As evidenced by my previous post, my revisions for this week are finito! That's not to say I won't have another round to go with them. In the meantime, what can I tell you?

I went off in search for my school's alumni magazine. Oddly, they haven't yet caught up with me since moving in June. I wasn't searching to read it, I was curious how they handle their web presence. Do they PDF the magazine and plop it up as a link? My heart was warmed to see they don't. OK, that's not going to make me think twice about not giving money but still, I'm happy to see they don't make that mistake.

Happier still when I read the lead story, which mentioned someone I used to hang out with. Those were the days of devoting hours to a dark, basement dry bar--it wasn't always dry--listening to live jazz, pining over this trumpet player or that bass player, and pretending to do homework. The Hatch. What a place! I'd love to see what's become of it but I know I can never recapture it's impact on me.

From '90-94, if school was in session, you could almost always find us there on a Monday night, occupying a table filled with open notebooks and textbooks. "Us" was the three of us: Becky, Megan, and me. Our reasons for being there were not always innocent but we veiled it well by getting through our work for the night. Over 14 years later and the images are still clear in my head--the director snapping his fingers and the exact movement of his head, the tunes they played and the ones I'd put down my pen for, the ridiculous faces the sometimes-present guitar player made, and the feeling in my gut caused by certain trumpet notes.

A few years after I graduated I went to check out The Hatch. I had different friends with me and I didn't know people involved with the jazz band. (One does not know Jeff Holmes, one simply escapes his wrath.) My intention was not to recreate what once was, rather I wanted to share a meaningful experience with different friends. Only later did I appreciate that the original experience, though drawn out over four years, was made meaningful by those specific friends.

This revelation stunned me. During these evenings, we didn't talk much. It wasn't possible to talk easily over the sound of the band. You could talk during breaks but we usually hunkered down over our books then because, truthfully, it was almost impossible to read/write/calculate/memorize/comprehend with music that loud. I questioned what kept me coming back to this place, Monday after Monday for four years if it wasn't the music, the love of jazz, the lust of one musician or another. Why, then, would it matter who was at the table?

I never equated those evenings with friendship or relationship building. Had I, I probably wouldn't have been game for them since I stink at both. Eventually I realized the draw was one of the few things I truly cherish about friendship--that shared comfort which allows you to sit for hours and share few words, yet go home feeling as if you had a night out together. Those friendships don't come along every day and, sadly, they don't always stick.

You will probably never find the three of us together again and certainly not at The Hatch for the jazz band. Though two of us live less than 1 hour away we almost never make the time to get together. Our lives and priorities are so very different from each other that even when we do, it can be painfully awkward. The third friend, Megan, lives in Denve and married one of those guys from the band. Good for her! During school she had a big crush on him. About 7 years after we graduated, they were both living in Denver and eventually a romance--not a midnight booty call, mind you--began. An unfortunate series of circumstances led to us not being on talking terms.

Last year I drove through UMass on my way to Vermont to meet up with my husband and in-laws for a family vacation. The drive through brought back many memories. Some day I might have enough time to visit and walk to some of the memorable places. Like the hardscaped area outside the library where Megan once got me real good when she asked "Guess who asked me about you? Come on, just guess. You have to guess. No, you're never going to get it." Like a little kid being teased with a wrapped gift I peppered her with "who? WHO? WHO?!" The climax hilarious, but heartbreaking, "Nobody, cuz you're a loser!" (I used that one for months on everyone I knew, hoping they hadn't heard it yet.)

I spent 10 years of my life in that area, most of it as a student or employee of UMass. I'd love to move back some day but struggle with the idea. Though I hesitate to quantify my reappearance at The Hatch, I wonder if moving back would uncover similar sentiments.

How much of our experience is shaped by the people we share it with? Are the people the experience and the remaining superfluous? If relationships are the experience, where does it leave someone like me: a self-admitted relationship failure?