IN WHICH THE AUTHOR CALLS A FRIEND TO BETTER REMEMBER A PAST EVENT

I wanted to write about an event that occurred seven years previous. I wanted to include dialogue from a conversation that transpired between my friend B— and myself so I called him with some notes on what I had approximated from my end of the exchange so he could tell me what he remembered saying, or what he would have said, or what he agreed would be a reasonable representation of what he would have said.

We both lived in one of dormitories at our school in the first months of our first year. It was the night of a weekday and we saw each other at the cafeteria and sat by a window overlooking the bronze statue of Sacagawea and the tree-lined walk to the academic buildings. Really you couldn't see the statue, the only objects visible in the dark were the emergency call posts and their blue illuminations, but I see it now. One of the benefits of memory is the ability to see in the dark, what you remember from the day remains in sight after darkness shrouds it.

You wouldn't look outside anyway—there's too much activity in the buffet-style expanse, eyeing the food lines to time the opportune moment to wait on a slab of sustainable lasagna or a bowl of ice cream, when a fresh pot of coffee is brought out, where that kid is you don't want to talk to, which tables you'd feel obligated to stop and chat with, sizing up a quarter student body in a continued process that began the day you began occupying a child's bed four feet from a stranger, the stories you begin to associate with these studying bodies. Really you just want to eat as much as possible and drink as much coffee as reasonable as fast as you can. You see Sacagawea now in hindsight, but really she wasn't there.

I had been talking to B— about what we had been calling The HBO Show. We had set up phone meetings that played as mock work sessions to get down some ideas. Ever since I fell down the concrete stairs in January I became enamored with this idea. I could fit together all of ideas up to that point, the book about Seinfeld, the collaborative autobiography with Ed, the bocce book, my musical endeavors, all the scenes I had incited or otherwise participated in. It would make a perfect HBO show: self-referential, vaguely intellectual, but it would be our generation's show in the way Girls could never be and decidedly is not. "On January 20th, 2013 Andrew Shaw-Kitch began to go back in time...but as himself."

On this night it so happened that I had some pot and so we conspired to smoke it after dinner and talk up an enthusiasm about whatever studies we intended to accomplish. However, on this night, as was wont to happen, our sojourn along the edge of the ravine a hundred paces off the road into the the redwoods inspired a dialogue that ultimately led to a cataclysmic rethinking of western civilization that spoiled the early evening's supposedly committed library excursion. It probably involved the Muppets, but such specifics are precisely why this phone call was necessary.

On this night it also so happened that Brendan had some beer in his room so we tiptoed up the stairs in our dormitory crossing our fingers that we wouldn't run into someone. It could be an authority figure or simply a friendly hall mate who wanted to say "Hello." Either way the stakes were high, though only because we were. So much is revealed in hindsight, and nothing is more clear than how silly this was. All the same, we felt a great triumph arriving at Brendan's room, looking out the peephole knowing we were in the clear. Everyone deserves the feeling of triumph on a daily basis, even if it's found in simply walking from outside into a dormitory. We sat down and an opened phonebook on the ground started the conversation.

"So, B—, I noticed the phonebook and you noticed me noticing it and I asked, 'where'd you get a phone book?' It was an undergraduate college dorm in 2005, after all, it would seem a little out of place."

"Wouldn't you have said that then, like 'What the hell is a phonebook doing on your floor? Why is there even a phonebook in this building?'"

"I guess so, let me write that down...'in this building.' So what did you say."

"I have no idea what I said. The phonebook was in your room. We were in your room, you had a bottle of wine or something and you probably wanted to listen to Pavement or something."

This was true, but I simply wanted to clarify something before we proceeded. This night had been running circles in my head for weeks now due to certain temporal incongruities turned its events into a paradox that made might heart race when I got lost in it: 1. I didn't remember waking up with a phonebook opened on my chest that autumn morning in 2005. 2. I revisited that evening several weeks prior to this conversation, December 2013. 3. After that, now January 2014, I came across some notes taken from a meeting dated February 25, 2013 in which I had written down two of B—'s ideas gleaned from the conversation: a. In the present I could be sober, however I end up at a party in the past that is technically prior to my sobriety date. And b. I wake up with a phonebook on my chest inexplicably.

I wanted B— to corroborate this detail for me because otherwise my sanity would be entirely in question. I would fear every word out of my mouth to be non sequitur, contextless, rambling and coded. I would seek help, put myself away. But no the phonebook was in my room.

"That's right, of course! So you asked me about the phonebook."

