I don't like living in a dirty town

I always wonder if I'm being too obsessive. I talk about Ryan and how he's in it with me, and that we're on the same page, but look at me in comparison to him - look at what I'm doing! I can say why this bothers me enough to write something like this about Derek, and anyone who won't spend more than a few seconds thinking about it will write me off as "obsessed" or "in love with him" or "get a life" or "leave me alone" or "leave him alone". But even those people who will spend more than seconds thinking about it... will the conclusion be much different? They'll understand, yes, sir, I can see why this bothers you. But...?

People come and go. We've all grown up with people and had friends that you can no longer talk to for whatever reason. Be it change in interest, growing apart, something... that's always been strange to me. Do people change that much? I don't think they do. I mean, of course, sometimes people are friends because of convenience - you work with them, you sit next to them in class, that goes without saying. I do find it odd, losing touch with someone in this day and age - the age of social networks such as MySpace and Facebook (which people only use to talk to people they already know anyway: we all know that trying to make friends through these sites is a failing mission, we know it already so don't think anymore about it). Friends of convenience is bothersome because it takes one person to declare it and one person to accept it. That means that, well, we'll take it from the top. Two people are friends in history class. Man, this teacher is the worst. Eventually they find other things to talk about. Eventually they hang out, and then the year ends. They don't talk much over summer, and in fall it's different. But why? We've already moved on from the history class and done so much else to this friendship, it has evolved. The one person, upon seeing or hanging out with the other, has taken that awkward first-day-back encounter and decided that it is no longer convenient or comfortable to put effort into this friendship, therefore, they decide that they will not try. Yes we should hang out! Empty words make empty sentences, my friend. We should do that, yes, well, I'll get lunch today. The other person will try and bring it up, and eventually they'll just come to terms with the fact that that person no longer wants to be friends with them for a completely lazy and offensive reason.

That sounds hateful. It's annoying to me. But I'm not talking about Derek. Derek's case is different. 

I was eating with a few of my friends yesterday. A bunch of school friends, and Jack (I will say Jack so his students don't search for him and find this blog, then he'll just have to hear about it.) It was a very successful collision of friends, things like this don't usually work out, but Jack was well received and he liked everyone as well. I was happy. However, of course, Derek came up. Then again, of course, I brought him up. Nothing upsetting, I just wanted to get a thought cleared.

I asked Nee if Derek had been on the "Siblings" set. It seemed right, had he been? He said yes, that he came for the first day but not for the others after that. But he was supposed to. I think I even brought it up to him, and he said he didn't want to or he didn't think they needed him, or he didn't know why they needed him. I could be making that up, though. Memory is very unreliable. Which is why we held that conversation, and it's also why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Nee went on to say things like what happened to that kid, where'd he go? It didn't spread to the table and it didn't go much further. I shouldn't have brought it up, that's all I ever do now, well that's not true, but I'm starting to wonder if people are thinking that I think too much about him. A week or two ago I was talking to Alex, and he mentioned that Paul had saw him in a car on campus. This was important! So I asked Paul about it, and he said he thought he saw him in a red car with a girl outside of the film building. Red car, now, possibly, maybe he got a new car, or it was his parents' or his girlfriend's. I think Paul said that he waved to Derek, and Derek smiled and drove away, but it was so quick that he couldn't tell what it actually was.

Immediately I texted Ryan about it. This week I am going to school, and it just now occurs to me that I could ask the head of the department for some information, and I probably will do that. When I think of him on the set of "Siblings", I think of the production lab shoot that Ryan did, and how Derek was the DP for one of the scenes. He didn't load the camera right, or he didn't cover it properly with tape, and some light leaked in. At this point in the school year, we were all very irritated at the program and the professors, and even each other (I will go out on a limb and say that we still, to this day, all love each other, and if people disagree with me I think they should really think about it because we were all in it together and any petty argument and such about our undergraduate films are no large deal in the long run, and again I am not being specific, why do you always think I'm actually talking about someone? If I am I'll use their name. But no I'm not talking about anyone in particular, just when you're a film major the only reason to get mad at other film majors is because of projects you've worked on, there.) So, reviewing the footage, the teachers started to tell him he did it wrong, and it was clear to everyone that Derek made a mistake. So he was going to leave and opened the door, and the professor said something to him, and he laughed and said he wanted to leave. As he left, she called to him, and he just laughed the whole way down. 

