Thinking about a friend

Just a little piece that I wrote in six minutes while waiting on my best friend to find me in the Village the other day.

I’m going to meet Lindsay right now. I don’t understand why I love her so much. I guess I envy her. I imagine I look at her and think, “What was I doing at 23?” To be working in arguably the best restaurant in the country with such minimal experience, a raspy voice, and a steady rotation of two dresses, one pair of ripped leggings, and a giant seahorse tattoo on her arm is truly something to be marveled. Her energy and lust for, as she puts it, “people to show up and not suck” is contagious. Around her, I never want “to suck.” I aspire to be at the top of my game socially – witty, charming, intelligent, open to any and all prospects that could result in “AMAZING.”

With her, I feel outside my own mind. It’s as though we were little children speaking some language we invented ourselves to avoid adults that would chastise us for being lewd, crude, and lascivious. Our pig-Latin sonata heralds arias on pickled ramps and quail eggs done to perfection, grits not being gritty enough and settling for hominy, and that bar that was just a step up from the diviest place we’ve ever encountered to elevate us to sheer ecstasy. I love our language, and I love our song. The soundtrack of our friendship brings a shit-eating grin to my face. Memories of my shoebox apartment in Somerville, MA: waking up with no shirts on, swilling Jameson and dancing on my futon to “Kansas City” and “New Violence” while laughing until our throats were dry and hoarse, in desperate need for another Jameson to quell our drought.

I hate that this is starting to read like an epithet, but ours is the kind of flame that burns so hard and fierce that it comes with the mystery of the Maccabees how it is able to sustain such warmth for so long.