Like the Corners of My Mind

All my life, I've had these weird moments of deja vu. And everyone has them...it's that time that you're having a conversation with someone about something obscure, like Mt. Rushmore, and suddently you have that feeling that you've done that exact same thing before. It all seems very familiar. And it's never to the extent that I can predict what the person is going to say next, but it's all just eerie. Like the memory has been overlayed on real life.

However, it's strange. I never can tell if it's a memory of having done something before. Usually it feels like I've dreamed it before... so I call them dreamories. When I recall it, I can't recall actually having lived through the moment but it seems too detailed and too realistic to be just a dream.

My point to this is...over the weekend, I ventured to my quaint little hometown to visit Mama, and my dad and stepmom, for the first time since I moved to Memphis in October. And as I drive through town, I see buildings and places I once knew. And of course they hold distinct places in my memory, but the memories are becoming hazy (I blame this on drugs like X), and these places and buildings are almost like the backdrop of my current dreams.

It's strange, because I look at a building and get that feeling of deja vu, and my first instinct is that I visited that place in a dream. So everytime I go home, it's like deja vu for an entire weekend.

Now one of the most bizarre instances occured on the way back home. Let me preface all this by saying, about 10 years ago, I remember having a dream in which I was in a park at night, and I met a boy who was everything I had ever wanted. Throughout the dream I never saw his face, but I knew he was the ONE. A few weeks later, I was visiting home for the weekend, and some friends and I ventured to the big city of Florence, Alabama, for a night out. We ended up in a park -- at night -- in Florence. Yeah, it was sort of a cruisy park, but it was also sort of the local gay hangout. That night, I met someone there in the park and it was a strange sensation of deja vu. We clicked, I thought. The night ended and I invited him to visit me in my college town.

The next weekend, he arrived. But he was much more flamboyant than I recalled, and I spent most of the weekend trying to smother his flame with a big ol' "butch it up a bit" blanket. I was over him by Sunday morning and sent him along his "Mary" way. Only to have him call me six or seven times a day for the next three weeks, just to see how I was doing. I finally had to tell him not to call me ever again, and I never saw or heard from him again.

Now today, as I'm driving back to Memphis from my hometown, I charted a new course, wandering through North Alabama and Mississippi, driving down a highway that I had only driven down once before. Nature called, and I needed a pit stop. I saw a gas station up ahead, but I thought perhaps I could go a few more miles before I really needed to go. And then at the last minute, I decided why chance pissing my pants.

I swooped into the parking lot and entered the convenience store. The girl behind the counter greeted me, and I nodded and quickly asked for the men's room. She pointed, and another hand from behind the fried chicken warmer/display case pointed to the men's room as well. As I passed by the owner of the fried chicken hand, I immediately recognized the face as the little guy from the park 10 years earlier.

After the bathroom break, I wandered around the store looking for a snack, and I decided on some chicken fingers and potato wedges (YUM). He was outgoing and friendly, asking me where I was headed. I told him I was going to Memphis, and he gave me the thumbs up sign. "What a great city!" It was a little over the top but cute.

I paid for my snack and he told me to watch out for state troopers as I got close to the Mississippi state line, and wished me safe travels. I thanked him and returned to the road.

It was a bizarre moment that I chose to stop at that convenience store on a highway I hadn't ever traveled. I'm not sure if it means anything or not. I don't know if he recognized me. If he even acknowledges me, maybe I'll just be one of his dreamories.

---

On the subject of deja vu, I worked for a crazy lady once who never said "deja vu." Instead she always butchered it and said "vuja de." My coworkers would only snicker when she left the room. We decided that if "deja vu" was a feeling this had happened before, "vuja de" meant that this shit has NEVER happened.