I thought that was great! That's something you read, people don't act like that, he did, he actually laughed in that situation and probably laughed even though we couldn't hear him any more. I don't remember if they said anything about it afterwards, after he left, but it wasn't that good if they did. And good this was-

Today, at Coach, an employee came in, we will call her Fall because I don't know these people that well and who knows if they want to have anything to do with what I'm doing. My friends have no choice. Unless they tell me. But you won't know if I change their name or not. Usually I'm honest but I'll probably lie about stuff every now and then. So Fall came in and I said "There she is!" and she smiled, laughed, was happy, didn't really know what I meant by that, but knew it was a good thing.

Derek made that up. When a friend of yours comes in, usually unexpected, say you're eating with your friends and your friend Martin comes in, what do you say? Well you're probably happy that he's here. I would point at him and say "Yes!!". People who like to take a long time with everything would say "Hey what's up man why are you here?" and stuff like that. Takes so long. Or you would have an inside joke to say, or do something like "Martin's gay!" and then you hide really poorly so he knows it's you saying it. There are so many options!!

Derek, if he saw Martin, would say "There he is!" And this is always good. I don't like explaining things like this, even the jokes and lingo my friends and I use, I like it to just be there and to be accepted, because they're not that hard - this is the thing that gets to me - things that people will get if they had just thought about it for a little bit, they get frustrated because it is not completely familiar to them and spelled out to them right away. We, as a society, always keep up with ridiculous slang, it's brought up and dropped so quickly and we're fine with it - the word "mad" I used to say in a joke voice, it has entered my regular vocabulary on occasion and nothing upsets me more than that, as you can tell the pain in my voice as it leaks out that I don't like it - either way though, Let's get to the point, I'll explain "There he is!" and why it is good and for any occasion.

If you see Martin and say "There he is!" in a positive way, that makes Martin think that you've been wondering where was or talking about him in a good way. Of course, this all depends on the tone, but to say "There he is!" in any other tone is just a waste of everyone's time. So say it in a nice tone. So yes, people like to be thought about by their friends, it's good when you see a clear display of affection from your friends. People always need to be shown things, if you're friends with someone you should already know they like you, I mean maybe everyone's nervous about losing their friends - read above, it's completely legitimate, so I understand. But yes, that saying is a good one because it starts things off on the best foot you could never dream of having. It almost always brings a smile, even if they don't get it right away, they'll still enjoy it.

Deploy it, use it, it was Derek's but he was not selfish with his sayings and doings.

Well, I mean, maybe that can be debated. 

We can be obnoxious, immature.

It's been a few days and I don't know if this is the right thing. What am I hoping to achieve when he reads this? If he reads this, sorry, but this will be uncomfortable for him. This whole thing probably hinders my chance at ever reconciling with him. And am I writing this just to show him that I know this is probably wrong, and am I writing this because I hope that he'll look at it and know that I at least thought about that. And by writing that I just fucked up anything good I intended to do. It doesn't matter, though, I don't know all of the answers and I don't know why I do everything that I do. I'm still figuring things out, and here I am writing about something I'll probably never be able to figure out.

Derek would often point at people and laugh at them, in public. It was a consistent gag that I always laughed very hard at, it was not in the slightest bit mature and it reminded me of me when I was in junior high and high school and still trying to be funny. It wasn't the nostalgia that made me really like it, though, that I know for sure. I think it was how oblivious people were, and how far he took it. He would really point at people, laugh at them rather loudly or loud enough, and they wouldn't notice. And he'd do it for a long time. Now this is the most blatantly disrespectful joke I've ever been a part of, one so unsubtle that the fact that nobody ever noticed makes it even more hilarious.

