Fast Friends and Fragile Friendships

Now here’s a classic ‘elephant in the room.’ Those individuals you’ve known over the years, the ones most think of as friends, who you see differently. ‘Acquaintance’ and ‘friend’ can be two very different vernaculars. As I continue on with my ‘coffee and chat’ sessions, it’s become apparent that I’ve really lucked out with the folks I’ve chosen to meet with. I know a lot more folks than those chosen few but these friends remain among the best.

Friendships are like life-experiences, collected and treasured for the moment, while others are vaguely remembered before turning to dust. A few old relationships slip into some corner of your brain and remain there for the rest of your life. Generally speaking, the majority of friendships are scattered back into that dustbin of old memories; good and sad mixed together.

High school friends, Army’s buddies, first job comrades-in-arms and the like all fall into that latter category of ‘fast friends’ for the moment. Then graduation, discharge or job transfers end the close relationships while life keeps marching forward and another one takes its place.

Whether they’ll admit it or not, a lot of folks like to search ‘Facebook’ for traces of their old friends, past acquaintances, co-workers, boyfriends, girlfriends and lovers. It’s a safe way to scratch through the fog of time and find out ‘whatever happened to’ with some degree of accuracy.

Last year, I wrote to an old friend I hadn’t heard from in some time. I got no response. We were best friends in the early years. We shared the drama and trauma of high school, attended sporting events together, and often times double-dated. Then he went off to the monastery and I went to college. We got reacquainted at our 50th class reunion. My wife and I saw him and his lovely wife several times before he began ghosting me and that was the end of that friendship.

Sharon and I have several friends who are going through major life changes now. It’s almost as if the writing is on the proverbial wall. Fewer get-togethers for the theater and other outings. They are moving on with their lives; new interests, and consciously or otherwise, shedding the cloak of the past to wrap themselves in new life experiences. Some old friends, as we used to know them, are slowly changing even as Sharon and I both move on with our own respective lives.

This last summer, I was able to solidify my ‘coffee and chat’ sessions with eight solid partners with whom I can share general, specific, bland, sometimes outrageous, interesting, and occasionally intimate details of our respective lives. We met at the beach, my back patio, park shelters or wherever we could put down our camp chairs.

Will they all last? Who knows? I certainly hope so. We all seem to enjoy the meet-ups and the sharing that goes with it. For now, I want to enjoy the moment, savor the sharing and keep plowing new ground in hopes of solidifying the friendships that have grown from this shared experience. Just another angle of everyday experiences in the wider spectrum called life.

Fragile Friendships

Photo Credit: Jerry Hoffman

Friends are like life-experiences, some collected and treasured for the moment, others vaguely remembered then turning to dust. A few lock onto some corner of our brain and remain there for the rest of our lives. Generally speaking, the majority of them are scattered back into that dustbin of old memories; good and sad mixed together.

I was never ‘friends first’ with my two girlfriends, one in high school, the other in college. Perhaps that’s why neither one lasted more than a couple of years. If we had started out as simply friends, our relationship might have progressed to something deeper. ‘Such is life.’

High school friends, Army buddies, first job comrades-in-arms and the like all fall into that same category of fast friends for the moment. Then graduation, discharge or job transfers end the close relationship and oftentimes another one takes its place.

Whether they’ll admit it or not, a lot of folks like to search ‘Facebook’ for traces of their old friends, past acquaintances, co-workers, boyfriends, girlfriends, and lovers. It’s a safe way to scratch away the fog of time and find out ‘whatever happened to’ with some degree of accuracy.

Last year I wrote to an old friend I hadn’t heard from in some time. I got no response. We were best friends in the early years. We shared the drama and trauma of high school, attended sporting events together, and often times double-dated. Then he went off to the monastery and me to college. We got reacquainted after our 50th class reunion. My wife and I saw him and his lovely wife several times here before he began ghosting me and that was the end of it.

