"I have moved to Alaska," he wrote.

With humor in my heart gained from ten years of looking back, I think of him occasionally when I pass by the last place I knew him to live. I was still living in my hometown, and he lived in Memphis. He had just moved into a duplex in what is now my part of town and I sometimes pass it, like I did a few days ago. Since then, I've just been thinking about it a little, sort of looking back and laughing about that tiny moment in my life.

We were a set up, a friend playing matchmaker. She flew with him on Northwest and had worked with me some years earlier. (There's a post about her somewhere but I never figured out how to link back to posts.) She had called me and talked to him and played matchmaker. We met one night after work at a casino. It was an easy drive down for him, and since I still lived in my hometown, it was an easy way for me to meet him.

I don't remember how long we romanced. I remember him coming to my apartment some, and I remember driving to his roommate's house some, and I remember seeing him in his new apartment. My last memory is him at my house, getting a call-out and leaving. He just disappeared after that. Completely cold. No break up. No return call. Just gone.

Well over a month later, I got a letter from him. It was delivered in an envelope that was sort of like an overnight express package, but it didn't actually say overnight express. It was some kind of off brand envelope. Not USPS or UPS or anything. Inside it was an envelope with a letter and he had written, 'I have moved to Alaska.'

Yea, I didn't believe it either.

Nor did I see the point in the odd delivery package. You wait over a month to write a letter with a lie, and then disguise it in a delivery envelope? Bizarre.

A couple of months later, Marilyn told me she had flown with his roommate. Typical he said/he said conversation ensued, without any 'he said' from me, because I just don't recall saying much about it. The roommate said that he said that i said some stuff about them or some such. It's hard to remember, it's been a long time. But the way I remember it, the roommate confirmed he had not actually moved to Alaska. A few years later, Marilyn flew with him.

I guess in the spirit of his oh-so-jr-high-break-up-letter, I kept the first card he gave me, the break up letter, and the one gift he gave me. Sealed them up in a box and hid them away. Everything else, I burned ala 'Waiting to Exhale.' Not quite as dramatic in the backyard of my then-apartment. But it made me feel better.

I've never seen him. Once or twice, I thought I might have seen him in a crowd, but I really thought the person only reminded me of him and wasn't really him. In the stands at a baseball game or something like it. Well over ten years have passed, and it's just a funny memory if I have to get on that road to bypass Union Avenue traffic, pass that duplex where, as a young man I kissed with him one night. And think of the then-drama where a supposedly grown man broke up with me a month after the fact with a letter that started with, 'I have moved to Alaska.'

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