Of course, when written down, it doesn't seem like anything more than a you had to be there joke. So maybe it is. The more I think about it, though, I feel guilty that he did this joke. It is a joke that I have done before, not the exact same thing, but it was a type of humor that I would perform back in the day, in fact I even still do it today, though not as much as I used to. But I almost feel like by encouraging him to do it, and not by telling him to do it but by suggesting he do it (Do that pointing thing) I feel that I had used him cheaply. I shouldn't have done that. Am I completely wrong? It's not one of those things where I said do this and he did it, right off the bat, it's something he did and I liked and I wanted to see again and again and again. Like in 7th grade when I did something funny, and people wanted to see it again and again and again and then it wasn't funny to them anymore and suddenly I was the one who was wrong, and in 10th grade when I stopped caring about making everyone laugh and I became ever more shy and unsure.

But it's not about me, this isn't, so stop.

And why use anyone?

And why write about Derek like this, in this fashion? What if I write something that is too far. What if then he contacts me, tells me to stop. Should I try to talk to him then, or would that be inappropriate? But it's my only chance.

Junior year, maybe Senior year, I forget what class it was, exactly - we had various classes in the same room - Derek would play online games. They're interesting, the internet games that play right in your explorer window, they're usually very simple and goofy. He found one that had you play as a guy waiting for the bus or for a taxi or something, bus makes more sense, but you're in a business suit and you're next to another guy. Now, you have to fart. So you have a gas meter, and that depletes the more you fart. But you can't let the other guy hear you! Or else it's game over. And you can't just not fart, because the bar will increase and then that's game over too. So obviously if you fart it goes down, and you need to fart when cars pass and such, because they're really loud. And if you need to, you can do silent farts, but there's a meter for that too if you do it too much. Plus, silent farts don't bring the bar down as much. They never do. If you fart while there is no noise to cover you, the man will hear you and look at you. Game over.

This, to me, was hilarious. There's no explosive finale, nothing overdone, the guy just looks at you. Very seriously. He knows.

So we joked about making this a short. With the game over as the ending. Pointless, but amusing. Why not? We were film-majors. We could do it. We never got past the idea, and it was only brought up twice or three times, but I don't know, I would've done it. And he would've been down.

Then I think of roll call in class. We had one teacher, he was from India, and he always had his eyes closed. Smart man, and as opposed to what other people think, I thought the films in class were good and usually enjoyed the films he showed (I'm tempted to list them, but that's not what this blog is about, and I'm actually thinking more about how I have to backspace every time I try to write Derek and write his real name instead). Now only in this class did Derek do his roll call joke, he had invented it sometime earlier, but it was here that he felt like he could do it. Any other class, the professors already knew us, so why would they call our names out loud? This teacher we had had had had had had had had had since freshman year, but, like I said, his eyes were always closed, so.

So Derek would wait, and as he called out names... Katy Azzarello, Chris Bell, Katie Dinardo, Corey Ditman (Corey Cock-tease), Keith Dorsch (Keith Douchebag), Ian Gilly (Ian Gil-gay), Adam Huston, Kelly Lorino, Peter Macaluso (Peter Macaluso), Derek (I stumble on making up a last name, what could it even be? I was tempted to write Pontiac, but I don't want to even try to make this funny or pretend that I think anyone with the last name of Pontiac is funny, as in, that's a funny thing).. is that in? I don't feel like going back and writing in Dan Kemmer, but he was there too. Oh, and Ryan Sartor (Yan). Tishana Miller. Trenece Frazier. Nick Deruve. Whoever I've forgotten is going to end my life sooner or later. If I've forgotten someone, I'm already something else for writing this, but man it would really make me look like something else if I write a story about an old friend and then forget another old friend. I think that's it, I'll stop talking about it because it might make everything worse.

So nothing against any of the people he made names for. I don't know why them and not others, I think we all pretty much got along. Why not? Film school is hard because you're all pretty much in it for the same reason, same position, etc. And you have to work together and it can be tense and competitive, but you know what, I love everyone there, everyone in my year, whether I was mad at this person or someone was mad at me, they were probably right, but everyone was just fine and I wish everyone well. I think they already know that but now I have it written.

