I don’t know that I’ll ever get over the thing where you haven’t seen someone for a long time and you don’t keep in super-regular touch with this person but when you do see the person it feels totally natural to tell this person all your business and have her sleep in your bed with you. I feel like it happens to me all the time, that it’s actually a regular occurrence in my life; I go home for Christmas, I see the Key Girls for my allotted one time per year and I end up crying on their shoulders and eating fondue at their houses and holding their babies and talking about everything and nothing and it’s fine. I go to JournalCon and see people I have been emailing sporadically since last year and there we all are together, humping each others’ legs and cuddling and holding hands and telling each other stuff we might not ordinarily tell a random stranger. Is this strange? Do other people do this?
I mention because my very silly and wonderful college roommate Airy was in town Tuesday night and we had dinner and she slept over and I even dug out the Cranberries CD (Delores O’Riordan, where are you now?) that I played mercilessly our entire freshman year and put on “Linger” just to make her laugh. She bought me dinner on her company’s dime and listened to me talk and talk and talk about myself. We had tea and were ready for bed by ten thirty because we both had to get up in the morning. Since lately my thing is sleeping with hot girls Airy just hopped in with me and we talked for a while in the dark the way we used to in college, when our twin beds were just the right length apart for us to be able to jump from one to the other with something approaching ease. The first few months of college I would write a new poem every week and read it at an open mic night and Airy…are you ready?..would accompany me on her recorder. Her hair is as long as mine used to be when I was eighteen and had just met her and mine’s now as short as hers was before she shaved it all off into our dorm room sink right before the party where I got to know my good friend Anna.
I guess I’m thinking a lot about friendship lately: the Friend Universe, if you will. I feel like I have a lot of different types, like everyone else, right. The Work Friends that are absolutely essential to the bitchery that is professional academic life; the Book Club friends that you kind of only see at Book Club but when you do they are so cute and funny and they say such good smart things about the books that you regret being in the other room getting more cheese dip; the Friends Of Your Housemates who welcome you to their barbecues with no hesitation; the internet friends you made through your online journals, like one day you started reading them and you blew through their archives and then you timidly asked if they’d like to have coffee one day and you talked and talked and talked and now they’re not really even your “internet friends” anymore, they’re just your friends you happen to meet through your online journal; the college friends that survived graduation and that you don’t even talk much about school with anymore because a) it was like seven years ago and b) so much else has happened since then to talk about; bellydance friends that you automatically partner up with whenever it’s time to practice duets and you’ve even floated the idea of going out dancing together; people you met at Burning Man last year that you asked to marry you; people you’ve known since you were eight and in whose weddings you’ve been and whose babies you’ve held and who maybe you wouldn’t know now, at this point in your life, because you’ve all done such different things and gone such different places, but they’re extra precious to you because as you get further and further away from being a little girl you love the people with whom you were a little girl all the more.
There are also the Friends With Expiration Dates (which for me would be a lot of the people I went to social work school with) and the Friends That Are Couples That You Used To Hang Out With As Part Of A Couple And You’re Not Quite Sure How That’s All Going To Pan Out. There are the Friends That You See Once A Year At The ABL Party and the Friends That Are Your Friends’ Husbands and the Friends That You Don’t Remember Having Anything In Common With Now which are closely related to, of course, the Friends You Feel Guilty About Not Calling More Often But You Move In Such Different Circles Now.
As I’m cataloguing all this I notice that in my head these categories are all filled with mostly women. I’m noticing that particularly right now, when I’m back into yet another round of Boys Are Yucky. For the record, I’ve got lots of friends who are boys and they are all lovely individuals…but I don’t know, I’m just really appreciating and admiring and loving my women friends right now. I’m finding it really difficult to relate to men as friends, especially when I could be hanging out with gorgeous women who get me in ways that it feels no man ever can or could. It’s these women who are holding my head above water, who are so generous and tolerant with me, who make me feel like they, at least, still love me when I feel that no one in the world possibly ever will again. They’re willing to listen to me and challenge me and support me and do all the things you expect from good friends but are surprised and grateful to receive nonetheless. I sometimes feel I don’t deserve such good friends in my life but actually, a lot of the time I feel like I do, because relationships with people are the most important things in my life.
So I guess I’m pretty lucky to have all these people all over the country whom I feel fine telling my business and snuggling in my new pretty sheets. It makes it impossible to feel lonely when I know there are so many good people scattered around like a homey constellation of gorgeous, sympathetic, trustworthy, amazing stars.