8 people i wish i was still in contact with

i wrestled all weekend with what to call this post. in the end, the title still doesnt sum it all up, but it will do.

i dont lose touch of people very easily. but it still happens — sometimes its me, sometimes its them, sometimes its both. but the following 8 people i would love to get an email from, have a beer with, have back in my life in some way.

it isnt a complete list by any means — ive already thought of other who could be on it. so if you arent on this one, drop me a note anyway. and if you know how to get in touch with any of these people, please let me know. it would make me damn happy.

felix gill

this guy transferred into washington-henry when i was in 7th grade. dan (see below) became friends with him and when we ended up in middle school in 8th grade, i ended up hanging with felix. he had failed a couple of times, smoked and ended up sleeping with the girl i wanted to marry (at the time). (and yes, this was when i was in 7th grade. and meagan had skipped a grade. so really, she was having sex when she was a 6th grader.) but felix, for all his faults, was a really good guy at heart. sometime in 9th grade, he moved across town. dan saw him a few times and then i never heard any more about felix. i dont know if he is alive, dead, jailed or free. but mr gill, id love to buy you a beer and shoot the shit sometime.

dan sheets

one of the easier people i can find on this list, i think. his father died a couple of years ago and i think my parents saw most of the family at a benefit concert, but im not sure dan was there. i heard a bit later that dan's mom had sold the house they had lived in forever and moved. i dont know where dan is or what he is doing. but he was my best friend for many years and even though circumstances and schools drove us apart, id love to be trading emails or having a drink when we are both in mechanicsville. we lost touch sometime in high school and i dont think ive seen him since. i drive by his old house almost every time i am home and think of him. and now i cant even go ring the doorbell.

sherry mills

karen and i broke up the end up my junior year. in aug, a few months later, i ended up on a date with this girl id known for a while through church retreats. sherry was really cute — strawberry blonde hair and freckles. but she didnt understand that i wasnt ready for another relationship so quickly. that date turned into wanting to talk every day. it didnt help matters that she was a thirty minute drive from my parents. i freaked out, there was no second date and then no more contact. now? its 12 years later and id like to say hi. but im sure she is married, meaning i cant find her on google even if i wanted to.

matt schrag

so high school was odd — 9th grade was spent in trailers while they built a new school and then half my 9th grade class went to the new school while i stayed at the old one. it sucked. its why i lost contact with dan, with heather nelson, with jennifer moran, with matt shrag. matt and i, for that 9th grade year, were unstoppable. every once in a while, in life, you sync up with someone with amazing results. this was us our ninth grade year. we studied together, hung out, invented a cult together, came up with our own language and other off the wall crap. and then he went to the new high school and i havent seen him since. i heard from his parents when i was sick, 2 years ago. i think they gave me his email and told me he was engaged.

teresa tew

i loved this girl senior year of high school through my sophmore year of college. she was mormon and seemed to have self-esteem issues that prevented her from believing i liked her. she was always paranoid i was laughing at her or making fun of her just from simply paying attention to her. its a shame; i always really wanted to date her and she blew me off at almost every turn. last i heard, she was married…but this was like 4 years ago.

julie hill

i loved julie too. she and i hooked up once and sometime thereafter, she decided she didnt love me. we fell out of touch but then came back around sometime when i moved to richmond after school. but then petunia and i broke up (for a weekend once) and i called julie the next day, asking her to hang out. i think she took it as a date/rebound/weird thing, where really i just wanted someone to hang out with and talk to. she declined and ignored me after that. somewhere in a pile of stuff, i still have a handwritten note with her email on it. i think. it said 'julie hill, publishing shit' and her email. she wanted info from me on getting into publishing.

brandon gentry

half of the psi-u 'crafty and the worm', gentry and i did the talk radio show on wcwm every sunday night. 2 hours of talking for a year and a half. the two of us got really good at riffing of of each other. i ran into him in 2001 in alexandria — i was in a car, he was walking on the sidewalk. i jumped out of the car (i think we had stopped moving but were still in the middle of the street) and all but tackled him. he was intown from austin for some reason. i got his email, but nothing every came of it. i dont know if he is still there or what.

allen fawcett

who was also in austin at the time. this guy joined psi u late but i loved hanging with him. he was coming out of his goth phase but still had the clothes and the incredible hair — so damged he needed no mousse to style it. i guess this whole post ends on a happy note — i just googled him and got his flickr page. hes in dc. and im off to drop him a note.