Derek often made these jokes, and I have to admit that I was the main support for all of them. They were immature, yes, and I was immature for liking them, but they did no harm to anyone, and if they did it was unintentional. Does that make it okay? I'm not sure. I really don't know. Though what I do know is that at one point, maybe junior year, maybe sophomore year, Derek stopped doing these kinds of jokes for a period of time. And I never found out why. I could inquire, but that would tamper with this whole idea, on my idea of Derek. I didn't know then and I don't know now, and I'm really trying to figure out certain things about our relationship that could have caused him to not want anything to do with me. In a way. I think I'd like to know why he doesn't want anything to do with anyone from school, I think maybe I'd like to know why he doesn't want anything to do with people he studied with for four years in a small program where, inevitable, we all became family, a competitive family but a family nonetheless.

When Derek decided to stop making jokes, like fart noises and such (he had one where he would do one fluid wank motion, as if something was coming out of his penis, and make a fart noise, as if that fluid, not the fluid motion but the penis fluid, had made the noise. Impossible.), people gave him a hard time. Nobody really understood why he stopped. He brings us such joy and then he takes it away? Maybe he got tired of being asked to do this and this all the time. The truth was, he was a very intelligent and sensitive guy. He had a lot to say, he had a lot of serious things to talk about. Maybe he didn't feel that people cared enough about him, personally, just wanted to use him for laughs. And I know how this feels, of course, try being a class clown, that's what it is. Though, again, I don't want to talk about myself, and you know what - I don't want to say this is that for that reason and such. I have no idea why he wanted to stop making crude jokes to people. But there is this-

I had gone to the cafeteria, circa Derek not wanting to make jokes (it is a circa, because at a certain point, he decided the hell with it and came back), and I sat with him and a few others. This seems so clear to me and I don't know if I've already written it or not, I feel like I have, but I'm not going to look back, but I encourage you to skip this if you've already read it. Read a little bit to make sure you have, though, I just don't want to look back because looking back means correcting and then that would kind of clean it up to much, and thinking about Derek is messy because it is so fucking confusing.

So here I am, eating with Derek and some girls, Monica I think is there, Keith and little Christine I believe. So we're eating and I was only there for a few minutes. Derek makes a joke and somebody says something, not even about the joke, maybe he didn't even make a joke - what I really remember is how much this next part didn't make sense, and how it took everyone off guard in a way. Derek says that Monica made a face at him, and it's because of those kinds of faces that he doesn't want to be funny anymore, he says, that's exactly why (Well, I guess we figured that one out together, reader!), and he storms out. Strangest thing is, even though no one expected it.. I don't want to say that no one cared, but it seems like they had seen it before. Dealt with it. So it was no big deal, let him go, let him cool off or something. I don't know if I left that or ate and then left, but I called him on the phone. I remember being by myself, but I don't know if I went in by myself too. Either way, I knew he wouldn't pick up, so I left a voice mail and told him that I was just calling to see if he was all right.

We spoke about it.. I don't think he called me back, I think it was in person. But he apologized for storming out, which he often did, which will be a chapter, him apologizing when he didn't have to and he probably shouldn't have done, which I told him at this point, too. He didn't talk much, I did a lot of it, I think he was embarrassed, but I told him that I understood how he felt, that sometimes, moreso back in the day, but either way, people wouldn't take me seriously or would write me off as weird and nothing else, et cetera. Because of this, I told him that if he was bothered by any of it, he could talk to me about it. He didn't after that, but I don't remember him exiling crude comedy for much longer.

What he did do, before he let the crude humor back in, he did a few jokes for me every so often in private. A wank motion, a voice, what have you, and he wouldn't go far with it, and I think even once or twice he would tell me that he basically wasn't comfortable doing it but knew it made me laugh and would do it for me. Eventually he reverted back to the old Derek, but I'm wondering if that's the Derek he always wanted to be, without the crude jokes, and I'm also wondering if it was a bad thing that he still did stuff for me in private. I never requested this, yes, I did request the point and laugh thing, but that wouldn't be born for another year. The big idea is this. If the no crude joke era Derek is the Derek he really wanted to be, do we remind him too much of it? Did he say fuck it I'll just do this until college is over I'm already in over my head and revert back to old Derek, but would go back to serious-only Derek after school and shut everyone else out so he'd never have to be old Derek again? And this would make me the main villain, the really bad guy, and I'll take that if it's true, because I was the one that pulled it out the most. 

