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?  

Goddamn Crows Are Laughin'

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 27, Verse 19

"A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he really is like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses."

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

Lion looks at Max and says, "Boy, some partner I picked."

Max replies, "You didn't pick me.  I picked you."

Sometimes you forget.  You know-- you forget which way it went.  Time does its thing and you forget things.  That's how it is, you know.  And, of course, in the end, does it really matter?  Who picked who-- who said what when and how.  The inflection, the silences, the good mornings that pass between.  Who picked up the check and who drove.  

It doesn't matter, I suppose.  Not all that much.

I've been very fortunate in my life as far as friends go.  I've lost many of them, but it's been a gentle loss, an easing away, like they're all out there together in some canoe and I'm standing there on the dock and I can see them and the water isn't really moving but they're sort of out there, just floating, floating listlessly away and it's so gradual you don't even really notice it and you wave, and they even wave back once in a while.  Once a year.  On your birthday.  They do the Facebook thing.  They Like pictures of your kids.  Facebook is the canoe.  I'm on the dock.

Good morning, my friends.

I'm in many people's canoes, too.  I don't just stand there on the dock.  Maybe I'm in your boat, out there on the water, occasionally waving back at you, or just sitting there, staring, waiting to re-enter your life.  And maybe that'll happen, because you run a successful theatre out in Des Moines and you're a doctor in Philly and you're a scientist of some kind and you're living in Israel and you're a lesbian and you're selling something to someone and you just had a baby and isn't life grand?  

Isn't life funny?  

But to return to that idea, briefly, of being fortunate-- well, I've been fortunate.  I guess that's all you need to know about that.

You know how you're anxious when it comes time for your girlfriend to meet your friends?  I never had that. My friends are the salt of the earth.  My friends are mature even when they're not.  My friends are intelligent and kind and gracious and, in their company, I am better.  Better behaved, even when I'm not, improved in spirit and outlook, honest, earnest and direct.  

What's scary is that I'm not too often around my friends anymore, so I wonder what I am without them.  Am I all of those things all or even some of the time?  How would I know?  

I'm always a bit surprised whenever I've made a friend.  The sensation of success isn't altogether familiar so, when the thing clicks, it's a bit jarring.  Like an airplane crash.  Like Hiroshima.  

But I suppose I'm getting used to it.  I was never friendless, and that's nice.  I don't really know what that feels like, to walk the earth with no one beside you.  That would be difficult, I think.  After all, a scarecrow needs crows.

Or at least another scarecrow.  

Be My Brother

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 18, Verse 19

"Some people are friends in name only.  Others are closer than brothers."

 

 

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CHIPPED WISDOM:

 

The films that I love most have strong male bonds.  "Funny Bones" is a 1995 film that nobody saw and, while the father/son dynamic was painful and faltering, a bond between two brothers, and a brother and his half-brother is the glue that holds the film together. 

 

1998 saw the release of "The Impostors" where Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt (who also starred in "Funny Bones") play better-than-best-friends-- life partners (and, no, not in that way) who prepare tea and bread for each other, sleep in tiny wrought-iron beds next to each other and are each other's muse and rock and worst mistake. 

 

"Rushmore" also found its way into indie/emo hearts in 1998, and the lovely, flawed, and love-threatened relationship between eccentric young Max Fisher and monochromatic shirt-and-tie combo wearing tycoon Herman Blume was as achingly sweet and true as it was improbable and incongruous.

 

 

Max: That’s the Perfect Attendance Award and the Punctuality Award. I got those at Rushmore. I thought you could choose which one you like more, and you could wear that one and I could wear the other.

 

Blume: I'll take Punctuality. 

 

And a bond was forged, we'd like to hope, forever.

 

Friendship for me has always been a complicated duck.  I suppose that's because I was never particularly interested in having a friend, I was more interested in having a brother, which I never did.  The friendships I forged throughout my life were quirky, easy to mock, and just as easy to understand and affirm.  Close, protective, exclusive.  The standards I set were rigid-- I expected nothing, except total loyalty and acceptance of my complicated personality, my sometimes need to eat breakfast for dinner, to sit in a car and drive around aimlessly for hours and talk about aboslutely nothing, to require a sounding board for neuroses and failings, to mitigate and sift through hopes, dreams and desires. 

 

That's all I required. 

 

There's more difficult challenges in the world, to be sure, than to be my friend, my wannabrother, but I'll tell you this: I wouldn't want to be my friend.  Because I might not hear from me for six months.  Or a year-and-a-half.  Because one day I might get a lenghty email out of the blue laden with emotion and straw-grasping and belly-aching and what am I supposed to do with that? 

 

I wouldn't know how to be my friend. 

 

As I get older, I'm learning more about how I am.  Not liking, just learning.  About the manipulation, the control, the demands and the resentments.  The need for validation.  Please, make me feel better about myself-- the choices I've made, and those I couldn't.  Am I wrong?  Am I bad?  Should I stay in therapy or should I go?  Was this the wrong thing to say?  Was it right? 

 

Am I right?

 

Should I take Perfect Attendance or Punctuality? 

 

My father had a best friend back in Israel, when he was young.  And one day his friend drowned in the ocean while he and my father and another friend were fucking around together on the beach.  You can talk to my father about the army-- about the redheaded soldier who was so ostracized that he tried to shoot himself in the head and wound up blowing off his jaw, you can ask him about the fear he had in adopting my half-sister and moving to this country with nothing.  But I haven't found the courage to ask him about losing his best friend.  I've lost friends, too, but they were not eaten by Poseidon.  They were taken away from me for this reason or that-- it doesn't really matter why anymore, it's so long ago now.

 

And I get it.  That's supposed to happen.  It's like shedding dead skin, only losing skin cells doesn't hurt.  You don't feel it happening.  A painless procedure.  You'll just feel a little pinch.  A little punch.  A staggering blow.  Out cold. 

 

But, no matter what happens in my life, I'll always have Hollywood-- and its quizzical male pairings, grasping at and clinging to each other for God knows what reason, wearing each other's pins, performing careworn comedy rountines, lighting each other's cigarettes, being there for each other. 

 

Being there.