I met a woman the other day who said she believed in reincarnation, ‘Don’t you?‘ she asked. I hate questions that are phrased like this. It’s clear from the beginning that if you disagree, you’re wrong. I don’t want to spend the next half hour listening to her try to convince me that if I live a good life, I will be the next Queen of England, and if I don’t I will come back as a maggot. ‘No, I don’t,‘ I reply. ‘I believe in the little baby Jesus, Heaven and hell, and since I had sex before I was married, I’m pretty sure I’m going to hell.’ That shut her up. My best friend stood next to me, her eyes bugging out of her face in complete and utter embarrassment. ‘I can’t take you anywhere,’ she said. ‘What are you talking about?’ I replied. I had answered the woman’s question in a clear and concise manner. My friend just rolled her eyes as we walked away. She is the only person in the world who loves me for my honest, uncensored, manic self. You just can’t buy friendship like hers.
I met her my freshman year in college. We were in the same Chemistry class, taught by a renowned Nigerian professor neither of us could understand. We bonded over the realization we were way in over our heads and wondered where the admissions office went wrong. For the next four years we were best friends, as I changed majors every six months or so, and she carried her urine around in a Nalgene bottle as part of a bio-chem lab. I think at that time in my life, our friendship came so easily, so natural that I took it for granted. It wasn’t until many years later, when I really needed a friend, that I realized just how irreplaceable she was.
When you are young, you have ‘groups’ more than you have friends. As you age, you have boyfriends more than friends, then jobs more than friends, then bills more than friends. Life takes over, and you do what you want to do less, and what you have to do more. When things get rolling it’s hard for a friendship to compete, which makes having a best friend that much more of a gift. Looking around, I’ve discovered that few people have true friends. They have people they like; they might even have people they confide in to some extent, but someone they can call at 2 a.m. because they’re in a bind? Most people don’t have that person. My best friend is cheap. She’s so cheap she squeaks when she walks; but I know she would be on the first flight into town if I needed her.
Our relationship has endured so many phases of life, yet it has never changed. As college students, we were poor, but we were also cheap. Her cheapness, however, is really in a league of its own, and I remember the time she cut her own hair to save a few bucks. Her mane looked like a toddler had just had his first experience with a set of shears. It was dreadful. She had initially performed an uneven cut on her bangs, so she just kept cutting one side, then the other until there wasn’t anything left. I shouted, ‘Hail Caesar!‘ each time I walked by until her hair grew back. Her frugality rubbed off on me once, and I recall the time I attempted to wax my own eyebrows so that my $20 could be used on something far more pleasurable – like Chinese take-out. I accidentally waxed an entire eyebrow off. I started screaming and crying as I hid my face in shame. She ran into my room and looked at the horrific sight, and what she said next I will never forget: ‘Well, you know what you have to do now, don’t you?’ Yes, I thought to myself. I will have to pencil the damn thing in until it grows back. ‘You have to wax the other one,‘ she said, straight-faced. This was the stupidest thing she had ever proposed, and she knew it once the words were out. We both laughed that night as she penciled in my right brow, and restored my face to some sort of normalcy.
Those funny times are the things I remember after all these years, but she has been there to pick up the pieces when life flat out got to be too much. I have been there for her to listen to her stories and make her feel normal again, when everyone else just didn’t understand. She is the only person in my life that knows everything about me, and loves me anyway. And I’m the only one who has never thought she was crazy for staking out her ex-boyfriend’s apartment in the middle of the night, because hey, who hasn’t wanted to know what their ex-lover was doing when you weren’t around anymore?
When I moved to Tahoe nearly four years ago, I left her in southern California after she had moved from the East coast to be closer to me. I regretted leaving her, but I just knew there was a better life waiting for me here. I have to tell you, for all the lake’s splendor and beauty, it sure is a tough place to live if you’re a relationship person. I am not so much into places as I am into people, so though I like living here, I could live just about anywhere if I had the right company. Can you believe that I have just recently found a truly remarkable group of people to hang out with? It took me four years, and I’m an overachiever! Can you imagine if I was one of those regular people that just moseyed along? It would have been a decade before I had a friend.
At first I thought it was me. Am I too much? I would ask myself. Why don’t people want to be my friend? Is it because I don’t ski? People seem to be really put off by that. ‘You don’t ski?‘ they ask. ‘Why not? What are you crazy?’ I’d squint my eyes, and look at them for a second, and think, ‘You’re the chump that’s lugging around 50 pounds worth of gear, waited 20 minutes to ride a ski lift with a complete stranger and spent your monthly mortgage on a season pass you’ll never use enough to break even, and you’re looking at me like I’m the crazy one?’ I became self- conscious and insecure – not at all my normal self. I reeked of desperation.
I eventually peeled myself off the floor and took inventory. I’m a nice person. I’m real. If I didn’t know me, I’d want to meet me. Hey, I’d hang out with me. I thought about my mother who has the patience of Job, and would give you the designer shirt off her back, yet does not have a best friend. I thought of my sister-in-law who’s about as nice as Leona Helmsley, and supposedly has hundreds of friends.
Maybe for some people friendship is less about the friend, and more about geography or timing. I began to realize I would never find my best friend here because she is truly one of a kind. There is not another her that exists. To discover her once was a miracle, to find her twice is impossible. We still talk every few days or so on the phone and get together about once a month. When I got married she told me she was so glad that she would always know me longer than my husband. I looked at her and smiled knowing that she would always know me better too. For it is only her who knows how many people I have really slept with, what I look like after a long hard cry, and that it was me, not the woman next to me, that farted during pilates two weeks ago.