And I had talked to Derek a lot about serious stuff, his girlfriend, my girlfriend, movies, such. I don't know a lot about him, his friends at home, the name of his town, what his parents are really like, and such. But I liked Derek not for his jokes and such, but he was actually a very good guy. A good person. So we liked the Derek that made those jokes, yeah, but we liked Derek all around. Still though, I can't help but think that I've stumbled onto something here, that maybe he had just had it, and me, and even Ryan, when we would all joke around together, maybe he wasn't really fully enjoying it, maybe he had had enough, and all of the other things we did together, film-making and what have you, I don't know. Maybe I did bring out something that he didn't want to even have any more.

The First (including) Seeing and Hearing

First class first day of film class. I arrived early and sat down, not in front or near anyone, I didn't want to bother anybody. I did take off my headphones, I don't know why, maybe - and I think this is why so now I know why - so that if anybody wanted to start a conversation with me, I'd be available.

But that never happens and still doesn't, and even with a book I have trouble not eavesdropping, so that's what I did. I didn't mean to but I did. Two students were talking about movies, and this is great, we're talking about movies. I mean, they were, not me, but yeah, this is what film school is. Freshman year, until I got sick of talking about them. But wait, I'm still young and I don't know a lot. I really don't know anything, yeah I've seen Magnolia. And my social skills, still needing much carpentry work, will not enable me to force myself into this conversation. I also cannot bull shit into it either, because that is fake and fake stuff like bringing up yourself into a conversation bothers me, and still bothers me to this day but now I force myself to do it because my friends should know about my stuff. However at this point I had not shaken the don't want to be Madison Whitman thing.

So these students are talking, I think they have just met. Weird that I missed the beginning of it, maybe they knew each other at Orientation, which I didn't go to - who cares. What's your favorite movie? That was Keith. Didn't say exactly that, in fact, it might have been Derek who asked first. I don't know if it was asked like this or answered like this, but I do remember Derek answering with two answers, and he clarified "favorite older movie" and "favorite movie", the latter being "favorite new movie" but that's not what he said. And it ended up being Taxi Driver and Garden State. 

Now this really happened, it's not a joke and I don't think it should be one. There was a time when I liked Garden State, and who cares if I don't anymore? And who cares if people did? If it meant something to someone, to Derek, who cares, let him have that. I don't even know if he still likes it. Or if he even did, maybe he was playing it safe.

Then, Ryan walked in. I didn't know him yet, but I remember because I made an an assessment of this situation. Backtrack, in the room was Keith and Derek, in the back were two seniors - both named Rich - and then someone with headphones, I forget his name right now, maybe a girl by herself, her name was Robin, she never made it past the first semester, where is she now, new blog!, Robin O'Keefe, but whatever. I knew Keith and Derek were freshmen, and they were talking, and now here comes Ryan, also early with us all.

Ryan, through our ups and downs, is one of my best friends. Of course. Writing partner, similar sense of humor, this and that. And he is the only other one who will completely understand this all, without having to even read it.

He knew Derek from Orientation I guess. So he sat down and started talking to Derek. Small talk, obvious small talk. Ryan always knows just what to ask though, and it's not that he seems sincere, it's that he is. Just how he was raised. So when he asks how your weekend was, you don't mind actually telling him how your weekend was. 

Only, Derek wasn't biting, and I didn't watch, but you could tell Keith was waiting. And Derek didn't introduce them, and when I say Derek wasn't biting, I mean, he was. If Ryan was polite, Derek, wow. I don't know why I said Derek wasn't biting, cause he was. And he meant it too. Now I want to know about your weekend. Whelp, okay. But, now I know why I wrote he wasn't biting. Because after the small talk, there was nowhere left to go, and Ryan admitted defeat and turned around. What I've come to learn is this - and I'm not going to spend this whole blog speaking of my lack of social skills and how they developed during college and why, but - when you just meet someone, it will be awkward and there will be small talk and as much as you hate it you have to deal with it. Then it'll work itself out. And with these two, both being so good at it, it's going to work! 

