Random Access Memory

Riding the bus home today I started thinking about a guy I met my freshman year of college. The memory was quite unexpected and the weird part is that there's still some energy there that surprises me... his name was Steve, and for the life of me I can't remember his last name (damn it all, or I could google him). The way I met him was remarkable for the time... I was in an intro computer science class and I was trying to avoid working on a program that I was completely incapable of doing (programming was not and is still not my forte). While messing around on the computer, I discovered and started to play with this thing called "e-mail" on Michigan's mainframe system.

This was 1987 and there was no www, no .com, no way to find out someone's e-mail address (for those few that had them, mostly at other universities) short of calling them on the phone and saying "Hey, do you have e-mail?" At Michigan, you could bring up a terminal and log into "MTS" (Michigan Terminal System) choosing either UM (accounts associated with specific coursework) or UB (generic accounts that anyone affliated with the U could get), and I discovered that there was a directory of sorts that would help you find usernames. It was really primitive, and I stumbled on it by mistake as I was trying to get out of a message I had started. I typed "stop". And the system responded with "Do you mean "Stop Stop?" Um. Sure, why not! So now I had a message ready to go to a user named "Stop Stop."

I didn't send it, if memory serves - after all, I didn't really want to write to someone named "Stop Stop". But I thought that it was kind of cool that people had fun nicknames they used in the system, so I started experimenting with different words to see what other names I could find. "Cosmic" seemed like a good word. "Do you mean Cosmic Demon?" Cosmic Demon. Now that was a cool name! "Yes." Yes I do. I'm sure that the message I sent said something embarrasingly naif like "I was playing in the system and came across your very cool name, and just wanted to say hi!" Let's hope I kept it to just one exclamation point, and thank the goddess that emoticons didn't yet exist.

Well... Cosmic Demon wrote back.

It was my first online thrill, my first virtual connection to another person... and it made me giddy. He was a very cool guy, a junior, and we exchanged many messages over the course of the next few weeks. Before and after class I'd rush to the terminal in the basement of the Union to see if there were any new messages for me. Then one evening I walked out of the stairwell into the hallway of my dorm room and there stood, in front of my door, a very tall, very blonde, very good-looking man in a black leather jacket. Cosmic Demon (aka Steve) in the flesh.

Once I was convinced that he wasn't a nutcase or serial murderer, our budding electronic friendship transitioned nicely into a real-life one (funny - the template for many of my future friendships was established way back then). It was never more than a friendship (sigh) due to both of us being involved with others, but there was music (Depeche Mode!), dancing (Nectarine Ballroom) and plenty of talking and drinking and late-night runs to Taco Bell.

And then... then I don't remember. Isn't that odd? I just don't remember how the friendship went from being something that I hold in my heart as something special to simply not existing anymore. I guess I can chalk it up to being what happens, sometimes, to the friendships of our youth. They don't all become the subject matter of "The Big Chill." Just as often, the names and lots of the specifics just slip away (though his face and his smile are astoundingly clear in my mind's eye). H. I think his last name started with an H.

I wish I knew why this 16-year-old memory found its way into my head today, and I wish even more that I could find out what happened to Steve wozzhisface. It would be fun to find him online again and to see if he remembers me. Maybe he could fill in the pieces that I've forgotten. I do often wonder if people I've known ever think about me, think about looking me up to see how I'm doing. Okay, actually I do more than wonder... I fret. Obsess sometimes even, wondering if I was so unmemorable or unlikeable that I will NEVER get one of those "someone's looking for you" e-mails from classmates.com. And now that I think of it, maybe that's why I still feel a tug when I think of seeing that cute boy standing all those years ago, waiting outside my door. Cosmic Demon came looking for me.