I'll be stone-faced and pale, you'll pout in stereo: Nonsensical rambling of epic proportions

I had to drive to the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania yesterday for a few hours of lying in a big ole’ magnetic tube and trying not to move. I gleefully found that Ben Folds Five’s self-titled debut album provided me with almost door-to-door entertainment. Okay, maybe Wawa-to-door, but who’s counting? Me, obviously. I also maybe not-so-gleefully recalled some seriously sage words that Mr. Folds wrote a long time ago, that were basically a frying pan upside my annoyed head this week.

From “Video”:

“Well I’ve seen some old friends sort of die, or just turn into whatever must’ve been inside them…or whatever all of us then had in common grew up. They left home. They don’t think that way no more.”


Regardless of what set things with Nicki in motion---and no, I’m not going to be vague here; the timing of it all, or any of the details, the fact is that where things stand now was inevitable.

Since you’ve decreed for your queendom of internet subjects that you’ll not entertain my attempts to handle this matter privately, I’ve decided to delve into my stable of big words and fanciful prose to state my case.

I can only speak for myself with a clear conscience, which is why, my dear FOUR loyal readers (that’s Leslie, Hench, Sheiko, and myself), it’s my name down there at the bottom of this here textual manifestation of the hot air I blow. My liking to read myself type aside, yes (REDACTED!), this was a long time coming. I can understand how you might think this came out of left field, an unfortunate side-effect of your being quite a terrible friend, and I might go out on a short limb to say delusional as well.

The fact is, you never really were a great friend. Often maniacally wrapped up in your own personal, and more often than not self-inflicted, drama…you only had time for your “best friends” when you needed a void filled. More often than not that stemmed from the guy in your life doing something thoughtless, to which you’d swear off the entire gender for all times. Or at least until your hangover wore off and suddenly your “best friend” was telepathically expected to have forgiven “the bastard” and be fine with getting brushed aside once again.

This is not to say anyone who wants to have friends cannot be in a relationship. I have friends (ahem, Saint Hench of Woodside Lane, ahem) who were (gasp!) in a relationship when we became friends, but has come to be the best friend I’ve ever had, through college, through her marriage, and despite the fact that she lives five hours from me and we have spent mere hours together in the last three years. Not to overtly deify anyone or anything, but she’s a pretty goddamned perfect friend.

Never once has Hench expected anything other than honesty and maybe a few hot dogs along the way. We have had exactly one argument not related to music or hot men. I remember it exactly. We were driving (OK, she was driving) down Hampton Boulevard towards ODU, crossing over 38th street and passing Camp Zama record store. We had been talking about middle names, and I asserted that I did not have one. Hench firmly informed me that Ann WAS my middle name; point blank, period. (Big ups RWNY2 Nicole). I felt betrayed and murderous. I don’t remember how the argument ended, probably thrown off course by a sighting of some beautiful bomb boy, but it was over regardless by the time we hit BAL (I know you bitches know the geography) and Hench has quite a lead foot. Over the years, Hench has taken a lot of guff from me, and still gave me rides wherever I needed to go. She carried the enormous burden that is the asshole flag, which she surprisingly only waved a few times, and always knew the exact thing to say that would make me accept her ruling. Usually something along the lines of “You’re going to have to drop out of school and you may never lay eyes on (Mike Presta) again.” If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s probably better for you.

(I’d like to take a hot second to thank (REDACTED!) for this opportunity to be as obnoxiously verbose as I have been in years. It’s fucking fantastic and no, Hench, I’ve held no beers this evening. By the by, would “obnoxiously verbose” be considered an oxymoron? I wasn’t an English major, but I played one on TV.)

While I am extolling virtues, I’ma go ahead and put one Leslie Paxton on blast (me and my damn RW-begotten slang). My first memory of Leslie is from the night before Thanksgiving break in Rogers Hall at ODU. There were about 7 people in the dorm counting RA’s and custodial staff. Needless to say, Leslie and I bumped into each other. We bonded over Foo Fighters and Super Nintendo. Now, Leslie and I weren’t the tightest of bros. She had Tiesha, and Hench & I had very demanding people-watching schedules in the Webb. But we shared some belly-laughs from time to time, and admittedly my being friends with (REDACTED!) facilitated my being friends with Leslie. Further, I don’t really think it was until (REDACTED!) left ODU that Leslie and I grew any kind of close. We walked a lot in the residential neighborhood adjacent to Powhatan and tried our best not to look like poor college students desperate for a peek at a normal life in suburbia, a land where ramen noodles are a novelty rather than a necessity, and taco night is an afterthought rather than a feast deserving of actual plates. To speed this montage up, Leslie came to work with me at SAC, which ultimately put the choke hold on our friendship. We dealt with some big-time, knock-down, drag-out shit, and didn’t talk for like a hundred years. Or two. Yes, it was about two years. A year and a half? I don’t know from math.