And it did. And then, well, you know, Derek stopped talking to us and now we have no idea where he is or how he is. You know what I was thinking? He could have died. Would the school know? Since developing as a writer, reading more, watching more movies, whatever, I'm perfect, but no seriously, writing things like "Is he dead?" or "Is she pregnant?" really bothers me because those things are real, yes, but are more often than not lame plot devices that are built to carry a shitty movie. But maybe?

So a week or two later I not only met Ryan, but Caitlin McGuirk, Joey Lindenberg, Will, and Jon Paul Boulier. We all hit it off, and Ryan especially because he was a freshmen that was also a film major. And we started hanging out and then he invited me to help on his project, which had Derek in it.

The Preamble

Usually it's called a Preface, isn't it?

Well, I like Preamble better.

I assure you, that's the last of the jokes. This is a very serious "story", and I mean that. I'm not going to be snarky or sarcastic, if I bring up something funny, I'm not going to try to make it funnier. It's not even necessarily written for you to laugh at. It's just what happened, and I'm writing it.

Before I go any further, I'll explain a little bit. And before that, I'll mention that this blog will be a mess, and I will get more into that once I explain the former, which is, the point.

I've been graduated from college for nearly a year. Does that make sense? I wrote that sentence as if it did. I don't know, but you understand the information I'm trying to send. I met a lot of great people there, and overall - despite what I'll say sometimes - I really loved the school. It had it's shortcomings, of course, but what is ever $35,000 a year good? The friends and experiences are priceless, of course, but still. What a price that is. Anyway, I had one friend named Derek. He was a complete joy and we were good friends. However conveniently, with only a month and a half left of school, we had a falling out. A really strange one, one that I still can't understand. We never spoke about it, but we should have, and now it can't be done.

Since school I have been writing, reading, and thinking a lot. I took a bunch of dead end jobs, that always being the plan, and I'm still at one now. It doesn't matter to me, so long as I pay the bills and have time to write and film. Close friend Ryan Sartor has become my writing partner, and together we write nearly every day. We've got a lot accomplished, and some really awesome stuff in the future. He once brought up that we should do something personal, and I got defensive. I said that the feature we were working on was extremely personal to me, and I felt that he didn't think that. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't, it doesn't matter, what does matter was that although he could relate to it, it wasn't personal enough. It wasn't bleeding. It wasn't Synecdoche, New York.

Which is brave. And why shouldn't we write something like that? It's difficult, though - making something that personal is one thing, but having TWO people do it... Ryan and I played with the idea of making a documentary in Spring, trying to find Derek in his home state, Vermont. We'd interview people at school, teachers, try to get as much information about his location as possible. As good of friends as we were to him, he was a very private person, which is what you'll discover in the later entries. It's also the reason why I changed his name.

The documentary seemed exploitative to me. Self-indulgent, intrusive. I was very uncomfortable doing it, but I encouraged him to do it. I think. Maybe I thought to but never brought it up. In my line of work (Retail Loss Prevention) I do a lot of thinking. This put me in a terrible down. Because of that thinking, I applied it to other projects and started losing interest. This was me taking advantage of my grandfather, this was me being pretentious, etc. etc. Eventually it passed, and I recently read A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius (which was great, did I miss that trend? Either way it's better than your Twilights) which put everything nicely - every one wants every one to know about them once they step out of the door by every action. If you're an artist, even more so, so it's best to just come to terms with it. And while I do think that it is something to be wary of, I'm less nervous about it and I won't let it hinder any personal projects.

So I suggested that the documentary idea - finding Derek - should be a feature length narrative. He seems down. He always is. Very supportive. Great guy, couldn't ask for greater. Us being swamped at the moment with current joint-projects and personal projects, and probably knowing a little bit about the endeavor at hand, we put it on the back burner. Something for Fall or Winter. Winter is most depressing. Probably Winter.

