Well, Fuck.
When you're a tech kinda person, whether by trade, career, talent or avocation, you're subject to the wide and deep gravity well it elaborates. You get sucked in. You start to believe that technology can enable just about anything. Can improve the Human Lot. Can bridge distances, cure diseases, take you higher.
All true, inarguably, even to non-techies.
Today I said goodbye to Bill & Edgar, my next-door neighbors and two of the more comprehensive influences in my life, a life already embarrassingly full of eventfulness.
I had convinced myself that infinite minutes on my cellphone, and broadband internet with full 30fps 2-way video would ameliorate the thudding silence from "over the backyard fence" that I must now endure. I had convinced myself that cheap airfares, coupled with a rather significant personal buying power on both our parts would help the making-due make due.
Duh.
I headed out back this morning because I heard the two of them making the kinds of noises white collars do when performing blue collar activities (hot). Now, before you start to think I turned into a weepy mess, I assure you I did not. It was more like that bucolic serenity in the beginning of Bambi meets Godzilla.
When we were done with smalltalk and the last bits of moving stuff, Bill said, "I guess we won't see you again before we leave."
The smooch-and-bodyhug is the greatest gift gay men have given the world. Ever.
First it was Bill. Two somewhat powerfully built men, chest to chest, expressing plain affection and sorrow. Then I hugged Edgar. Same level of affection, same sorrow. So much the same reaction it was almost completely different.
It was during all this that I realized that free minutes and 30fps are nothing at all compared to a yell over the fence or a hello-hug. So the highest-tech thing I'm willing to take comfort in is a 5-hour flight to NYC.
That's a big admission for me.