righting a nineteen year old wrong (a throwback)

junior’s birthday was on sunday, which WAS supposed to be when this posted…the late sunday / early monday edition. but as many of you know, there were technical difficulties beyond my control (or the control on anybody i could bitch slap for technical difficulties) so it didn’t get posted. monday ended up being a long corpus / sa excursion, so now it’s 1:30 in the morning on TUESDAY, and i just got home. more on all that later…right now, we gotta make up for the lost sunday thing…so just PRETEND we’re reading this on monday morning, okay?

so, today (remember the land of make believe we’re in, folks) is junior’s birthday, and yesterday was ozzfest, where we WERE supposed to hang out. but we didn’t. and i KNEW we wouldn’t. why? because it’s tradition…we NEVER hang out for our birthdays…we’ve barely been friends a year, and i can already spot the trend. look at the history…

it’s just after labor day, 2k1…the star offices are still shoe horned into downtown austin, and i wander into subway. i scam my traditional free liter of pepsi refill, and ask junior what’s up. he says, “nothing much”, and asks me what i’m doing that weekend. i tell him probably hitting sa to go to a show. he fires back, “really? i was HOPING you would say that…static x and mudvayne, right?”. “yep”, i reply, “you going?” “i WANT to”, he said, “but have no money, which sucks ’cause saturday’s my birthday…” “well then, we MUST make this happen….you’re going with me!!!”, i reply, and plans were set.

they were simple. TOO simple. sound familiar?

at that time, he didn’t have a car worth a shit, and he didn’t have a mobile. we set up to meet at the target in san marcos. i told him (half jokingly) that i would only wait fifteen minutes for him, and then i would bail. he took me at my word. he HAS since learned not to do that at certain times, but in his defense, our friendship was pretty new then.

but here was the problem…i couldn’t remember if we were supposed to meet at 5:30 or 6:30. and he didn’t work that day, so i had no way to reach him and see. so, i showed up at target at 5:30…and waited till 6:00. when he didn’t show, i figured i had told him 6:30 so i went into target to do some shopping. i came back out at 6:35 (long lines) and waited till 7:00. then i called information, got the number to subway, and then got ahold of his home number. called, but no answer. called BACK to subway to verify, and they said to try his girlfriend’s and gave me another number. no answer. so i went to the show, had a great time, and ended up hanging with some of the guys from both bands to have stories to rub in junior’s face from his birthday since standing me up IS cardinal sin numero uno in my world.

but here’s what went down in juniorland WHILE i was in target:

he showed up at 6:15 and waited ’till 6:30. he then went to a payphone and tried calling my house which was written down on the back of my business card. what he DIDN’T notice was that below the address, phone, fax, and email line on my card was a line PRINTED ON THE CARD AS WELL that said “mobile” and had my mobile number (which, like almost all star phones, contains the numbers 666). he got no answer (duh – i was in target) and since it had been fifteen minutes, he left. two minutes later i walked out.

flash forward to june of 2k2, and my birthday. we are ALL wanting to hang out, and jethro tull is playing that night….and i have NO intention of spending my birthday listening to the extended flute solo of the live version of aqualung…so, i decline working the show. so they schedule the only two star employess i figured would join the dinner and such at guerro’s…josh and junior.

then, came ozzfest. i found out later that junior and his room mate (dion) HAD gotten there at 9:00 am as planned…but decided to take only dion’s phone in, so junior forwarded his calls to dion’s phone. and then, the rains came…and like many of the phones in the world, dion’s ISN’T waterproof. so that’s why i couldn’t reach him. and have you ever tried yelling the name “JUNIOR!!!” at a rock show in SA? you get about two hundred hispanic guys turning around at you, but no lanky white boy. i figured it would be easy to find him when the crowd thinned out for ozzy (still think that kinda sucked, but it DID allow me to get up close), but since they had been there so long, junior was part of the thinning, and therefore was unfindable because he was….well….gone.

so now, i guess we can shoot for next june and my next birthday…or we can just throw in the towel on the whole birthday thing and say fuck it. maybe arbor day needs to be our specified hang out and party day of the year. does anybody know when the hell arbor day even IS?

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I’m almost positive its sometime in May….