Will You Be My Friend?

READ BY THE AUTHOR ABOVE

Hi there. My name is Kate. I’ve just moved to the area and I’m looking for all sorts of people to hang out with. Anyone out there remember what it’s like to welcome someone new into your life? Before this, I don’t think I’d made a new friend since middle school--my children’s, not my own.

I’m a bit neurotic, but in that old Brooklyn, we are all half a step from disaster. Fun, you know? Puppies, jokes and/or babies easily crack my veneer.

I’ve managed to collect quite a nice complement of steadies over the years, people who are a given and don’t go away, even when years and circumstance come between us--neither frequency nor proximity required. Some I speak with more often than others, but I don’t have to consider what we might like about each other. We’ve lived it.

In the parks of my wayward youth, on the college campus I loved, over perfect weathered lunches in Los Angeles, and onto the pristine shores of Long Island with my children, I put in the long hours. That’s not what I need anymore. I used to think friendship was a lifetime commitment, but that’s true I’ve found the hard way, only if two people want it to be. And maybe that’s exactly right. And good.

Carpooling calendars gave way to potluck schedules and hopeful readings, which have fewer variables and require more than my eavesdropping on the conversation in the backseat. 

This move from situational to experiential friendship proves both more complicated and infinitely more simple. Now that I’ve dealt with all that angst, I’m ready for the good time—on a bike or in a sculpture garden. I’m not desperately seeking a holy grail life manual or validation.

I can only offer an ear and a good time. Beyond the Kate Chronicles, that is.

So, do you want to be my friend? I like birds and words. Food, walks, bikes and hikes. I might have a difficult time making a decision, but I’ll give you my honest opinion afterwards. I’ll try anything. Once. Unless I have a panic attack right before, which has never stopped me from jumping anyway. I appreciate the opportunity in being lost, but I’d like to know the next move. All wisdom shows up in that difference.

I’m in the market for a new band. I can play the klezmer autoharp and carry a tune. Sort of. But I miss my original one. The amazing songs we sang together chime in my mind like a heartbeat, though I’m currently in the market for trios going just deaf enough to smooth over my missed strums. Either way, the resultant, exuberant look on my face as I hit any high note will stay the same.

Do I even really need friends? I’ve been online for so long now, I Zoomed into a full life when I was careful. Faces on a screen were a glorious reprieve, but I miss smelling people’s farts, you know? I have easily pixelated myself into cavernous loneliness on occasion in these last handful of years.

Anyway, want to come over? Maybe we should go out at first.

I do cook but don’t always appreciate criticism unless I’ve put my big girl panties on beforehand, which is far from given. I know I put too much cumin in the couscous that one time. There has to be a statute of limitations on this! It wasn’t murder! 

Yeah, we could use some couple friends--once you’ve passed the pre-interview my husband prefers I conduct, but is trying to be less rigid about. You understand. Right? 

I’m a fantastic listener or too stoned to fully grasp what’s going on at any given moment. Either way, the resultant look on my face along with my motivations are the same. My husband will have a similar expression, but he will not have heard a word you’re saying, distracted as he will be trying to discern the authenticity of the stars in the Google review for our upcoming dinner reservations.

My cabinets are filled to the brim with all sorts of non alcoholic beverages, a virtual non liquor store of liquids. My husband is a confirmed non-drunk. Weirdly, by choice. I prefer tequila. It has fewer calories. See, something for everyone. 

The nicest people live in western Massachusetts and wherever I go I run into someone with the potential to deepen my understanding of what I’m doing here in the first place. Besides my couple of steadies within a 15 minute radius, I’ve wrangled some wildly talented artist buddies and several storybook neighbors already.

Come over for dinner. We’ll hop on the grill and I’ll make my famous couscous. We can cover a whole range of topics beyond the noise--from engineering to music to poetry, the shattered earth and lawn mowers, while we spend our precious moment as companions together on this planet.

It’s a wild world we’re living in. Haven’t met you yet, but I’d love to.