Jan 04 2009
How does a friendship like this fall apart?
He was sage and practical, with enough mischievousness to keep him interesting. He listened to blues and jazz when everyone was listening to alternative. He was reading Tolstoy and the biography of FDR, when everyone else was reading the Celestine Prophecy and the biography of Elle McPherson in Sports Illustrated. He tangoed and waltzed, when everyone else was head banging and doing the Macarena. He bared his eccentricities with grit and mettle in a world of poster-boy military men. Most importantly of all, when I stepped out of line after reading the wrong article in Cosmo and heading to the wrong place in a dizzying whirl of a salacious night, he was there. He would scold me with whispers or shouts. He was the one person who could stop me along the cobblestone streets of Annapolis, abuzz with menacing Midshipman, and convince me to look him in the eye. Stop. Breathe. Stop chasing the comfort and ultimate disgrace of conformity. Stop betraying yourself.
We sang show tunes along the cliffs of La Jolla at dusk. Like lovers without the discomfort of intimate love. He carried me across the Mexican border, an inebriated disaster, negotiating truths with police who eyed me as an escapist under an actor’s spell.
He saw past the facade of high heels and new hair. He saw the melodramatic tendencies and overreactions for what they really were. He saw through it all when no one else did. He knew better than anyone else, that I had woven a finely knit cloak for a disguise that everyone else foolishly mistook for being designer.
