Exes are NPCs
How do they keep spawning in my life's video game?
personal stories, reflection, self-care, refreshers for the soul.
I’ve had too many online coincidences with ex “boy/friends”1 lately.
People and the past hide in the woodwork and reveal themselves in batches. The universe, or whatever causes synchronicities, plants lil reminders around the internet or (worse) around town.
No one wants to be an NPC, but in certain ways, we all become that to each other as we age—characters on a loop receding into the background. The guys I’m about to mention are from a while ago. Easy to imagine them as total NPCs, living their lives on a very different timeline from me, talking the same way, eating the same things, maybe an outfit upgrade or two.
Will any NPC “exes”2 ever become playable characters again? No! Best to go forward, never look back, etc. It’s not the last time the past will run up on me. There’s, ahh, a few former relations.
I’m more interested in examining the coincidences that reminded me of them.
Remembrances of NPCs I once knew as Sidekicks or Foil Characters lol:
Google Maps: How do Google searches start? No one knows. I ended up on the page for a bar in Chelsea. The main photo was from a rooftop vantage point I immediately recognized. It felt like a picture I snapped, for a second. It showed the large, wooden deck and might have been taken from the bar next door (unimpressive, small rooftop). I bet I couldn’t even bring up the bar again on Maps if I tried (I never knew the name of it). I remember being there with a bf who lived in Jersey. It must’ve been a Sunday if we were on the west side of the city. We probably drank overpriced margaritas out of mason jars late in the day, in an attempt to stop time and his train ride for as long as possible.
List of new albums: I was browsing an aggregated list of new albums. I saw psych-rock-signifying album art that caught my eye. I clicked. I opened their Spotify and staring back at me is a guy I hooked up with a few times (so long ago!). He’s famously not online so the shock factor was through the roof. I recognized at least one other band member from an old bar. I obviously pressed play. Some of the others were in a band years ago; it seemed promising. I realized I paused on the album’s art cuz I recognized his hand drawn work. Their bandcamp bio says they’re signed to a well-known indie label, the same one as an artist he loved: he’d put him on while we were doing dabs in his lofted bed, as he cleaned at work, or when he drove me and his friend around in his van.
Celtics City: Given my location, I felt a kind of responsibility to start this Max doc series. I didn’t know how brainwashed I was by historic Celtics sports photos until the opening few minutes, where every image was vaguely familiar, from sitting in classrooms decorated with “legends” or maybe framed somewhere in my childhood home. Anyway, this is the last place I’d imagine my past to jump-scare me. But they talked about a jazz club Bill Russell owned in the 60s and showed it current-day:
I know Boston is a thumbnail-sized city, but my memory threw me way back to the wayback. I Google Maps’d it to confirm but even as I brought the page up I was already remembering, or thinking up imagined conversations, where this guy I dated tried to explain Bill Russell to me and why Slade’s had once mattered for Roxbury. I would walk by that spot to get to his. The colors of the building (funny, it always reminded me of the Lakers), the shape of the sign, you do not forget. What I cannot remember, no matter how long I street view myself around the map, is which way we’d exit his building to go to the corner store for lighters, blunt wraps, and Gatorades.
What’s your most recent coincidence/run-in with a person you dated?
oh my god they *are* NPCs....