It's a jump to the left, and then a step to the right

The literal time warp started with my red eye on Friday night. The concept of red eyes always freaks me out - that you get on a plane, close your eyes for a few hours, and suddenly it's a brand new day? That's a little Twilight Zone-ish, if you ask me.

I was hardly able to sleep and arrived in New York groggy and exhausted at 6 AM Saturday. Fortunately, I was able to make up for lost sleep at my friend Cara's, who is training for a marathon (support here here!) and so left me to nap while she went off to run 13 miles through Central Park. Fair trade off, yes. It couldn't have worked out any better.

Cara returned just as I started waking up around 12:30. That left us a little more than four hours to eat lunch, buy our friend Kristin gifts for the engagement party, and get ready for the party that evening. Since it was being held up in Westchester, we were hitching a ride with another friend in the city, but had to meet her on the other side of town to do so.

The engagement party was fun - having the celebratory feel of a wedding without the formality and stress. There were about 75 people there - college friends, family, and friends from the new life she shares with her fiancee. Of the 75 people, I was one of five single people at the entire party. Five. Seven if you count her brothers who are in their young twenties. Of course I had a million friends to talk to, but the loneliness hit the next day when I went to take the train back to the city, knowing everyone else was waking up with their significant other and would be gossipping about the party, sharing laughs, having breakfast in bed. I just lugged my overnight bag to the MetroNorth station, thinking about who might be worth text-messaging, just so I could say hello. Have someone to check in with.

That person turned out to be Hilary who was in town for the weekend with her four year old, Sophie. I can't remember the last time I had seen either of them, and we had made plans for brunch with our other friend Nick. If I haven't seen Hilary in two years, then I probably haven't seen Nick for three or four. But we all have a tremendous history together.

I met them both first semester Freshman year and became close with both rather quickly. Nick was my platonic guy friend, and Hilary was my best girlfriend. After graduation, we all moved to the city within a few months of each other. When September came and I was ready to look for my own place, it turned out that Nick was also ready to get an apartment. It was an easy decision to become roommates, and he brought in a third friend, who I also knew, to make rent more manageable. Hilary, who had been staying in her grandmother's guest bedroom while she looked for work, ended up living in that apartment for years. Since it was a large, three-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment, our group of friends often met there to hang out - at least when the grandmother was out of town.

By the end of the first year, Nick and I weren't getting along. I thought he was an inconsiderate slob, and I found out that he was taking the money we gave him for the phone and, well, not using it to pay the phone bill. I kicked him out of the apartment (and asked Kristin to move in) and we avoided each other for a few years, eventually patching things up sometime later when neither of could remember what we were mad about.

In 2002, Hilary got pregnant, then married, and then moved back to Boston where rent was more affordable. I get holiday cards every year but have only seen her and her daughter a handful of times since the move. So I was eager to see both of them and catch up on lost time.

Brunch turned into an all-day affair, and Nick and I found ourselves back at Hilary's grandmother's entertaining Sophie while Hilary packed up the car to go back to Boston. Nick read the paper as I gave horsie rides around the living room, the same room I had been in so many times with these same people. And that's when the deja vu hit. I have been here before. But in a different life.

That life was before babies and husbands and engagement parties. The same apartment, the same people, but now there was a baby. Excuse me, not a baby - a child. A four year old child that my friend had practically in the blink of an eye.

Coming off of the night I had had prior, it was a weird and kind of sad feeling. Nick and I walked out together and he commented, "I really miss the good old days." I swallowed the lump in my throat and agreed.

What made that reunion even more intense was that the last few weeks have brought reconnections with some other people from my past, namely Copywriter, who was in my life during the same exact period I lived with Nick and hung out with Hilary. He talked me down the day our phone was turned off, tried to set Hilary up with one of his friends, and painted our kitchen the day Kristin moved in. He knew me at a very distinctive time in my life, when I was basically still a college kid - utterly green and unsure of myself in the big city. We didn't talk after the breakup, save for a few run-ins, and all of my memories of him are tied into that unique, year and a half window of my life.

So it was fitting that I met him for coffee this week.

I wasn't nervous, exactly, even though it had been six-plus years; although I wasn't quite sure what to expect, either. But he walked in, looking exactly the same if not better, and we just fell into our natural banter and spent a good hour and a half laughing and reminiscing. It was comfortable and nostalgic and fun. Also a nice ending to a trip I hadn't really wanted to take. Again, I felt that there was no way seven years could have passed. Oh, except for that he is engaged and I live in LA, and that, despite my best efforts, time still finds a way of passing, after all.

Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed.

And such is the figurative time warp this trip became. In between my social calls, I was actually there to work, visiting the various magazines to introduce new products. This is something I do occasionally - schedule appointments with beauty editors at their offices to show them my goods. The last time I went was about a year and a half ago; since then, offices have been upgraded, the Hearst tower was constructed, and security was at such a maximum I actually had my bags X-rayed at Time Life. The Hearst tower was straight out of the Jetsons; everything else was just a reminder of the world we live in, post-9/11. When I started doing these appointments, back in the days when I dated a copywriter and lived with college friends, you could just saunter right up to each floor and do what you wish. Now, I had identification ready at a moment's notice and spent my time before appointments locked inside the sealed glass doors of the elevator banks, lobbies and reception areas having been sacrificed for safety.

The continuous juxtaposition of the past with the present (and future) has now left this time traveler exhausted. It also makes me laugh. In a week where all I want to do is look toward the future, I can't seem to stop partying like it's 1999.