We have several friends who are going through major life changes now. It’s almost as if the writing is on the proverbial wall. Fewer get-togethers for the theater and other outings. They are moving on with their lives; new interests, and consciously or otherwise, shedding the cloak of the past to wrap themselves in the newness of new life experiences. Our old friends as we used to know them are slowly changing even as we both move on with our own respective lives.

Long term friends are a real rarity, especially among men. My latest play ‘Widow’s Waltz’ deals with this issue. Add the perspective of single older gay men and the complications compound exponentially. All the standard clichés pop up here: people change, time moves on, ‘things’ happen in our lives. The play was a challenge to write but deeply satisfying at the same time.

Over this last summer, I’ve been able to solidify my ‘coffee and chat’ sessions with five solid partners with whom I can share general, specific, bland, sometimes outrageous, interesting, and occasionally intimate details of our respective lives.

Will it last? Who know? I certainly hope so. We all seem to enjoy the meet-ups and the sharing that goes with it. For now, I want to enjoy the moment, savor the sharing and keep plowing new ground in hopes of solidifying the friendships that have grown from this shared experience.

Male Friends as an Oxymoron

The Old Gang (Photo by Jerry Hoffman)

My wife has a theory, in fact, many of them. I think it’s indicative of that species that they somehow believe women have cornered the market on all the great wisdom of the world and are more than happy to share it with their hapless other half.

Army Foot Locker

PFC

“Men don’t have friends.” Sharon claims. “They have business associates, contacts, pals, acquaintances, fishing buddies and other males who share similar interests. But friends, true friends who would drop anything at a moment’s notice at help you…that’s something else entirely” …she claims.

She believes men aren’t programmed for such intimacy, such sharing and revealing, such openness. That, in turn, leaves us vulnerable (in our golden years) to reveal in fantasies of past accomplishments, old school glories and tempting reflections back on old relationships.

At first, I was offended by her seemingly casual yet caustic remark. But the more I thought about it the more it burrowed under my skin like an irritating itch that I couldn’t ignore. I came to the rather painful conclusion that she might be on to something there.

(Photo by Jerry Hoffman)

Reflecting on a lifetime of relationships, casual friendships, intimate feelings, and deep connections (or so I thought) there haven’t been many if any male friends that went the distance. It was probably my fault more than theirs. But I’m guessing that neither one of us was any the wiser about it…or because of it.

Micky and I (Photo by Jerry Hoffman)

I had a friend in grade school. We shared a lot, talked a lot and waxed philosophically about the future (high school and beyond.) Yet by high school we had both moved on to new friends, activities and interests. I lost track of him for a while, made contact again after college then lost it for good.

Joel, Peter, and I at prom

I had great friends in high school. We shared all the drama, trauma, first inkling of love, rejection, self-doubt and grand hopes for the future as all teen-agers do. Graduation severed those ties until years later (fifty to be exact) when we had matured to that stage of reminiscing and wondering what ever happened to?

There were buddies in the service. Casual, surface, momentary, tepid and vapid friends who vanished just as soon as their transfer papers arrived or they got discharged. There is nothing as anxious as a man whose time is nearly up in the service. Nothing and I mean nothing is more important than their return to ‘normal living.’ All the wonderful things shared in the service disappear with that plane ticket home.

When I was living in Europe my friendships were brief, intense, wonderful, and about as vapid as morning mist. It might be a weekend in Berlin or camping on the west coast of Denmark that brought us together but Monday morning that made it vanish in a flash. Of course, we promised to write and stay in touch. Of course, we never did.

Farewell party at Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting

KTCA television

By the time it came around to making friends in the business of television, film, and video, I was a married man and busy with my other life.

This inability to build up a portfolio of friendships during our working careers only increases with the demise of real work and what to do afterwards in retirement.

Let’s face it, friendship is hard work. Anyone who is in a marriage, committed relationship or shared space knows what it takes to make it tolerable, enjoyable, believable and rewarding. It is a daily challenge.

