On Friendship

This from a post of mine back in 2009:

"Erica Jong writes...

'... analyzing which had gone into each of these relationships, each of these relationdinghies, each of these relationliners. I knew that the way I described them was a betrayal of their complexity, their humanity, their confusion. Life has no plot. It is far more interesting than anything you can say about it because language, by its very nature, orders things and life really has no order.'

I'm finishing, or resuming after great pause, Fear of Flying.

I used to think I wanted to write a semiautobiographical graphic novel or play. One of my best friends plans to write a memoir.

This is all wrong: the stories that we tell about ourselves must continue to shift and transform or we'll die."

I like this person-- I like what she was thinking about. I like that she was interested in specifically acknowledging the organic nature of human relationships and how they're outside the capacity of language to describe. I also like how she knew this about the stories she was telling herself and others. I am not other from this person-- it's just awkward to say that I really like my 24-year-old self.

The other important thing is this: I've been taking an inordinate number of pictures lately of Kristin, Stephanie, and Claire. I'm just going to say it flat out: I didn't expect to make friends, and  I am absurdly grateful to them for their friendship. Yet even now I find myself on unsure ground in most of the relationships I've built here.

Trust takes time. We do have to be wary of boredom, stagnation, and complacency, but trust in relationships takes time. So does understanding: Claire, with whom I lived for my first month and a half here, said something so completely surprising to me on Saturday that my mind could not register it for a few minutes. I have known her intensely here, but I was reminded that I have not known her long enough to always follow her perfectly. And that's fine. Like language, with patience and listening, it will come.

What I mean to say is this: I am surprised at the fun that I'm having, but right now I want to center my mind on the friendships that are so old, dear, and well-established that I no longer have to explain myself. You know who you are:

