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The Evil Jay - not so evil?

2004-03-22 - 10:03 a.m.

Today I was relieved to get an email from my friend, Evil Jay.

Jay is in China and I hadn�t heard from him since that outbreak of bird flu a couple of months ago. I had been a bit worried but was afraid to email him to check on him because he�s not always great about responding to email and I figured it would make me confront my worry if he didn�t respond, even if it didn�t necessarily mean he�d succumbed to anything. I know it�s kind of childish to basically stick my fingers in my ears and la-la-la about the possibility that he could have had something bad happen to him, but that�s pretty much what I did. I don�t think I�d even really been aware of how worried I was until I heard from him and realized how relieved I was.

As it turns out, he�d only been in a motorcycle accident and sustained �only minor injuries...cuts, scrapes, broken bones...you know.�

Whew.

You may wonder why I care about the welfare of someone I call the Evil Jay (and yes, he is aware that that is my nickname for him). The thing is, I know two Jays with the same last name. I met the second one (the Good Jay) when I was trying to email the first one.

Their last name isn�t that common you see, so when I checked the hotmail member directory for Jay T_____ and there was only one listed and he lived in Quebec, I thought Bingo, and emailed him. Turns out there are two Jay T_____s and both live in Gatineau. After some initial back-and-forthing confusion when I suspected that I maybe had reached the right Jay T_____ and he was playing a game to see what I would say about him, and the new Jay T_____ suspected I was an ex-girlfriend trying to stalk him in a sneaky way, we eventually realized that the other was on the up-and-up and actually ended up meeting. Once I knew two Jay T_____s, the problem arose as to how to differentiate them. The second one was a year older than me, tall, cute, liked to work out, and was an all-around nice guy and gentleman. The first, the one I�d been trying to email and who I had briefly dated, was a couple of years younger than me, average height, cute, liked to work out (we had first encountered each other at my favourite bar and then again at my gym � oh, this is a good story so I�m going to digress; he�d flirted with me at the bar and I�d given him my phone number and then he�d never called. Then a month or two later I was at the gym and saw him on the treadmill and when he stopped running I asked, �Is your name Jay?� and he�d smiled his wolfish smile and said �Yes. Where do I know you from?� and I pounced semi-triumphantly, �I met you at Zaphod�s and gave you my number and you never called me.� Without missing a beat, he cocked his head at me and said, �Shawna?� Now back to our regularly scheduled entry�), but was a total tomcat. You can see where the major difference was between the two, hence the nicknames they evolved.

The Evil Jay isn�t so much pure evil and he is devilish. He�s the kind of guy women know they should know better than to be charmed by, and yet they still find themselves giggling and preening and handing over their phone numbers. Jay has an infectious enthusiasm for things and is prone to grand schemes and big ideas which often come to naught. Imagine my surprise then, when after announcing he was going to Asia to teach English, inviting us out for his going-away bash the night before he had to be on a plane at 5 am, and we left him a the bar just starting the carousing at 11pm, he actually didn�t surface around town later that week and it turned out he had actually left for China. And once it turned out he had left, and was on a new continent and living a completely new life, he even managed to stay in touch.

Imagine how much more surprised I was when he said he�d plan his visit home to coincide my wedding and sure enough, there he was.

I have to admit, back when we first met, I never would have thought that we�d still be in touch several years and a lifetime later, when he�s moved across the world and I�ve gotten married. But I�m glad we are.

Before - After


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