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09/26/2005: "Lost Among The Missing"

Having caused Chestnut financial ruin and generally made a mess of his life, Tumble has been absconding lately.

I don't know if "absconding" is the right word, but I'm so drunk i can no longer make heads or tails of my thesaurus.

Tumble has been taking a screenprinting class over at CCAC most nights, leaving in the afternoon and coming home late. To be honest, I've missed hanging out with him. We had planned to start a band (I was pulling for the name "Lords of the Tundra"; Tumble was insisting on "Feeverdome" with four e's). But as my foster father once taught me, men fight their battles in odd and maddening ways. This is the same foster father that once dared God to give him hypothermia and sat on the lawn in February wearing only a towel because he'd had a knock-down drag-out with my foster mother at a family friend's wedding. So it is.

It's been a few weeks since the eBay debacle, and although Tumble has gone so far as to work out a payment plan from his substitute-teaching paychecks, he's been reluctant to return to the house for significant stretches of time.

Well I stayed up tonight, ostensibly to rework a series of short stories entitled "Heartdroppings," but in reality to listen to Cat Stevens on the record player and wait up for my best friend (co-best friend, in case Chestnut reads this). As luck would have it, one o'clock ushered Tumble onto our porch with the remainders of a Pabst six-pack under one arm and a newly silkscreened T-shirt under the other. As Tumble smacked the needle off of Tea for the Tillerman and replaced it with Willy and the Poor Boys, I couldn't help but get the feeling, cautiously optimistic as it was, that he'd turned a corner. He handed me the fruits of his labor, a Hanes T-shirt size Large with a picture of a Hummer and the words "Sorry 'Bout Yer Penis" newly minted on the front, and sat down with me over a pair of freshly cracked cans.

People may say they've outgrown it, but the feeling of staying up too late with a good friend is one of the greatest feelings known.