So S (of whom I’ve written a few things here and there) got married on Saturday. Strangely, it didn’t seem like it had been all that long since she first hooked up with her now husband, but four years is a pretty long time.

I find what transpired in those few months before she left for the Bay Area somewhat strange, and still a little confusing, but it is what it is, and the likelihood of traversing that pathway has long ago dropped to zero.

There are other what-ifs in my life that are more likely to keep me awake at night anyway.

In a half-comatose daze, I drove myself over to Lindbergh Field before the sun was even up, and somehow got myself to the proper terminal. I contended with the TSA, and plopped myself in front of my gate. I watched an Indian (South Asian) family deal with their 2 year old daughter running around all over the place. Eventually, they called my boarding group. I found myself a seat and soon passed out, waking up some 20 minutes south of San Jose.

I don’t particularly remember my rationale for showing up in the Bay Area nine hours before the wedding, and seven hours before I could check into my room. Be that as it may, I had to kill some time and found myself wandering the streets of Milpitas.

It’s rather odd. My aunt used to live in the South Bay, and we would come to her house almost every summer, as far back as when I was five years old. That house on Hillview Drive was kind of a fixture of my childhood, more so than our old house in Echo Park, even. I’ve had quite a few good memories of summers there. The best was when our cousins from the East Coast had come out to visit L.A., and we ended up on a 12 hour quest to the Bay Area via U.S. 101, stopping in Santa Barbara and Solvang before finally making it to Milpitas. Somehow, my cousins thought it would be fun to throw spitwads at cars passing by in the middle of the night. They exhausted several boxes of tissue paper which ended up on the driveway, much to my aunt’s consternation.

One of the most funny episodes was when they decided to pelt a semi-truck. The impacts caused the trailer to reverberate, and it freaked the driver out enough that he actually got out of the cab to check out what the hell was going on.

There was also my last summer there, in 1998, after graduating from college, in my vain attempt at securing employment and actually starting a life out there. I ended up leaving in August, in defeat, in more ways than one. It’s pretty bittersweet. Even now, I don’t like to think about it too hard, because there’s always the possibility of finding myself in yet another downward spiral.

But I remember the endless Starcraft sessions. And riding my bike all over Santa Clara County, from Fremont to San Jose. I mean, it wasn’t an entirely bad time at all, really. Although I doubt I would want to relive those moments again.

But my point was this: I felt like I was wandering around my old neighborhood, nine years after all that shit went down, nine years after my aunt ended up leaving the Bay Area. Even here, there are ghosts. Shadow memories that spring up like boobie traps. The lazy summers of my childhood. The four years I spent at Cal. The moments I managed to steal from my exile in the Midwest, surreptitiously coming out to visit the Bay. Even that month I spent with A+E.

Odd that nearly a decade after the fact, there is still a possibility that I might give it another shot in the Bay.

Even this far out, I have no idea where my fate will lead me.