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I had this friend one time.

His name was Jake Stoltz. His tongue was sharp, his cars were fast, and his hoes were pleasing. Plus he had a pool table in his basement. Together, we stalked the night, rewrote history and destroyed the universe.

Wait – let me back up.

Jake lived on Dayton Street, a few blocks down, back in the day. This was, and still is, a diverse part of Akron called North Hill. We met in kindee-garden (that’s vernacular) and became the best of friends. We went to Harris Elementary School, Jennings Middle School, and Nof’ High School (that’s vernacular too). During our senior year, arguably the height of our antics, Jake was elected class president. By law, this gave him the same power over the students of North High School as the real President has over the rest of the country. He immediately overthrew the government, had his political opponents executed and their lockers condemned, and became a Utopian dictator of sorts. He appointed me Secretary of Defense, which mainly meant that I had Cart Blanche to give wedgies to the nerds in the hallway. I had a quota, in fact. Every week I missed my quota Jake would pull out one of my fingernails. He was a cruel man, but fair.

Anyway, we spent most of our spare time together. As I grow older, I have a good deal of friends, but most of them exist on a 3-5 year time line. The ones that go back further than that I see so infrequently that catching up with them in any meaningful way is difficult – because of the infrequency with which I see them. I never realized just how valuable a friend was who you knew virtually everything about simply by merit of having been there for all of it. There was no topic that couldn’t be covered with ease, because we both knew all the back stories.

The time we spent together was legendary. We met cool people, traveled to strange places, drank cheap beer, smoked cheap cigarettes, drove each other around in cheap cars, and met innumerable girls that broke our hearts. Next to my wife, it’s probably the densest tome of good times that I’ve committed to memory.

Then, sometime in 2001, Jake stopped talking to me very abruptly. He was angry with me about something, but no matter how hard I tried to find out what it was, he wouldn’t tell me. And that was that. I saw him once or twice over those years but we didn’t talk. Every now and again a mutual friend would offer a kernel of his goings-on… a new girlfriend here, a college graduation there, a new job here, a summarily dismissed charge of first degree manslaughter there.

And then one day I typed his name into the MySpace search bar and his profile popped up. If I’ve found one truly curiously creepy attraction on his god-forsaken web-port of souls, it’s the ability to “voyeurize” people that you know or used to know in a voyeurs favorite fashion-without their knowledge. It’s a very strange feeling, especially when someone really goes all out with personal information in their profile, as so many of us are wont to do.

So I caught up with Jake, without him knowing. With the exception of this girl who broke his heart and temporarily derailed his life, he’s doing fantastically well. I thought about dropping him a line, but the last time I tried to get in touch with him – about two years after we stopped talking – I was not merrily met.

But finally I gave in and decided to give it another try and shoot him a line. Lo and behold, he responded – with his list of grievances. I finally had the answers to questions that I’d been asking myself for years.

There were no surprises, really. Jake’s beef with me can be chalked up to my history of generally being a dick. He had every right to be pissed at me – when I look at the stuff he was angry about, I realized that I had been a pretty shitty friend. It’s just too bad I had to lose all this time with him to learn that lesson. It’s been a huge fracture in my life. I never really let on to anyone just how much I missed him.

Anyway, I saw Jake on Friday night. We had many beers at the Boulevard. I apologized for being an ass. He accepted. He apologized for holding a grudge. I can’t say I blamed him for that, so the apology wasn’t really necessary, but it was nice to hear anyway. Five years had passed, but it was like I saw him yesterday. We had a rollicking good time.

So whats next for the myopic duo?

We’re starting a moped gang. We’re going to smoke banana peels and get plowed on Cutty Sark, then ride down the sidewalks of strip malls and clothesline old women coming out of hair salons.

We’re also going to start our old band back up – Buster Hymen and the Penetrators. It’s mainly just karaoke with a banana peels and Cutty Sark warm-up.

We’re going to finish our pilot for CSI: Mayberry. That’s long overdue.

Also, we’re going to finish co-writing our novel. It’s a story of hatred, violence and war, but also of compassion, humor and loyalty. It’s the story of an ordinary man coming to terms with an extraordinary world, fighting to stay in control of his destiny, and despite everything, holding on to his dreams. It’s the story of a woman losing her identity, and then finding that she can be more. It’s a story of courage in the face of twisted and brutal fate, and of refusing to accept that this is the way things have to be. Also, there are boobies in it.

Rock on, brother. It’s good to have you back.