Alas, Leslie and I began to bump into each other in oh-so-chic downtown Norfolk nightspots, and managed to build up a limited cordiality in the sterile environment that is Backstage Café. Too loud to string together any kind of sophisticated unpleasant conversation to further widen the rift, too loud not to only manage pleasantries and neutral commentary at best. Actually, I’m not really sure how we came to actually have a real conversation again. Forgive me if I have a massive legion on my brain that makes me have cognitive and memory issues from time to time (we’ll touch on that later)…but I believe it was the night of the Ludacris concert at ODU. I had some tickets and tried to get a hold of Leslie, knowing she’d enjoy the show. We never did get to meet up, but she called me as I was walking out of the convocation center, and we talked all the way on my drive back to Chesafreake. When I got home, I sat in my car talking on the phone for two hours. We didn’t talk about what caused us not to talk in the first place, but rather just about our lives at that moment. We traded horror stories about our wretched first jobs out of college, frustrations about being out of college, and just kind of gabbed. I missed Leslie’s accent, her tendency to not only impersonate people but write fictional dialogue for them that totally sums up them up better than actual dialogue of theirs could, and her frankness. I will try to don the cap of a good person and suggest that a guy someone describes as an all-around gem, good church-goin’ folk that helps old ladies across the street and loads their groceries into the car for them is actually a nice guy, and Leslie will explain him away as “a 30-year old virgin and you know it”. This is why I must have Leslie as a friend. She does not dilly-dally, and she keeps my brain on its toes (or cord?).

I have learned a thing or two about what a good friend is in the last 7 months. At the end of April, I broke my leg as a result of a mounting as-yet-undetected Multiple Sclerosis attack. I was diagnosed two days later, and my life changed forever. The details of my disease are for another manifesto. This one is about friendship. My true friends showed themselves in all different ways. The ones local to me were big on bringing gifts to the hospital or just coming to sit with me. Some were real troopers, fielding messages relaying yet another phone number to use for yet another hospital stay (there were six in all) and finding time in their busy schedules to take a minute out to call and say hello. It reminded me that there are normal people in the world, not just sick people, people who take care of sick people, and family members who wanted to tear their hair out in frustration over what was happening to me. It was a time when I didn’t want to go to sleep, because I didn’t want to wake up and find something else wrong with me.

The day I came home from the hospital after diagnosis, my friend Daina came to my house armed with a stack of packets full of information she’d gathered on MS. They were collated and bound, and there were enough for everyone in my family. I for one was grateful if only because I had no real grasp on exactly what this disease I had was, let alone the risk she took making all those copies on the company dime (kidding!). Daina called me every day, and even though she knew I had my sister graciously serving as my personal nurse and attending to my every need, she constantly called to say she was stopping at Target on her way home from work and did I need anything, or do I have to go anywhere and need her to take me?
Or take Dena and Gabriella. When I was released from the hospital for the third time, Dena and Gabriella both happened to be in town (from DC and Florida, respectively). I’ve kept in regular contact with Dena, but Gabriella not so much. We haven’t spoken in years, and in fact, had some bad blood over an ancient fight. When they could have been out whooping it up, and laying the mack down on their vacations, they became seasoned professionals at carting my crippled ass around our tiny island, loading me and the wheelchair into Dena’s Jeep at record speed and efficiency, and never once making me feel like a burden.

Throw in some awesomeness from the Hench (of course), Horns, various co-workers, and most of all my sister. She is most certainly going to get one of the cushiest clouds to sit on in heaven, if only for that one time, during my second visit to the hospital when I was on industrial-strength medications too numerous to name, coupled with a broken leg and confinement to a bed pan…I umm…made a mess and somehow had enough wits about me in my stupor to hide the evidence in a bedside drawer. She never took the opportunity to use this against me (at least not in front of me), and for that I have abstained from sneaking into her room when she’s not at home and farting on her bed to alleviate any ill-will I may build up towards her.

I bet you didn’t expect to read about poop and farts, now did you? That’s probably something you didn’t know about me. I’d be modest to say bodily functions account for at least 40% of my conversations. It might not help that I live with my sister, a critical care nurse, who deals almost exclusively in the bodily function, fluid, and dysfunction business; but who’s counting. If you think this is a slap in the face of sisterhood, you clearly don’t know my sister. She nasty.

Hey, how about I make a point regarding my original inspiration for this composition? Let’s talk about what a bad friend might do faced with a situation like mine.