"'Spareribs, why is there a phonebook on your floor? Where can you even find a phonebook around here?'"

"'That's exactly what I've been wondering all day. I've checked all the buildings on campus and checked them all for payphones. There are six, and only four of them have phonebooks.'"

"'So you don't know how it got in your room?'"

"'I woke up this morning with the phonebook opened on my chest.'"

"'Which page was it opened to?'"

"I have no idea which page it was opened to. Do you remember?"

"Wasn't it like Patio Furnishings and Pizza or something?"

"Couldn't we just make up a maximally absurd page? That seems fair."

"We can do a little research for that one." "'Which two payphones were missing phonebooks?'"

"'The library basement, and the phone outside the cafeteria.'"

"'Were you there last night?'"

As I said: I have no memory of this night, much less the one that preceded it. It felt much like a night I would have had at the time, but all of its specifics escaped me. My first cognizance of it was a month before when I reexperienced it, though differently than my other travels into my past, it was as though I were experiencing it for the first time.

"Now this is where the conversation gets weird, B—."

"The conversation wasn't just weird, buddy. You started looking at me as though in that moment you lost your mind. Your eyes doubled in size, your mouth slowly opened as far as it would go and your hands went in the air, fingers opened, swatting at the air in total, physical disbelief. Isn't that why we're having this conversation? This is the scene when you tell me. This is how it starts."

"So...you remember. This really happened. I haven't made this up in my mind."

"Oh my god. It's January 2014! That's where you were on that night, now I see why you're freaking out. It's OK. Let's just finish the dialogue, Spare. The universe is a loving one."

"'I don't remember where I was last night!'"

"And then you just stared at me still looking totally insane, but I just figured you were really stoned and worked up about the phonebook thing, so I laughed, which seemed to cause you to smile, making your face look a different kind of crazy, occasionally squinting, standing up and sitting down, biting your lip and staring at space as though you were figuring out an intensely satisfying puzzle. Then you sat down right next to me smiling hugely and started to whisper."

"'B—...'"

"'What's going on, little buddy?' I said kind of anxiously, as I can recall."

"I wasn't drinking wine yet, but you were sipping it out of a coffee cup."

"It was the spider cider mug. I remember because it broke that night."

"'B—, I have something to tell you that might sound crazy, but I want to assure you that I'm not fucking with you.'"

"Whatever I said there had to be kind of cliche or else it would sound out of place. 'Are you alright?' or 'You're freaking me out, Spare.'"

"'In January 2013 I was visiting Emily, or, I mean, I visit Emily. She lives in Northeast Portland at the time. I am at her house alone one night and I go to get a towel from the basement and fall down the stairs as I try to find them. The next thing I am perceiving is the house I live in in Monterey in 2012. I then get up and live eight hours of that day before returning to the moment at the bottom of the basement stairs in Northeast Portland.'"

"'Like in Home Alone when Daniel Stern falls down the stairs and the movie leaves him there awhile before coming back.'"

"I can't believe you said that, of all the things you could have said."

"Whatever, it's what came into my head, your revelation actually made me make more sense of you. You were so damn worried I'd think you were crazy."

"'Yeah...like in Home Alone, the camera of my consciousness left that scene and revisited a prior one, eventually returning to where it left off....'"

"'So where are you now? I mean, where did you leave? And where am I in the future?'"

"'I am in January 2014, that's all I can tell you. I don't think I should tell you anything else.'"

"'I guess that makes sense.'"

'''Except for two things. One: I found a note recently about two story ideas suggested by you that both come from tonight, the phonebook being one. The second is that my present self becomes sober then goes back in time to relive a night in which he drinks, but it's okay because it is prior to his sobriety date. Now, I do not become sober, as far as I know, but, on the first day of the year I decided not to drink for a month, yet here I am with a glass of wine not sure how to proceed.'"

"'So you're telling me that you are experiencing this moment right now for the first time as yourself from a decade in the future and that, due to some time loop I have memory of this conversation and night while you do not until you experience it as your future self? And that I gave clues to you in the ensuing time so that one day you would figure out this was so and realize that for the entire time that we knew each other I knew that you traveled through time and you didn't?'"

"'That's what I'm saying.'"

"But what if this was a mistake, what if you just misread coincidences and I was never supposed to know? What if you ruptured fate by not keeping your mouth shut and going along with evening as it was supposed to?"

"That's not what you said."

"I'm saying this now."

"That can't be. No. That can't be."

"How should we end it?"

"..."