Blast from the Past

Recently, I received a rather odd email. The story of this email starts almost six years ago (this story was pieced together through the mists of time, or perhaps the mists of keg beer). Two good friends were leaving DC, and there was a huge bacchanalian goodbye party. At some point during the party (late, but not so late that I don’t remember), a young man approached me. He told me that he was from Korea, and he said, “I think you are very beautiful, and I would like to give you my card.” Well, flattery will get you everywhere with me, and I took his card, and I must have given him mine, although I have no memory of doing so. He seemed harmless enough, and he said something about going back to Korea, so I didn’t think I needed to worry about hearing from him again. Something he said seemed to indicate that he was a friend of one of the departing people. I don’t have his card anymore, but I remember that it was kind of cool, because it was in English on one side and in Korean on the other.

Fast forward nearly six years. I get an email from an address I don’t recognize, but the subject line indicates that it’s probably not junk mail, so I open it. The writer tells me that he met me at a party that he attended with BobbyRock back in August of 2000, where he met me. He’s now back in the United States and is looking to get back in touch with BobbyRock. This is all very strange. I assume it’s the person I met at the party, but I don’t remember the connection to BobbyRock, someone I didn’t know at the time. I did meet him some months later, and we hung out a few times, but we were never really more than casual acquaintances. He moved to London in 2001, and I lost track of him after that, although I did hear that he had developed a strange habit: he would go into HMV, “borrow” CDs from their cases (CDs aren’t shrink-wrapped in the UK; some stores just have the case in the rack, and you have to ask for the actual CD when you purchase it, but apparently, they’re just sitting in the rack in HMV), taking them home, burning them, and then sneaking them back into the store. This struck me as ridiculously convoluted, but whatever. Last I heard of him was several years ago, and I have no idea where he is now. Receiving an email from someone I had spoken to for approximately two minutes at a party six years ago asking about someone I haven’t seen in five years just seems so random.