Anatomy of Friendship (An ode to nuns and soldiers)

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that – E B White, Charlotte’s Web

Yesterday, after attempting to fine tune the equation of ‘noise level vs. the ability to be tuneful’, I met with ‘dashing’ Government friend, rescuer of fair French maidens, for drinks at our ‘local’ (you see, Little One? I can be mindful!) Our ‘local’ is just the place on the South Bank that we repair to, when we can think of nowhere else to be or where all other ideas fall to waste due to everybody else’s lack of ability to be accommodating. And I say ‘we’ when I mean ‘he’, because I never think of anything and usually just amble amiably along waiting for his little legs to come to rest next to some chest high platform over which we can purchase beer. We, once again, didn’t surprise ourselves with our ability to talk of nothing of import but to make it sound incredibly interesting and meaningful. We lightly debated the possibility of having many contradictory core beliefs while holding them all to be intrinsically and concurrently true and he educated me on the merits of the ironic exclamation mark and the fine art of spotting it in a text message. He teased me mercilessly about my infatuations, I extracted (painfully!) information about his impending ‘affaire de coeur’, while he reminded me (worryingly!) that I was not his mother and that he didn’t do cooing (I have no intention of being his mother, I could never foster one so contrary!) He is still in splendid humour, and with a deft hand he sparingly peppered our evening with sweet little admissions of friendship (I thank you that you jokingly think ‘no one is good enough for me’. True or not, it is often what a girl wants to hear!) We have a lot in common, my ‘pocket friend’ and I, as diametrically opposed as we be. And I absolutely adore him.

I couldn't resist it!

I am glad we kept each other. It is thankfully less challenging when the notion of ‘impressing the other’ is out of the way. I see more of him now, though I see less of him. Everything breathes now (and yes, there are a few sighs of relief), all muscles are relaxed, attentions are focussed inward rather than directed at distracting ourselves with the parade of the populace that passes us by. And barbs have less sting now because they only carry the weight of one meaning, that of the deliverer. Quips are unburdened by the coupling of what he/she might have meant, or what it might all mean…it matters not, they are what they are, the thrust and parry of comradery.

This is a rarity for me. Dating disasters are usually relegated behind that shut door, in that room where I keep ‘time that I wish I’d spent doing something that turned out to be more fruitful’, and ‘things that I wish I never had said’, and ‘I could have seen that coming, why didn’t I pay attention’. Other things are kept there too, other regrets, but they are irrelevent. There is usually the meaningless ‘Let’s remain friends’ at the end, it is part of the gentle let down, a trophy of failed partnership that you give yourself by giving it to the other person, it says, ‘You see, I am a nice person. I can put aside the fact that I find the idea of going out with you quite detestable, never actually having understood why I even considered it, but I am willing to still grace your life with my presence, though I have no use of yours’. The ‘post dating friendship’ is an empty promise and an arrogant one. And it is something that I never consider…because I have enough friends! (see ironic exclamation mark here.)

But every so often, a familiar comes along that has mistakenly made their way into the wrong entrance into your life. A mother attends your life where she should have entered through the door marked ‘Sister’, an acquintance approaches where he should have entered through the ingress marked ‘Enemy’, a stranger emerges where he should have entered through the portal marked ‘Brother’. And a friend appears, who should not have come in through the door marked ‘Romantic Dalliance’. Luckily, sometimes, we are mindful enough to see the weight and significance of our true connection. Though they’ve gotten their cues wrong and mistakenly entered at the incorrect place in the scene, you know your script well enough to pick up where they are, to improvise through the murky bits and get the play back on track, where it should be, dialogue in check, the action of the piece going as it ought.

The good things that emerged from our encounter continue along swimmingly, the bad things now fodder for tasteless and tiresome jokes (on my part, I will wring the comedy dry out of anything and I can barely pass up the opportunity to see my wee friend roll eyes heavenward as if there were someplace else he would rather be!) Things are as they should be, another piece of Life’s puzzle falling seamlessly into place after some jamming and forcing into the wrong position on the board. The picture is clearer now, or well on its way to becoming so. It is a good picture, a right picture, in concord with the will of two and that ethereal determination that directs the meeting of souls.

I am happy to call him friend. Almost as happy as I am to call him ‘little’…