Does This Friendship Require a Lot of Oil Changes?

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 19, Verse 4

"A wealthy man has many 'friends'; the poor man has none left."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

I'm not sure if I have a lot of friends anymore.  What I am sure of is that I have some cognitive distortions, which is a fancy, psychobullshit way of saying that my thinking is fucked up, so, when I sit down and feel sorry for myself and cry into my decaffeinated tea about the dearth of friendship in my life, I have to pinch myself (I originally mistakenly typed "punch myself", and I guess that would be effective, too, though people would eventually start to wonder about the bruises) and ask myself, "Is what you're thinking really true?  Or is it bullshit?"

Sometimes I have to ask myself things.  Things like that.  

For instance, an old high school friend of mine opened up a really cool restaurant with awesome food-- it's Jewish-Italian (like she and her husband) and I've made it a point, whenever an old high school friend of mine is home visiting from wherever the fuck they've moved to, I take them there.  And I've been there with a different person maybe four or five times.  So, that right there says, okay, I have four or five friends.  Plus the friend who opened the restaurant.  Though she isn't really someone I would necessarily hang out with, every time I come to the restaurant there is a very warm, lovely hug (she's a great hugger-- some people just have it, I don't know what it is) and a genuine smile of happiness and she'll always make time to sit and talk, no matter how busy the place is.  And that all feels good.  It doesn't hurt that the food is so delicious it should probably kill you.  Eat enough of it and I guess it will.

I was reminded, this past weekend, that I have other friends.  Well, maybe they're really my wife's friends, but she's pretty generous with sharing, and she shares her friends with me, and it's seamlessly just... worked between us all.  I share some of her personality quirks that attract a certain kind of person to her, so I suppose it's natural that they'd get attracted to me.  No, not in that swinger kind of way, but, hey, I'm open to whatever.  

That's a lie.  I'm not open to whatever.  I'm closed to whatever.  I'm closed.  I'm closed to things like that.

We have this dining room table-- it's made of oak.  It's beautiful and ancient-- thick, heavy wood.  It was given to me by a friend.  Actually, the sister of a friend.  And she's kind of my friend, too-- even though both of them are nearing seventy.  That's two more.  Some of my friends are old.  Anyway, this table has leaves that you can use to extend the table.  I think maybe we've done that once or twice before.  Having a table that has leaves that you never use is kind of like having alcohol in your house that you only "keep for company" and that you never open.  

My parents had liquor in their liquor cabinet that they only took out when my great aunt and her husband would come over.  One day, they came over and my father looked for the key to the liquor cabinet and he couldn't find it.  So my great aunt and her husband moved to Florida and died.  The liquor, however, remains, malting away inside that cabinet which, ever opened again, would probably knock you stone dead with the stench of urethane and cat urine.  That's what I remember it smelling like when I was a little boy.  

Maybe that's why I don't drink.  

So, on Saturday, we opened our home and our table and, around it were seated ten people (okay, two of whom were my wife and I and two were our children) smiling and laughing and awkwardly joking and sharing personal anecdotes and eating good food and being generally very nice to be around.  Friendly.  Friends.  They were all gathered to mark 10 years since my wife's brain surgery.  Her Brainaversary.  They drank soda and spritzers our of cups marked "Bird Brain", "Brainiac", and, my favorite, "Shit for Brains".  They ate watermelon with a little placard that read, "Now That's Usin' the Old Melon!".  People brought over brain-themed food items, including deviled eggs (those fuckers really look like autopsied brains-- I, unfortunately, know that from experience), Smart Food popcorn, and they ate my wife's Monkey Brains, and a pretty awesome no-bake Jell-O cheesecake brain mold.

This one got a hunk of parietal lobe, that one got occipital.  It was all good.  These weren't necessarily my people, but they were my kind of people, and that was definitely enough.  My sister-in-law was there, too and, over the years, she has become my friend, too.  She moved here from St. Louis to be closer to her sister and our children, but she, through working at my hospital and just through life, too, has become my friend, too.  Someone I can effortlessly bullshit with, or just be quiet with, or profane with-- and it's good.  Hell, she gave me the topic for this blog because I've been pretty spent on inspiration, and a lot of things, of late.  Parenthood will do that to you-- you have been warned.   

I was lucky for three years-- I got to see my closest friend every day at work, and every other weekend, also at work.  Now I see him every three months or so, and that's okay, but it's not the same.  We text every day, because that is how it should be, that is how it must be, that's kind of how we are.  It's not so good.  And it's also the story of my life.     

My wife, of course, remains my best friend.  The one whom I can tell anything, say anything, believe anything, throw anything at or to, go through anything with-- you know, like brain surgery.  We were very young when that all happened, chronologically, and together.  We were very young together, very young at being together.  You know what I mean.  But, as I cuddled her in her hospital bed, nuzzling up to her even as her skin stunk and her head-wound was a mess of matted hair and blood and pieces of God knows what and staples and antiseptic, as Hunan the Intern opened the door and saw us together, he assumed I was her husband.

I wasn't, yet.  But we both knew that was coming.  Hunan was onto something.  I'll bet he's a great doctor today, that schnook.