That aforementioned sooth sayer would say that men aren’t willing to do the hard work that it takes to create and keep a friendship. Who knows, she may have a point. I’m just trying to keep my head above water with a coffee or luncheon get-together whenever I can.

People Who Disappoint

It sounds terribly harsh, haughty and perhaps even cruel. People in your past life who disappointed you. Past friends or acquaintances whose actions didn’t live up to your expectations; real or otherwise. People who didn’t follow through or fell short of what you expected from them.

Of course, it’s terribly subjective and handicapped by a less than thorough knowledge of their motives. Were there extraneous factors, whether recognized or not, that contributed to the demise of that friendship? Was it something you did or didn’t do? Was it something you said, even in honesty, that was taken the wrong way?

No matter what the contributing factors might have been you’ve come to the conclusion that whatever you once had with these folks has now’ left the station.’ On one hand it’s sad. On the other it’s just life giving you a poke on the backside and reminding us all that nothing and no one is perfect.

Some folks can be brutally honest in terms of their relationships. They separate family (with all those obligatory ties) from friends and acquaintances (where they get to decide whom they want to be associated with.) They pick and choose their friends based on connections, associations and tie-ins all for their own self-benefit and satisfaction. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ as my boss used to say, ‘it’s just business.’

Friendships and relationships can be by their very nature a very vapid and elusive bond to attain and hold on to. Fleeting friendships based on circumstance are easy to recognize. A partnership in the Armed Forces evaporates as soon as discharge papers are served. That’s understood, accepted and welcomed for a return to civilian life. A close relationship in school can wither away and die when outstate jobs or opportunities beckon. Neighbors and neighborhoods fade from memory after the moving van has arrived. It’s all part and parcel of the ebb and flow of normal life.

Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

But what about those friendships that you thought were meant for greater things. Something special you wanted to hold on to but couldn’t…her fault or yours, it doesn’t matter anymore. The clichés are rampant when describing what happened or might have happened. ‘There were promises not met or kept.’ ‘We were moving along in life.’ ‘People change.’ ‘They/she just wasn’t that into you.’ And the one that best describes them all because it tells us nothing: ‘Things happen.’ Whatever once was had become vaporous and vague. Then like the morning mist wrapping itself around a tree trunk it slowly slipped away.

It seems to me that some folks go through life on auto-pilot. They never stop to question anything that life throws at them. Instead of designing their life as they would want it or like it or wish for it to be they simply accept what is lying there on top of the morning covers. I think that’s what happens to a lot of friendships. They’re taken for granted until those innocuous bonds that held it together have slowly unraveled and broken apart, leaving nothing but memories where a welcoming smile used to be.

A mental-meandering trip back in time usually reveals little. So what happened to those folks?

Did they change or did you? Whose expectations weren’t met? Was it your baggage or theirs? Did they move on or did you move on with your life and in the process leave behind what once was or might have been. Did they disappoint you or did you screw up and lose what might have been a wonderful friendship or relationship?

Like most mysteries of life, there are no easy answers…if any at all. What once was is no longer relevant and if that bothers you then the onus is on you to make it better the next time around.

As the saying goes: “To have a friend you must first be a friend.” They’re still out there…those wonderful folks who could be your friend. You just have to be generous in kindness and spirit.

I guess we (or perhaps just I) have to make the effort and accept the fact that we might be disappointed. 

Seeds out of the Ground

During one of their heart-to-heart sessions recently, Sharon’s mother asked Sharon if she was ever embarrassed by her rural upbringing. I thought it a strange question since Sharon has always embraced her life growing up on the farm. Anyone who knows Sharon understands that her rural heritage brings nothing but pride to her. It seemed a strange question to me until I realized that not all children share the same pride that Sharon does in being a farmer’s child. Some of them move away from their roots, physically and mentally, only to realize later that the green grass on the horizon isn’t always so emerald. Funny how sometimes in our youth we can’t wait to shed the cloak of our pedigree only to end up embracing it as we get older.

