Ever since Scott moved out of the city in 2000-2001 or thereabouts, I had kept in touch with him mostly through the Internet. In so doing, he became less of a “real” inhabitant of my life and more someone who I knew through the virtual reality of ones and zeros. It’s easy for me, then, to chalk up his absence to simply having moved onto the Next Big Internet Thing, as he has done many times before; that, when I saw his Facebook profile on today, his birthday, it felt like I can still give him a ring the next time I’m in town and meet up for a drink and cheesy comestibles at NoMi, in a sort of blissful ignorance, a tacit denial of the reality of it all.
But with a blink of my eyes, I remember again.