My best friend and I don't celebrate bullshit holidays like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day and Father's Day, not because we're better than anybody else, but Brainaversaries are far more important to recognize.  Birthdays are good, too-- but all that other manufactured stuff can go to hell.  We don't need it, but I know for sure that we do need friends, even though they are tremendously hard to come by and sometimes harder to keep.  Friendships, like cars, can sometimes depreciate if you're really not up on the required maintenance, and they do require regular oil changes.  Since I can't imagine that anybody reads this fucking blog anymore, whether they're my friend or not, I'll be emailing this URL to everyone that I consider my friend, because I want them to know how I feel.  I don't do that nearly enough.  I guess we can consider this the latest in a series of long overdue oil changes.

Happy Brainaversary, my love.

Why the fuck isn't there a Happy Friend Day?  

A Good Vomit

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 12, Verse 25

"Anxious hearts are very heavy, 

but a word of encouragement does wonders!"

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

Scott Stossel, already the editor of "The Atlantic", and the nephew of the mustachioed TV journalist John Stossel (not sure which of those two distinctions is more meretricious, depending upon the quality of John's uncle-tude) is on the road to getting appreciably more famous.  He just wrote a book about his anxiety, his innumerable therapeutic and psychopharmacological interventions, and his significant phobias, the most severe, according to Stossel, is emetophobia: a fear of vomiting.  

Stossel hasn't vomited since 1977 (he knows the exact month, day, date, and time-- I don't) and he also knows that he hasn't vomited since then, and he also knows that the fear of this thing he hasn't done since Gerry Ford was in office is irrational.  He knows all that.  He's a pretty smart guy.  Funny, that the editor of "The Atlantic" is a smart guy.

Isn't it?

My former best friend was, and, I'm assuming still is, an emetophobe.  I lived with him for a few years and, as far as I can recall, it didn't impact our friendship too much.  It's interesting, looking back on it, that, for someone with a deathly fear of rauwlfing, he sure ate Papa John's pizza a lot which, just thinking about it, makes me want to throw up every inch of my intestines.  

As I was listening to the interview with Stossel on "Fresh Air" today, I, of course, thought about my former best friend.  My ex.  Whatever he is.  And I was intensely annoyed that I couldn't enjoy a simple radio interview with this intelligent, very talented, not altogether funny freak without that enjoyment being intruded upon by memories of my former best friend.  I can picture him, standing in our dorm room, grinning, the same way he used to when he was in fourth grade, when we first met.  He has big teeth, and big, black hair.  I wonder if any of it's gray now.  I can see him in his black jeans, white t-shirt and white socks.  He wasn't exactly a fashion plate.  Black sneakers.  Black Tague watch. 

I remember.

I guess he won't ever get his chance to write his book about emetophobia.  Of course, I'll never get to write my book about anxiety, about obsessive compulsive bullshit, about dysthymia, about worrying I'll be found out as a fraud and a phony and a bastard and a mean, yucky meanie man.  

Stinky butt.  

I don't want you to know the truth about me, and yet, it seems like all I do is graffiti it all over your face.  And mine.  There's graffiti over the map of Israel and it's telling my terrible story and I hope it diminishes my glory so you will finally know and stop reading this blog and leave me alone and think to yourself, "Jesus, he really was right."

Maybe that's the only thing that would make me truly happy: for you to go away.

Please, don't go.

I wasn't just annoyed, of course, about being forced to think about my old best friend, but because Scott Stossel's bankrolling his mental illness, and, gee: I'd like to do that.  That'd be swell!  Sign me up.  I want.  He's smarter than me, but I'm funnier.  I'll even pull down my pants to prove the point.

Christ, he's not even really Jewish.  Where does he get off anyway, pretending to be anxious?  Come on, man.  

I want to show him.  I want to teach him a lesson.  I want to go to his book signing in my neighborhood.  I'll sit in my car in the Barnes & Noble parking lot with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (dark meat) and eat that shit in under two minutes flat, wait in line with his book clutched to my chest and then, when I get up to him, I'll fucking throw the hell up all over him.  Then we will see what's what.

Then I'll have something to write about.  You know, for money.

A grand adventure.  A good vomit.  A tall tale.  That's what my life's missing.  It has all the typical stuff, the peaks and the valleys, but there's nothing there that's really ZING-KA-ZOING, you know what I mean?  Nothing that really grabs you by the lapels or the taint and pulls you closer and says, "Now, listen here, my darling; this is a tale that ought be told for approximately a $250,000 advance."  

And maybe that moment will come and maybe it won't.  Maybe I won't need a Colonel's Original Recipe bucket to make it all come true for me and for my family, and, if it doesn't happen to me, for me, for us, well, I will have to be okay with that, like I've had to be okay with so much.  Like we all do.  We can't all have John Stossel for an uncle, and we can't all hide our stinky butts from the world or hang onto our best friends like our childhood dollies forever.  All we can do is what we can do, and that will just have to be enough.  It will have to be enough for you, and, I guess, for me, too.  I suppose, as long as I have you, I'm good.

Anxious, but good.