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rue-madame's Diaryland Diary

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What are friends for again?

TA�s mom remembered my birthday and sent me a gift certificate to iTunes. It took me about 10 seconds to spend all of it.

Instant gratification is just not fast enough!

I got the new Stars, the new Spoon, and the new Robbers on High Street (which is basically Spoonesque.) They are all great and making me very happy.

A lot of people have told me they could never work alone, but I think that if you�ve got good music to keep you company, the hours just fly by and it�s not lonesome at all. It also helps to have a speedy internet connection so that you can listen to radio stations all over the world (well, ok, just LA, SF and Paris,) and you can keep in constant touch with friends. I don�t need to be surrounded by people to feel connected to humanity.

But a funny thing: the other day we saw some friends, and they mentioned that they come to downtown NH (where we live) on the weekends for dinner or just to walk around. So I said, �You should call us next time you�re down here!� because it would literally take us 3 minutes to get anywhere they might be.

The wife unit replied, �Oh, but we eat at 5, and I know that you guys eat late.�

Which prompted me to say, �True, but we could still meet you afterwards for coffee or dessert or something. Or maybe you�d get us on a day when we needed a late lunch.�

Our other set of NH friends are the same. They come into town regularly and don�t call us. TA and I bump into them when we�re running errands downtown. We both think this it�s weird that they never think to call us, but at the same time I�m willing to cut them a little slack since they have a baby and are still enveloped in their New Family Smell.

The other people, from what I can gauge, don�t really have a lot of friends. What is their damage, Heather?

My whole life, I have always called up friends when I�ve been in their neck of the woods. Heading to 3rd Street? Call J and see if he wants to meet us at Joan�s for a coffee. In Silverlake? See if Ned wants to hang out at the Downbeat. Shopping in the Castro? Maybe Mr Bingo will want to join us. Our friends have done the same.

Is it a city dweller vs suburban dweller thing? Like, when you live in a big city where it�s difficult to get together with friends, you take advantage of the coincidences? Or is it an East Coast vs West Coast thing? Like, East Coast folks are far more regimented in their schedules whereas people on the West Coast go with the flow? Hmmm.

I don�t expect either of these two sets of people to become lifelong Friends with a capital F. Their backgrounds, (I hate to say it but fuck it) social classes, interests, goals and tastes are too divergent from our own to ever make the leap from column B to column A. And I�m sure it�s the same for them�they view us as exotic and fun for now, but we won�t ever be invited to meet the relatives or anything. Which is totally fine with me.

I just know that every once in a while, I miss having friends nearby. I miss seeing and talking to people with whom I�ve shared cocktails and movie popcorn, people who understand me, who have a similar sense of humor, who�ve traveled and experienced other cultures, who teach and challenge me� I miss that.

I�m ok with settling for counterfeit friends until I can get back to the real deal. Don�t our friends here feel the same way? I know that they don�t have many friends to begin with. So what is the problem? Don't they occasionally want to connect? Why is this irking me so much? Could it be that we�re not as great as we think we are?

Impossible!

9:37 a.m. - 2005-05-25

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