A bad friend, like (REDACTED!), might happen to call you on your cell phone during your first hospital stay. They might be absolutely distraught over your condition. They may dutifully keep in touch throughout your initial ordeal. Just hearing their voice and knowing that they are thinking about you may comfort you more than the most optimistic outlook any doctor could give. They may offer to rush to your side, but you insist that is not necessary, that knowing they care is more than enough. The bad friend puts on a very moving show. And then they disappear. After a handful of more hospital stays, and some seriously scary shit, you come to find out that, no, your bad friend has not driven off the side of some mountain road, thereby explaining their mysterious vanishing act. Your bad friend met a guy. And even if this is the guy that your friend may spend the rest of her life with, you can’t help but be hurt. Your bad friend makes small attempts to reconnect. Your bad friend blames an odd work schedule for not having better contact. But you scratch your head at the notion that an odd work schedule would prohibit someone from maintaining a friendship they purport to be very important to them on the least demanding of levels: an occasional phone call, but this bad friend somehow found the time to not only establish a new relationship, but establish one so deep that they’re gonna bring God and some paper into the equation. You didn’t expect your bad friend to have dropped everything, rushed to your side, and hold your hand through the whole messy ordeal. She didn’t need to empty your commode or buy you a teddy bear urging you to “Hang in there, baby”. All she had to use all of her scruples; her extensive education, her deep sensitivity, her strong sense of self, and her abilities to really bang out those Jack Handey quotes; to do was pick up a mother-fathering phone and say, as a good friend (Leslie Paxton) said, “I don’t really know what to say, but I’m here.”

If sickness scares you, I understand. It’s not offensive to say that. What’s offensive is someone who’s your biggest cheerleader until some wayward quarterback saunters by and hocks a loogie in her general direction, thus indicating true love, and ceasing the need for your late-night drunken Instant Message support system.

I have taken a few wrong turns with this entry for sure. I’ve stopped in rest stops and read “Us Weekly” for the hell of it. But at least if you’ve read this far, I’m taking away a fraction of the time from you that trying to make sense of your special friendship tactics has cost me.

And like you, I’m not upset anymore. Like the little lady in Poltergeist say, “This house is clean”.

Revisiting an earlier point, yes, this implosion was a long time coming. The things I’ve mentioned here are only a few in a long line of warning signs that I really should have taken as my cue to bow out gracefully a long, long time ago. Maybe then we would have the opportunity to come together some time in the future and start fresh. I take responsibility for not speaking up in favor of not wanting to make waves for an already strained long-distance friendship as it was. And I take responsibility for not making a better effort to adapt to the reality that our friendship had changed from those heady days at ODU; drinking really terrible vodka, assaulting amphibians, and foolishly thinking life could be that simple forever.

You seem extremely concerned that your position be public, and if I do say so myself (with extreme self-awareness) that this lady doth protest too much. You tried to point a similar finger in my direction for inferring something from what you said in your blog about other people’s opinion of your wedding prattle. To which I call a sincere bullshit, as you cannot say that what was exchanged over e-mail (my sending you a link to this here blog and your subsequent reading) and what you posted on your blog (which you handily reminded me of the link to) are mutually exclusive. No way, no how.

And, speaking of blogs, if you really want to know my personal inspiration for creating Our Electronic Friendship…it was your penchant for electronic communication, and truly, I envisioned it as a new way that we could keep in touch. Do you know what Hench’s immediate response to reading it was? “I want in.” And access was granted. Yours? “I’m glad you two are so tight.” Which, despite what you say, is dripping with judgement and/or bitterness. While I had the stupid hope that you might be interested in participating as well, I didn’t even get the chance to extend the invite before the whole thing gained a taint.

But you know, everything happens for a reason. I’m bummed that you didn’t come on board, and in an unfortunate turn of events we’re not friends anymore. But I really love the electronic friendship that I have with Leslie, Hench, and even though I’ve never met her, our loyal reader Sheiko (what’s up girl! Leslie thinks your alright, and that’s alright with me.) . I’m embarrassingly giddy thinking about the possibilities down the road. And admittedly, my friendship with Hench didn’t really need a boost, but I’m glad to have the opportunity to nurture it in a whole new obnoxious way. But the real success story (I think) is that Leslie and I have found a way to do the same, that is, nurture our friendship in a whole new obnoxious way. I hope to do the same with others and for others someday.

And as I make a dent in my 8th page of text in Word, I know I’m way past the time to wrap this crap-fest up. I haven’t made much sense, but I have medications I can blame for that if I get in a jam. As for resolutions, there are none, as has already been stated by both parties.

I think breaking up with a friend is a million times more bewildering than breaking up with a boyfriend. There’s no property to divide, no real embarrassment or consequences when you accidentally call your next friend by their name, and unlike the convenient excuse of “he cheated on me” or “he kisses his mother on the mouth”, you’ll never really be able to wrap your head around it.