• we always share the same family birthday party
• I have known you since preschool, and I was there-- in the boat!-- when you met your partner
• you call me "Gus", "Turkey", or "Jessie"-- things which would, out of any other mouths, be completely unacceptable (and, of course, I love that you call me this)
• you've known and loved my mother for nearly 45 years
• in first grade, yours was the first telephone number I memorized after my own
• the Grand Coulee Dam-- actually, mostly the car-ride there
• we competed to see who could read more The Boxcar Children books
• I've definitely changed your diapers (I was nine!), but now you're smarter than me
• in fourth grade, you loved maple bars from Winchell's (this was beyond my capacity to understand), and we'd go back to my house and record radio shows using an old tape player and a soy sauce bottle as a mic
• Red Cross babysitter certification trivia
• MYST, Riven
• Harry Potter Trivia
• you witnessed my first middle school dance with that boy you later said wore eyeliner
• Mt. Vernon Service Trip
• we always ended up in history classes together, starting with Wilk's ninth grade history-- at some point (I think this was Sr. Heck's class), you wrote out the lyrics to Rufus Wainwright's "Tower of Learning" instead of the desired short answer
• you made a hot-red dress for me-- what were we thinking?
• "Scarlet Locks" and Joe Natale
• you didn't act, but you had to take it on for the One-Acts so that someday you could direct... Hmmm!
• Harry Potter books on tape (yes, tape!)
• Settlers of Catan-- and you were always trying to trade those useless sheep
• many early mornings chopping vegetables at Sacred Heart
• your Geo hatchback
• your Honda Civic
• that terrible paper about Cuba and embargoes
• MJ's "The Man in the Mirror" at the worst hour of the morning
• those terrible films in Spanish class-- not Destinos, no, the ones we created
• the penultimate Christmas trip to Krispy Kreme after we were teenagesick of our parents
• however did we get through the winter of 2002-2003?
• you actually liked my poetry
• you were there when I smoked my first cigar (it was a Swisher Sweets!) on that camping trip right after graduation
• we don't share biology, but I call you my aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my brother, my sister
• we do share biology, and you still love me for it
• we lived, worked, and loved through J. Davis's The Core together
• I taught you Settlers of Catan
• February 2008: the Vagina Monologues
• Gender, Body, and Religion (and really, all those other M. Wilcox classes): by the way, I still have that blue knitted hat you got from a friend
• when I first met you, you were talking about how thick your file at the CIA must be-- and I knew right away that I would admire you forever
• you shaved my head in front of an audience
• you loved me even when I came home with a shaved head
• you fasted with me, and we danced in the rain
• I crawled under your rickety dining room table when I was sure the earth was quaking, but really I'd just had a beer
• I had the incredible privilege of working with you at Divina Providencia
• "YOU made out with that accordion player, too?!"
• The Late Foucault
• you were blueberry bagel/blueberry schmear guy at the bagel shop, and most of us who worked there were rather disdainful of your choice. I met you again in yoga class five years later, and the rest is history.
• Martini Tuesdays
• when you come to visit Walla Walla, we always eat weird Chinese food, and you always want to visit Klicker's (and I always love it)
• I painted you for an early experiment in my art thesis, and you may still be friends with me because I still have all those photographs. Burning ceremony before the one of us gets married next summer?
• you were married before you could legally drink champagne at your own wedding, and I don't know that I'd ever been happier for or had more faith in the love of two people
• Queer Beer
• the phenomenal(ly strange) pieces-- technical, performance, otherwise-- of New Genre Art w/ B. Bloch
• did we really live through April 2007 and come out the other end with the same Studio Art degree as those other people? Wow.
• you hollered when I graduated from college wearing the most ridiculous sunglasses
• you didn't begrudge me the right to stay in Walla Walla-- in fact, you were glad I had a job at all
• you tolerated me when I was a terrible bowling teammate
• you told me I wasn't insane for wanting to be treated right
• in fact, you've insisted on this my entire life
• you let me sleep on your couch when I couldn't go home
• you can't play Scrabble or Dungeons and Dragons without taking a fifteen-minute turn, and yet we don't hate you
• you're probably actually a "Badventist", but you taught me a lot of good things
• 2 East Birch Street
• you worked in the desert, and your presence has always given me courage
• you enjoyed the most remarkable dance at your wedding reception, and you asked us to remind you when times were tough that we'd stood at your wedding and would hold you fast to that
• I got stalked by a coworker, and you: offered to beat him up for me, offered to litigate, offered to move somewhere new with me and my cat
• I think of you often, especially when I'm thinking of Hillary Clinton or airplanes
• High School Musical I, II, III
• making you read Agatha Christie
• you are my favorite business major turned winemaker
• when we faked going to a Bavarian village for Christmas instead of back to our families
• you are a vegetarian whose job it was to slice meat several hours a day, and I still love your thesis even if it wasn't quite what you wanted
• we read Atlas Shrugged together, and we weren't even in high school anymore. Seeing the movie might've been a mistake
• you are allergic to everything! Sulfites! And I love to cook for you.
• you took care of that cat I adopted on "Free Kitten Day" for the first two weeks of his life with me-- he's still in love with you, I'm sure
• I enjoyed the dark beer we made together until it exploded in the Subaru all over those books-- ugh
• July 4, 2010: the place where we were going to watch the fireworks? You called it "the adult playground"
• one favorite wedding of my life, in which I'd previously met four of the wedding-goers (or participants) of onehundredsomething but was made to feel as though I was home
• we shared a season watching Twin Peaks and reading aloud to each other-- from Wendell Berry, Herman Hesse and Other People of Letters
• the Maker's Party
• 10.10.10-- you ran the Tri-Cities Marathon, and we held signs for you
• when we almost didn't make it down from the skiing fields at Thanksgiving near Joseph, OR
• I've read several of the most entertaining books (The Hunger Games, Kate Shugak, The Scorpio Races) in the last three years because of your recommendations
• when we made the gingerbread house, it was the most glorious thing we'd seen all season
• we have gleaned the seconds of Walla Walla's crops side-by-side for the last several seasons, and you gave me the gumption to make my own preserves
• I was there when you met the Pacific Ocean in person for the first time
• you taught me proper backgammon, you kill me at Scrabble, and you've made me Sudoku fearless
• at your birthday party, the boys sang and danced to "Baby Got Back". Do we have that on video? I want it.
• we don't share biology, but you have made me family
• and, after many years, and many warm discussions, you've persuaded me to love Portland, OR almost as much as I love Walla Walla and Seattle
• I am here, free, and unafraid to be in Turkey (during Christmas no less!) because no matter what, I am so well-loved by you at home

Each of these moments may look different to you who were present in them. I am not their master, only a temporary conductor of what these small things mean to me.