Doppelgangers by A. Iwasa
 
I'm convinced everyone has at least one doppelganger.  There are only so many ways a human being can look.

For years I was haunted by one, who also had the same first name.  I became aware of this the first time I walked into Common Ground, a café in Kamm's Corners, Cleveland.  I walked up to the counter, and a really pretty barista said, "Hello Alex."

I was smitten but dumbfounded.  I asked, "How do we know each other?"

She squinted a little, and said, "Oh, funny, you look like my friend, Alex."

A few years later I was on my way to Common Ground for my second time and told this story.  My ride's older sister was sitting with me in the back seat and said, "That was me!  You look like my friend Alex, and I was the only cute girl working there, then!"

I could have keeled over and died.  She was still all kinds of cute, and now she was starring at me.  Perhaps this was when I found out Alex fronted Cows in the Graveyard.

Rewind to 1996, and I'm walking through a way over sold Mushroomhead, Incantation, Forlorn show at the Phantasy Nite Club in Lakewood, Ohio.  An extremely attractive young woman walks up to me and exclaims, "Alex!"

I ask, "How do we know each other?"

She looks me over and says. "Sorry, you look like my friend Alex."

"I am Alex!"

She laughs and replies, "Oh, funny, you're also named Alex?" then walks away leaving me disappointed.

A year or two later I'm walking through Parmatown Mall, and briefly talk with another mall rat.  Later he told me as I walked away his companion said, "He looks like my friend, Alex."

He told her, "That was Alex."

"No, Alex sings for a band."

"Alex sings for a band."

"Not him, different Alex."

I was also told she thought Alex was hot, for whatever that was worth.

A few years later I was on my way to Washington, DC to protest the war in Afghanistan before it started.  We stopped in Kent, and a student I didn't know sat down next to me and we got to talking.  Eventually she told me I looked like the singer of a band she just saw.  I asked if the bands was Cows in the Graveyard, but she couldn't remember.  I was ready to lose my mind!

The next summer I was at a drum circle behind the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on a Sunday evening, and a lovely young woman I just met told a mutual friend she might have still been dating at the time, "Doesn't he look like Alex?"

He simply replied, "Alex is hot?"

"You think so?!"

"Yes!"

"I don't."

We make eye contact, I'm frowning deeply.  She laughs awkwardly and says, "What I'm saying?  Alex is hot."  We sort of become friends that summer, but I was always a bit suspicious that she was using me to make her ex jealous.

In October that year, the International ANSWER Coalition organized demonstrations against the second Iraq War before it started, and I went to the action in Clevo's Public Square.

Somehow I ended up in a conversation about doppelgangers, and I heard the worst doppelganger story ever:  "About every five years someone walks up to me, punches me in the face, and then says, 'Oh my God, I'm so sorry!  I thought you were someone else!'"

We all laugh heartily, I can't top that one, but I share my haunting story to a few good laughs.

Later I keep hearing people shout, "Alex!" but they're never calling for me.  I notice someone else answering all the calls as he dorks with the PA.  He has brown skin, about my height, glasses, shaggy hair (we both had long, long hair, then cut it about the same time)... and a backpatch:  Cows in the Graveyard.  I walk up to my long lost brother, and introduce myself.

I retell my story of how I'd been hearing about him for some six and a half years.  He'd like to know who all these pretty women were.