just about what was happening where and who was doing what. Daniel was realizing he wasn't going to stay at UCA much longer, though the decision point was still two months away.
But he was healthy, he had some good friends, and he was making a name for himself where he was. And just as I was starting to really enjoy his company, Lisa Jackson walked in and I was off to Shreveport. I don't think we ever mentioned it again. We had a great summer, I busted my leg, we kept in touch pretty well that year, but I didn't come home but once that next summer, and we didn't really talk at all my junior year.
I found him during the summer of 2000, and since then we've reforged a best friendship, seeing each other at least six times a year, drinking beers, playing EverQuest, and living a life well removed from Rogers High School and the townies. I got a dirty six hours on the couch in the grad student lounge, woken up at 8 by some woman checking her email...I assumed someone would find me, but figured it would be last night at 3 or so, when the drunken cavalcade arrived from Katz's needing to check email and download porn. New house. Today. Yeah, I'm excited. 
