So. I went to my friend Jenn�s wedding in Baltimore over the weekend. And it was gorgeous. She was gorgeous. The weather was gorgeous. The tiny catholic chapel � with its slate roof and quarried rock walls � was gorgeous. And it was so good to see my old friends as well.

All the same, it was strange. These were people that I knew, and who knew me, 5 years ago. Life B.D.

The night I landed, I met the gang � Linda, Carla, Carrie & Joe, Kim & Matt, Dauphne, Jenn & Casi � at this Baltimore bar called Howl at the Moon. It was a dueling piano bar � loud and rowdy, with Hooter-esque waitresses hawking a variety of shots. The first 10 minutes of shouted conversation went something like this:

�So, Andy, how is Austin?!�

�Oh, good, good. Little Rock?!�

�Great, great. Have you heard? Linda�s started law school up in Chicago.�

�Yeah, I heard. Linda! Linda! How�s Chicago?�

�Fine, just fine. Austin?�

�Good. Austin�s good.�

It took a while, but finally through half-heard shouts at each other, we deduced that Austin was good; Little Rock was great; Chicago was fine; Wichita, Kansas couldn�t be better and that Andy hadn�t changed a bit.

Say what?

That last part really shook me. What were they, blind? Even I don�t recognize the person that greets me in the mirror anymore. Maybe I had put on too good a happy face for this reunion with my old pals. Between beer and vows and more beer (it was a Catholic wedding after all), the weekend was full of old stories. I featured prominently in more than a few: there was the �How Andy put off going home to a dead rabbit� story and the �How Andy came to love sour apple Pucker� story and the �How Andy�s old boyfriend loudly revealed his phobia of ants at 6 a.m. during a camping trip� story, etc. In each starred an Andy who doesn�t exist anymore.

I may walk like her; at times my laugh may even sound like hers, but I am her ghost. She is gone, dead and buried in an unmarked grave in Dallas next to her mother�s. And you know what? I don�t miss her.

I was a pretty clumsy kid. I�ve got the marks to show it. There�s where my bike pedal swung up and sliced open my shin when I was 11. There�s where I slipped and scraped my knee when I was 12. Here�s where I impaled myself on a chain link fence when I was 8. And that�s not all. I�ve got chicken pox scars and acne scars and burn scars � no, I�ll never be a model.

But I swear to God, the worst scars are those that don�t show.

Same old Andy?! A close, dear friend of mine had gone to lunch with me on Mother�s Day this year. She asked me how I was, and I lost it. I told her that I didn�t know how to answer that question. That I sure as hell wasn�t okay. That I would never, ever be okay on Mother�s Day again. Ever. The look on her face told me how much I�d hurt her, and she didn�t deserve it. She�d started probing a wound she couldn�t even see, one that hadn�t healed over yet. And hurting, I lashed out.

Same old Andy? I want the wound to be visible. I want people to know that I�m in mourning. I want it to heal into a big honkin� puffy scar that goes from my forehead down my chest and ends over my heart to show the hurt. I want it to fade about the same time the Sun goes supernova. (That�s like hundreds of thousands of years from now.) In the old days, people wore black or white or yellow, depending on the culture, to show they were in mourning. Today, you wear pink if you�re honoring breast cancer sufferers, purple for battered women, red for AIDS and black arm bands for the trendiest third-world cause du jour. Whatever. I want a scar.

My last night in town, I�d gone out with the gang to tool around Baltimore some more after the wedding reception. (I think our goal was to drink the city dry.) After the evening was over, I found myself in the hotel elevator with Carla, who in 1997 had had one of the most Technicolor personalities I�d ever encountered. She lived big and bright and to the beat of a thousand-drum symphony. At least before the crash. See Carla was on the plane that crashed into a Little Rock swamp in 1999. Nine people died. She lived. I told her that I was sorry I wasn�t there for her during her recovery. I asked her how she was. She had a better answer than I did for my friend. She said she was doing better. That she felt like she was coming back. That she was still working on some things. She was okay, she said, but not really okay. Yeah, I said. I know what you mean. And we left it there. I hugged everybody goodbye that night. I knew I�d be gone before they woke in the morning. And so I was.

Post script

Then at the very last, there was this:

Sunday at the airport as I was checking my bag with the Airline from Hell, the ticketing agent commented on the picture burned onto my credit card. �How old were you in this picture?� she asked. �You look about 15.� Finally, I had received the reaction that I wanted.

Is there something about my eyes? Do my shoulders sit differently? I�ve stared at dozens of pictures of Andy, B.D. and I can�t pin it down� The woman�s reaction was what I was looking for � she saw that something was forever different and that was satisfying even if she mistook that difference for age. But it was an empty victory. See, my mom and I had gone to Kinko�s to get passport photos taken. I took an extra set for the credit card picture. What the ticketing agent couldn�t see was that my mom was standing off camera making me laugh. The picture is actually three years old, a lifetime ago. Pre-beige.

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