Still some folks don’t see it that way. This came to mind recently when a dear colleague of mine decided to leave town. We’d worked together in television for over 35 years before she decided to move from Minnesota to points west. I’m going to miss her a lot. She was a confidant and able translator of most things female. She helped me understand the feminine psychic and was invaluable in helping me craft female characters for my novels. Now her husband has tired of Minnesota winters and decided to pack it in. They’re going to put down roots elsewhere. I certainly wish her well and will be curious how it goes for her.

Dorm for Mass General Hospital, Boston MA

I knew another woman who left the Twin Cities a long time ago. She was born and raised in a small Minnesota town. In college she couldn’t wait to escape the confines of her college campus for a career out east in Boston. Even Saint Paul and Minneapolis were too small for her worldly ambitions. While still an East Coast ex-pat today, she now proudly claims her small town upbringing on her Facebook page, has old classmates as Facebook friends and even flew back for her 50^th high school class reunion.

Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting

The draw of ‘back home’ is strange and mysterious and yet ever present for many of us. In 1977, I was working at the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting. It was, without a doubt, one of the premier public television stations in the country at the time. I had a great job, a nice house, wonderful friends there and a son just born. Yet I couldn’t wait to return to my Minnesota roots after an absence of five years. Go figure.

I’ve commented in past blogs on my amazement how important one’s upbringing is to so many people. While stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco I would sit around the barracks and listen to my bunk mates lament their being away from their home turf.

One missed being awaken each morning by the L train shaking him out of his bed. Another couldn’t wait to get back to the south side of Chicago just so he could hang out on his favorite street corner again. Our confederate Johnny Reb still didn’t trust Yankees even in the Golden State. He couldn’t wait to get back to Mississippi where they got things ‘right.’

Even with a great part-time job working at an art theater, easy living on base, a great MOS in journalism and adventures many a weekend in that city by the bay, I still missed my Minnesota roots. I wasn’t ready to return home just then but I knew I would once my thirst for new experiences and adventures had subsided.

Aerial view of Palm Springs, CA

Palm Springs is like a modern-day version of the fur trappers rendezvous. In Palm Springs everyone is from someplace else. I’m always taken aback when asked where I’m from and when I say Minnesota the other party may occasionally respond ‘Min-es-o-ta’ in their best Fargo imitation. I then calmly respond “No, I said Minnesota” and nothing more because it’s usually in polite company. Those are words uttered by the untraveled and uninitiated. Most of us got it a long time ago.

I’ve also referenced the interesting twists and turns of friendships in this regional melting pot in another blog entitled Like Snowflakes come and gone. Like many other resort towns such as Key West and Las Vegas a lot of the residents are transients in passing. They spend the winters away from home but like homing pigeons always leave in the spring.

For many, the siren call of our youth is a powerful magnet always calling us back home.

Breaking the Enigma Code

Memories are a curious kind of phenomena.

I can’t remember a lot about growing up in our single parent household with just my sister and mother. Not because it was sad or traumatic which it wasn’t. And I don’t think there were any incidents that might have repressed certain memories. Recollections of that period in my life are simply few and far between.

On the other hand, my sister has vivid memories of that period growing up. Sometimes she can recall in great detail little incidents and events that seem totally foreign to me. It’s as if I was never there in the first place.  

The same thing happened with some old college friends that I’d recently gotten reacquainted with. Most of them had vivid memories of events that occurred back in school. Some events I can remember while others seem like an empty dream. Really, was I even there?

Granted that was a very crazy period in my life. I’ve already blogged about that decade in ‘My Lost Years.’ I’ve tried to document my life in the military, living in Europe, sequestered in the Amazon, traipsing around the country, falling in and out of love and other sordid adventures before they all escape my memory bank. Trying to recall those glimpses into my past often brings up just vapid images and faint recollections. If it wasn’t for old photographs those mental images might be a total blur.

