• "As far as other women go, in my experience, they tend to leave Jerks alone--giving them plenty of free time to write games like this."
• "Please get laid before you write your next game. Thank you."
• "Have you even played Myst, you bitchy little shit?"

I still check, though.

A couple of weeks ago I thought I hit paydirt -- I found an e-mail address of a girl that I used to date, the only one that I could say I've ever ended things on good terms with. We were sophomores at one university and when I stopped attending it we stopped seeing each other -- both literally and figuratively. So over the years we'd completely lost touch with one another. It wasn't like I was going to call up her folks to get her whereabouts: the girl's father was the kind that would never stoop to intimidating those boys that currently held his daughter's hand -- nay, instead he was the kind that would stun said boy into a complete mental paralysis through shocking comments and his halfbreed- alien personality. Upon meeting this guy for the first time I was informed that my name was now, and apparently forevermore, to be "Rudy." (I later found out that all her boyfriends were called Rudy by the geezer, and that apparently in the old country -- like Eastern Fucking Latveria or wherever the old man was from -- this was normal.) He spoke with a screechy grunt and wasn't great at directing individual questions to individuals. I said "what" a lot. That I remember. I spent a weekend under that roof and had one solid comment the entire time. It was during dessert.

"Rudy, do you want a tart?"
"No thanks, I'll be eating one later."

So after her graduation (mine came years later with decidedly less fanfare) I hadn't heard from her again. Until recently. Because recently, I found a Hotmail account of hers listed.

The mail that I sent to her was just a "feeler" type of note. I wasn't sure that the e-mail address I found, while scouring the web late one night, was really hers so I was certain to make sure that I didn't put anything in it that I didn't want to see posted on the textual equivalent of "Cliff Yablonski Hates You." I didn't need some webmaster getting big chuckles out of the affairs of my soul, is what I'm trying to say. I didn't hear anything for a few days, but then I really didn't expect to. Last night I did get a reply.

It was weird, seeing her post in the in-box like that. And not just because it was to my Juno account, which, thanks to their "Janice gave it to Eunice" line of ads last year has me associating the very concept of E-Mail with sexually transmitted diseases via their logo. I think it was "weird," if I may use such a useless word, because I never really thought that she was the kind of person that would use e-mail. It just seemed too... mundane. And she was never about that. Whatever else happened, she certainly managed to exude a pheromone of glamour in all the time we were together. But there it was.

I opened up the mail and found out that she would like to hear from me. That she was doing well. That she was in Peru of all places, getting her Master's Degree. Excellent. I am, quite honestly, happy for her.

But, then, the excruciating part comes. I have to give a quality response. It's not so much that I can't write something in return as much as it is knowing what to cover. I've got to presume that being in the middle of a rain forest does not afford her much opportunity for the kind of Americanized belly-laughs that I like to sling on a regular basis. But what doesn't make the message? What large portions of my life get thrown out? It was like the scenes of my life auditioning for the Greatest Hits disc.

The bit about moving to Colorado -- the actual trip itself? Probably.
The bit about living with the world's greatest cheapskate, a sissy fairy princess boy and a King Kong Bundy lookalike? Probably not.

The bit about getting a royalty contract from Red Grendel for the game I wrote? Probably.
The bit about how they were giving those out to everybody and the fact that it will probably not buy me the cheese on a hamburger once a quarter? Probably not.

The bit about finding someone to love for a couple years after we broke up? Probably.
The bit about said love-of-life effectively driving a rusty knife into my persona and leaving me for a guy with the same fucking first name? I think I'm going to pass on that.

And I should probably mention that I am now, in the loosest definition of the word, a college graduate. Don't want her to think I avoided that subject because eight years later I still hadn't addressed that. No sirree!

But that's the thing, really. As someone who has more-or-less commented on every aggravating bit of his life (as well as the small triumphs) for the past three or four years in some vaguely public forum, having to compress all that down into the interesting bits is somewhat of a challenge. It's nice, though, to be able to go through the pages I've put together and look fondly upon the past. Rather than a host of old photos or letters, I -- and I'm guessing other members of my generation -- have archived tirade pages. A few of my friends are in similar situations, should they ever look back. The writings were about our victories and failures and put together in a format that we helped establish. And that's kind of cool.