Will You Be My Friend?

Soundtrack[CLICK HERE],

A few people I know have had a friendship crisis lately. This, combined with my own set of lackluster friends has led my to ponder on the nature of friendship itself.

I even did some research, but I figure it will take me a little bit to get through it, and I wanted to write something sooner rather than later. Perhaps I’ll respond to it in a later blog. In the meantime you’ll have to read my own, uniformed opinions.

“Friend”, I figure, is an arbitrary term. There is no clear definition of a friend that everyone accepts. No code of conduct that says “if you do this you are friends, if you do this you are not.” Makes things particularly sticky when two people enter this relationship with two different definitions of what friends should be. Or at least, what these two people should be to each other.

In that sense, I figure, friendship is a sort of negotiation between two people, with terms that are constantly in a state of flux, constantly renegotiated. Even worse, these negotiations are often unspoken. Which makes the chance of confusion, disappointment and hurt even worse.

It also makes trusting someone harder. Pooh Bear has gone through several tough times over the past few years. She had a confidant, a friend she shared things with. During a recent tough time, this friend of hers disappeared. No explanation, no excuse, leaving Pooh wondering what the hell happened. Turns out this friend decided that her tough times were too much to handle. They finally starting talking about it, after a month or two, and are trying to rebuild their friendship. But I imagine Pooh will think twice before sharing another tough time with her friend.

I’ve had very few dramatic friendship alterations. Instead, I’ve had a series of generally unfulfilling friendships really.

Chief among them is my friendship with Optimus Prime. I’ve told stories of him elsewhere, but let me re-iterate: we have made plans to do things throughout my life, and at the last minute, he backs out. Most memorably is my 7th birthday, when I was allowed to have one guest, I chose Prime, and he backed out that day, leaving my friendless on my birthday.

When he isn’t backing out of our plans, he’s refusing to make them in the first place. Most notably here is the time Wilma told me she wanted to go to Vancouver on her own. I’ve told this one before too. I was delirious and called Prime from a pay phone. He didn’t want to come see me, and did not make plans to come to see me at all. He had a wife who was due in a month, but he made no effort.

I haven’t talk to him much at all in the past year. A few lunches here and there. I’ve tried more than once to make plans, and he agrees that we should do something soon, but does not want to commit and never tries to contact me to do anything. He hasn’t met Minako, who I’ve been seeing for almost a year. He hasn’t seen my apartment where I have been living for over a year. When I ask him when he will get a chance to do those things he says “Probably never.”

Here is a case, not of someone abruptly changing the terms of the friendship, but reluctant to change them at all. Prime has always been this was. And may always be.

The rest of my friends are, for one reason or another, reluctant to hang out as well. I talk to Pooh Bear on MSN all the time, which often leads to misunderstandings due to lack of face-to-face activity, but she is working full-time, and finds it hard to bring herself to get out. Speed (you remember him, don’t you?) is relatively new as a friend, and like Prime, won’t commit to things. He said, at the beginning of the baseball season, that we should hang out and watch a game sometime. After several attempts to get something together, baseball season is now over, and he hasn’t been around. Rockzilla is a go with the flow guy whose efforts have been thwarted so many times that, if he does make an effort, it’s either on a whim, or on a commitment he made on a whim. I appreciate him, but he’s not exactly the go to guy when I want to just hang out. Hanging out with him is more of an event. Phil Ken Sebben is AWOL most of the time, but he lives in Southern Ontario and is only there half the time because he travels on business all the time. And then there’s…

No wait, that’s it.

Shitty.

In moments of hurt and disappointment, I think my friends are shitty assholes. But really, they aren’t. They just want different things from our relationship, or don’t feel like they are in a position to give me what I am looking for right now.

Which is what exactly? Here’s my checklist for my wet-dream of a friend:

Someone I can talk to about baseball, romantic entanglements, sex, writing, religion, etc. Doesn’t have to be knowledgeable in all categories, just interested enough to talk about it. Could even do without one or two.

Someone who is interested in hanging out from time to time, going to see a movie, going to see a band, getting together with a group for drinks, etc.

Someone who will call and ask me to do things. Different than the last one. I have had so few friends who actually initiate encounters and I am tired of chasing people.

Someone who wants to come over and just hang out without big plans or fanfare.

One of the things I read somewhere is that, as adults grow older, they increasingly view their friendships as expendable, a luxury that isn’t necessary, something that can be sacrificed. While there is a higher percentage of men who feel this way, women are not far behind. Maybe in another blog I’ll rant about how it is a combination of capitalism and the exploitation of the Puritan work ethic by corporations that leads to this perception of intimate relationships outside of romance.

Right now I’m just sad.