03.26.2002 - 11:27 a.m.

Conversations...a good one can make an entire room full of people disappear, until all you see is the two or three closest to you, all leaning forward in their seats, talking, talking over the ends of each other�s sentences, gesturing with a beer bottle or a free hand. The light in their eyes (you can feel it in your own, too) is not so much about an alcohol buzz, although a fuzzy calculation of time and number of drinks tells you there must be a bit of that, at least in yourself. The three you are talking to are male, bigger than you and probably less far along. You almost wish you weren�t drunk, because a buzz is so much smaller than what is happening to the group of you...

When we left, the DD was going to drop me off at home, but the rest of them wanted me to come home with them, to hang out, to talk...clich� or no, I felt like a kid at Christmas finding one last package tucked behind the tree. My car was still over there, anyway.

There were only three of us, now.

We talked...(Let me see who you are, how you think. Tell me a contradiction so I can find a deeper similarity. I want to ask a question and see it excite you; I want to hear your answer and feel it shift my beliefs. I want to watch myself shift yours. Now, for the space of this moment, let us agree not to be strangers, and we will build something higher, more beautiful than our separate truths...) God, it�s been years...

Years...

We talked more, but by 1:30 it was fading. We were getting tired, and the night was getting older; we were coming down the other side of the mountain. One of them went to bed around two, hitting the hall light on his way out. I don�t know if he realized it was the only light we had.

The two of us remaining sat silent, invisible to each other, waiting or wanting, but there was nothing left to discover except who would sleep on the couch, and who would get the spare bed. The moment was over.

I couldn�t let it go. All I wanted was to feel something sublime...

A conversation like that can fuel your thinking for days. If only I could breathe at the summit, I would never, ever come down.

-stonebridge

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