2006-02-02 - 5:05 p.m.

Seems to me this is a pretty good recipe for a rewarding, fun friendship:

One adventuresome person + One person willing to go along with pretty much anything = Fun Frienship.

I know this isn't groundbreaking work, but I just had this thought and whenever I get thoughts that cut through the fog, I always pat myself on the back a little bit, because what is sterling thought other than connecting the dots?

It's no surprise, of these two variables, which one I am. In any event, some friends who have been or are my complement:

My childhood friend John. John lived in a nineteenth-century all-brick farmhouse. There were a dozen or so pigs in a little farm next door. We used to feed them leftovers from a nearby restaurant and then climb in the sty and let them chase us. John also used to shoot at the Western Maryland that ran about a mile past his house. We also used to take pisses on the electrified barbed-wire fence in his back yard. I smoked my first cigarette with John. It was a Pyramid menthol. And he'd taken the pack from his grandmother's house, after she died. Her name was Mickey and she made Hawaiian Punch jelly.

My high school friend Andy. Andy introduced me to a lot of things. Weed and huffing gasoline vapors and Dust Off. Andy was a little bit crazy. He was a bully to a lot of kids (kids I'd later become one with, appreciating their graphic novels and their differentness, if not their specific taste for science fiction and general lack of interest in girls) but he was protective me and made sure to include me in things like drinking and drugging and school skipping.

My college friend Blair. I went to a Phish show with Blair and I tripped absolute balls and we recorded ourselves on cassette tape. Blair was my friend with whom I fell for Kerouac and Hemingway and it was with Blair that vast horizons opened up. We live in the same town again, and we're still good friends, but I don't see him as much. He'll be my last friend to get married. His loyalties run very deep; he loves (and fights with) his brothers, his friends, his teams, his music. He taught me how to feel deeply.

And my friend Kevin. He's the instigator, the one who calls, organizes, buys what needs buying, risks, dishes the tough love, gives the other kind of love.

I like to be a part of something larger than myself. A movement. I wonder if, given the right circumstances, I wouldn't have been a decent guerrilla fighter. Or at least a very dedicated propagandist with an incredibly revolutionary eye for split infinitives!

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