Dreaming of Zihuatanejo

I am a boring person. But I’ve always thought of myself as a unique sort of boring person, with esoteric tastes in everything from food to movies. So it always feels amazing to come across another soul who shares even some of them.

From Sting, S & I went on to discover we also loved off-beat movies, BBC documentaries, cold weather (we’re fellow aliens in Texas, surrounded by idiots who jog shirtless at 3:00PM when they’re not driving around in convertibles), discussing half-baked theories of history & spirituality, hogging at Madras Pavilion (essentially tasty food cooked by someone else), laziness…To top it all, we are fellow insomniacs.

I believe that each of us has a few hoops, some critical, that we hold out for folks to jump through, before we start thinking of them as “friends”. With some friends, like S, the progression is clear. With others, it’s a mystery, how one proceeds from “I wouldn’t kill myself if I had to spend a ½ hour that person” to “This is the one person who can help me snap out of my Dumbledore-blues.”

Like so much else, friendship appears to be fraught with risks - an extremely complex process that can fall apart at any instant, and for the most trivial reasons. To continue with the S example – if he knew of my LOTR / Potter twin obsessions before he knew of my preference for overcast days, and if I knew of his sports mania before I let him convert me into a Tarantino fan, would we be the sort of friends we are today? There appears to be some sort of invisible threshold that, once crossed, suddenly makes us think of differences as endearing, rather than as annoying. Pain-in-the-backside type behaviors (inability to talk of little else during basketball season, waiting outside Barnes & Noble in the middle of the night to buy a kid’s book, health-food crazes, an interest in the politics of Zaire & nominations to the Supreme Court (honestly, who gives a damn?!), and so much else) suddenly become “that’s-what-makes-them-special” type qualities.

The one encounter that bumps people up from acquaintance to friend is the weirdest thing, though. Don’t remember what it was with S. With other friends, it ranges from a shared horror of amusement park rides to a single shopping spree where a now-close friend & I discovered a taste for things that we don't ever see ourselves using, but find them irresistible all the same.

When I think about my friendships, the one feeling that’s common across all of them – ‘Who’d have thought?’

What started me on this maudlin train of thought? S is leaving Dallas. He’s moving to a better job in a colder place. The best of both worlds. Am very happy for him, and look forward to a free place to crash when I feel a need to escape this unbearable heat. Here’s to you, friend! Dallas will be drearier without you. But here’s hoping that you find another Sting fan or another Lakers-hater in your new city.

# posted by DoZ @ Friday, August 26, 2005