We always spoke about Derek's disappearance, not being able to figure it out. When he brought up writing something personal that we both knew about, it fit too well. I've tried to talk to others about it - Maxine gets it, she gets everything - but people who know him mostly just say "That's Derek" or don't seem to think of it as a huge deal. So why do we think it is? Not to put the others down, as I have lost friends and gotten over it, or I have lost friends and have not even really been under it. It happens. But Derek's disappearance is something I couldn't really shake, mostly because it made little sense to me.

It crossed my mind every so often after graduation. That summer we came up with the documentary idea. Then in winter we came up with the narrative idea. Still, while it deeply bothered me, I had no problem waiting to write it. We were both passive about the whole thing, in a way, in a weird way. I think one of us would think about it, say something or do something, and the other would listen and understand, but it wouldn't be on their mind in the same way. Really, though, what could we do to contact him? When I say that it crossed my mind every so often, I mean that for Ryan too, and I also mean that every time it crossed our minds, we tried to call him. And it always went to his voice mail. And we texted him, and he never responded.

The other day it crossed Ryan's mind, and brought it up to his girlfriend Sarah. While together, they phoned him.

His phone was disconnected.

Yeah, cue the music, but seriously. That was our last connection to him, aside from e-mailing (Which, now that I think about it, we did try, though only once), and it was gone. We had nothing else.

This bothered me.

A few days after that, Ryan said he figured something out, and he looked up Derek's full name on some website. It might have been this website that I had been shown by my friend Pete, it might not have been, that's not really the point so let's not think about it. Ryan looked up Derek, a very private person with a private family, and found his work number. We were a step closer. Ryan said he wouldn't call, but I encouraged him, and he complied. "Tomorrow" he said.

It didn't happen. Why would it? What would we even say? We were snooping around on the Internet and found your number. etc. etc. All the obvious weird stuff. And how far can you go to try and talk to someone that has cut ties with you?

It's all too confusing. We have the number, and because Ryan won't do it (and I don't blame him, yet..), I volunteered to do it. Not entirely gung-ho about it, though - I don't have the number, and when I said "I'll do it" he said "Okay" without me asking for the number or him giving it to me. I talked to my grandfather about it, and he mentioned something about legal action, which I wouldn't rule out at this point. He also had some extreme ideas as to Derek's sudden change in behavior and sudden reclusiveness, but as cliche as those ideas are, they're honestly the only things that really make sense to the situation.

At work, all I could think of was Derek and the times we had. So, I'm going to write about them. In detail. If something was funny, then it'll be funny, if it wasn't then it won't be. A part of me is like, it will become an Internet hit and he'll find us and it'll work out. A part of me is we'll write this script and shoot it and take it to festivals and he'll find us and it'll work out. And then there's this part of me, this part of me, it goes he'll find out and then he will send an e-mail saying to stop. Or take that legal action that my grandpa thought of.

And I wouldn't put it past him, not at this point. So there's questions like how far can you go when someone doesn't want anything to do with you anymore and is this exploitative? Is this self-indulgent and unfair to others that aren't you but there's also how can you call someone a good friend when you really don't know anything about them.

I don't know if there will be an end. I don't know when or if I'll finish. I really don't know what's going to happen or how often I'll do this, but when I started thinking about it, I covered a whole sheet of times with Derek. Small stuff. But it's something. And the more I wrote down, the less I understood.

Keeping my promise, as in, this whole thing will be a mess, I will leave you with a description of Derek, something I should have posted right away.

Derek is tall like you thought you'd be when you were in the back row in your kindergarden class picture. He had long hair, to his friends at home it was weird (this is the only thing we know about his friends), and he usually covered it with a hat. The hat was usually an RDA production, but towards the end he found love in Ed Hardy. Always very nice and tidy, he'd stick around the film building (who could blame him? the first was very cozy. The second? Habit.) and meet everyone. Everyone knew him.

Which makes this even weirder to me, but

He made jokes a lot, then at a certain point he didn't want to. Then at another certain point, he decided he wanted to again. It was all fine. He disappeared a little during his last month at school, and there he is now. Well, gone.