what can we expect from friendship?

some questions

Paul Ganguin, Fleurs dan une coupe, 1901

I take K to Nari for his birthday and we end up in a Korean karaoke lounge with bisexual light. One bartender has micro-bangs, the other is wearing a hoodie with a bunny tail sewn onto the back. This is like Cloud Atlas, K says. We’ve known each other for almost 10 years.

I’ve been thinking lately that friendship to me is a term that encompasses everything—the familial, the romantic, the nostalgic. My friendships have helped me understand what I never liked about dating, which is that I don’t want to get to know people unless I’m going to keep knowing them. I remember being 18, a boy trying to pitch me on the concept of a “summer fling,” and being like… But I want to get married. I mean, probably not to you, but what’s the point of dating if we aren’t trying to be together forever? I was way too serious about everything. I have matching tattoos with three of my friends.

I’ve been wondering lately: what requests are we allowed to make of our friends? And what does it mean to really live those promises? Everyone loves the idea of intimacy, but not everyone loves the compromises that continued intimacy requires. Like, well, I’d like to live closer to you, but the rent is better in this neighborhood. Or, I know we were hanging out every week, but now I have a boyfriend I love, and he doesn’t really like you.

I think that relationships become good when we work on them continuously for a long period of time. Friends don’t exist just to make you feel like you have friends when you need them. There’s the work of maintenance, there’s the need to be there at the birthdays and engagements and breakups and dinners, there are the conversations that have to be had, negotiations and renegotiations.

You need some shared philosophy of what constitutes a meaningful life to sustain friendship over time. Why live here? Why work in this industry? What are we afraid of? What are we hopeful about? Do you know me, see me? Will you tell me when I’m wrong?

*

If I had to advocate for the benefits of friendship, I would say: you get to cry more, and you get to have more enemies. I’m constantly crying over good first kisses, therapy sessions, weddings, breakups, every kind of loss and gain that matters to the people I care about. And I wouldn’t say I’m personally vindictive but I hold extreme and persistent grudges against people who’ve wronged my friends.

I’m at a Bedstuy bar with D and she says to me, Well of course there’s something essentially romantic about friendship.

Friendship is romantic. I love to tell my friends I love them. There have been people I’ve dated or at least considered dating who’ve had a problem with that. Like, why do you go around telling people who aren’t me that you love them? My heart sunk when I heard those words. In my opinion, being opposed to platonic intimacy is the same kind of offence as “not getting” poetry. We may keep talking, but there is evidently nothing more to talk about.

*

I live in an “utopian enclave” filled with people who’ve known me for a very long time. We have similar backgrounds, similar worldviews. My friends tend to be talkative, excitable, read a lot, walk a lot. They understand my references, the context in which I transitioned from adolescent to adult. It’s true I’m in a bubble, but a bubble is also a kind of reprieve. I have chosen to seek out and keep close people who help me answer the question of how a person should be.

We don’t get to have so many real friends. If you want to see a friend at least once every two weeks, and you do four one-on-one hangouts a week, that’s a maximum of eight friends. But who really needs more than eight friends?

Relationships are insular worlds. The deeper the relationship, the more incomprehensible the world is to others. You have shared jokes, shared memories, you keep tunneling under.

*

I love you because you’re familiar in ways that remind me of my parents, but also because you’re new and strange. You have objects in your home I do not recognize. You like songs that I find confusing. You’re from a state I’ve never been to. We met on the Internet. We met at a group house. We met at yoga class. We are drawn to each for reasons that are both mysterious to me and entirely obvious.

*

Can you water my plants while I’m gone? Will you go to Los Angeles with me? Do you mind if my dog comes along? Do you like this dress better, or that one? Did you read the article I emailed you? Will you move to San Francisco? Can I pay for dinner this time, and you can get it next time? Can we go see the three hour long movie? What do you think I should text him? Do you think she’s mad at me? I’ll see you tonight at the party, right? This is boring, should we leave and get a drink? I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your text, can I call you? Are you mad at me? Why did you tell her that? Do you think we’ll be close like this forever?