It’s funny how memories of past relationships and/or friendships can sometimes paint rainbow images in your mind. Yet when confronted with reality your memories don’t always match those of the other party. It’s an interesting paradox. What really happened back then and from whose perspective?

And it isn’t just a question of ‘he said…she said.’ In reality, it’s a present day memory-story of what the other party really meant verses what was or wasn’t stated in the first place. Turns out, you just thought you knew what was stated or implied between the lines.

The paradox that’s seldom addressed is ‘what kind of baggage were you both carrying at the time?’ Have you ever had the experience of thinking you know someone else pretty well and then they turn out to be quite different from many of your expectations? Or reflecting on a past relationship, you could never figure out when the hell it went south and why.

Cretin High School Reunion

 I’ve already waxed philosophically about those folks who have entered my life for brief periods of time and then exited as quietly and subtly as they entered. There has been a plethora of acquaintances from school, the military, past jobs, social organizations, neighbors or other passing friendships. They came and went in a rhythmic pattern but always leaving behind fleeting impressions, temporary feelings and sometimes great memories; real or imagined.

I was at a retirement party recently. These were folks I’ve known (some well, some not so much) for a long time. Most had retired by now while a few were still hanging on. But we were all at that critical juncture in our group lives. Yet most were unaware that what used to be was about to change. Upon her retirement, my wife told our friends that we were ‘moving on.’ Turns out that retirement party was the beginning of the end to the old gang. Some got it. Many others didn’t.

There was once an enigma in one of my past lives. She was a swirling tornado of vivaciousness that swept me off my feet and rendered all logical judgment null and void. It was for me a period of elation and excitement, confusion and disappointment, deep feelings and unmet expectations(at least on my part). Then ultimately that infamous five minute phone call that ended it all. I could never figure out what happened…until now.

My wife would say that it’s a gender thing. She believes that women are much more likely to know and understand what another person is thinking. She claims that most women have an intuitiveness that can detect if another person likes them or not. They can read body language and subtle hints in conversations that paint a pretty clear picture of true intentions and interest.Men aren’t so well equipped. She would be less kind and simply say ‘we’re clueless.’

Upon reflection, I figure most of my fleeting friendships could be explained away simply be-cause of my focus on self, thoughtlessness or just plain immaturity. That would explain high school and a few of the years after that. But after the service it was a little different. Not that I was any more mature. I just think I had a little better handle on other people. The service did that to me. 

 

The friends I made in the service (if ever so briefly) were an entirely different breed. We were both caught up in a time and place not of our making. We were trying to make the best of that situation. I’d venture to guess that if I met them today we would have absolutely nothing in common other than that fleeting window of shared experiences back then. It would probably be a very quick ‘yeah, remember’ with a smile and then as quickly ‘now you-all have a good life.’

On the other side of that relationship spectrum would be the high school and college friends I’ve become reacquainted with after an absence of many years. Not surprisingly, we usually spend the first twenty minutes doing an edited version of ‘So what have you done for the last fifty years?’ interjected with a few comments from (fill in the place here such as high school or college). Then the real fun begins with a genuine focus on the present and future.

Thankfully, none of these reunions have been a rehash of our ‘Glory Days’ but rather a reconnection of the bonds that brought us together in the first place…a long time ago. I’d like to reconnect with a lot more old friends like that. 

Oh, and that enigma from one of my past lives. She became an East Coast ex-pat. Now after fifty years I think I’ve finally broken that enigma code. That realization (or assumption at this point) brings clarity to our past lives and a better understanding of what really was and wasn’t happening back then. 

That’s OK; it’s all good.

As a writer and one always hungry to better understand the human condition I can mine this new discovery to better explain the behavior of one of my characters in ‘Debris.’ It would seem to be a plausible explanation for this character’s confusing behavior toward the one she supposedly cares about.

Great character drama even if it’s fiction. 

Unlike in real life.