You know you wanna be friends with the Asian chick wearing a t-shirt that says "Bling it on." Just try telling me you don't.
Friends. Friends friends friends. Friends! It's not just a seven-letter word, but also a plural noun, which starts with F. In the dictionary it appears before "ribald" and yet after "botulism," which can only be significant. But what else can we say about this word, indeed, about this concept? What are "friends"? Where do they come from? Where do they go? What are they wearing? Why do they look at me so? All these questions and more we shall answer, or at the very least ask, in this blog entry.
It struck me on Saturday, as I trudged desperately through Hangover Forest, that I have very few friends. (It's okay, I'm not going to get all self-pitying. I just want sympathy from as many people as possible, that's all.) I realised that I've never had many friends, but that I've always been very close with the few friends I have had. I think this is in general a good thing: I like having people on whom I can rely, and who know they can rely on me. But the obvious downside is that it takes a long time to get to that place. It takes a long time to meet people to whom one can become that close, with whom one is compatible enough that that kind of bond can be formed. In the meantime one must settle for the loneliness of acquaintances.
I've been told numerous times that Vancouver is an unfriendly city, but I'm not sure I believe it. I'm not sure Vancouver is any less friendly than other cities. I think the problem is partly cities themselves: it's as if the enforced intimacy causes people to turn inwards, to become over-cautious with regard to strangers. A stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet, say the hippies, and they're right. But a stranger could also be a psychopath you haven't been hacked to pieces by yet, or a Conservative. City living, because of its anonimity, encourages mistrust.
Or maybe I'm just an asshole, and no-one wants to be friends with me. That's also a possibility (some would say a likelihood). It might explain why a dozen or so of the people with whom I've exchanged numbers don't call me and don't return my calls. But then why would they take my number in the first place, and give me theirs, if they don't actually like me and don't want to hang out again? Politeness? Perhaps. Personally I'd rather someone tell me straight out that the only possible reason they'd need my number is if they ever had to nominate a person to be executed in their stead.
Maybe it is me. It's true I've been in a rather introverted phase since coming here, since I turned my life on its head. I've written almost nothing. I feel boring. I probably wouldn't want to be friends with me, either. This is a very frustrating realisation, because I don't believe I am boring, when I'm "myself." Yet I struggle to break out of this introversion, this self-absorption, I guess. I often want desperately to talk to people, to socialise, to make people laugh. I'm good at it, and I want to do it. I miss doing it. But I can't bring myself to. I actually get anxious, sometimes, at the thought of talking to people, or even seeing them. Crazy, yes, but at least I have all my own teeth.
So what am I going to do about it? I have to get out of this phase. I have to stop navel-gazing, stop feeling sorry for myself, stop lamenting my lack of friends. I have to realise that finding people with whom one is more than superficially compatible takes time and effort. I have to make that effort. I have to smile even when I don't want to. I have to talk to people the way I used to be able to do, the way I can do when I'm not feeling so goddamned shy. I have to make them laugh, and say the outrageous things I've been known to say on one or two occasions in the past. I have to flirt. I have to floss daily. I have to use moisturizer on my elbows.
Alternatively I could just offer people $50 to be my friend. It worked for Tom Cruise, after all.
