We're All Friends Here

My best friend moved back to her hometown. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. She’s been back and forth in the last few months while a family member is in the hospital, returning to Austin every other Monday a little less energized, a little more homesick.

I told her I was proud of her decision, and I am. She’s always been a homebody, from her thrifted batas to her fully stocked refrigerator to her flourishing house plants. Although she made a home here in the state capital, her heart was set on Mission.

The way she talked about that small town at the southern tip of Texas, I must’ve been as good as Oz. So a few months after we met, we followed the yellow brick road (US-281) so I could meet her family.

She was lighter there, a glowier version of the lantern girl I first met at the cafe where we both worked. I was introduced to every barista, cashier, and mailman in town like I was a celebrity, and folks treated me like family just for being Emily’s friend. A few days later, I wrote “Emily from the Valley”. 

She has an appreciation for tradition and community that I idolize, but do not possess. I ran away from home, whereas she was dragged by scholarships and an older-by-a-minute twin sister. She looks out for people - a certified “mom-friend” - no matter who you are or where you come from, you’re welcome at her apartment.

We first bonded over our love for performance. We’re both theater-kid-turned-baristas, both longing for any stage that reminds us of the neon lights of the high school auditorium. We scratched the itch with jobs in the service industry (which can feel a lot a shitty ensemble role) and Emily did not blend into the chorus.

She was everyone’s favorite barista. She laughed at everyone’s jokes, and BIG. She remembered your name, and never made you feel guilty for not remembering hers, or for mistaking her for her twin sister. Sometimes she’d sit in the cafe after her shift to help a customer with a breakup or an existential crisis. Customers would text her to see if she was working, or to see if she was free to babysit that Friday night. Working with Emily was the best, and not just because the tips were good. She was the kind of barista that reminded me why I got into coffee in the first place: these mother heckers look like they’re having way too much fun. 

—

People come and go out of our lives. I know this is true because I have watched plenty of sitcoms. Some of the best characters leave after the first season, or maybe just a few episodes. Those people still count. Those people still get memes.

I met a guy at a karaoke bar on the fourth of July that told me what his tattoo meant. It was an arrow with a pine tree at one end (or something like that, I truthfully can’t remember) and he described it as a metaphor for the people in your life, coming and going.

“Everyone on your tree starts as a leaf,” he said. “There are some leaves that become stumps and limbs, but everyone starts as a leaf, and some leaves just fall off and don’t become anything.” (Now that I’m writing this out, I’m thinking he was probably very drunk, and I don’t think that’s how trees work, but all that to say, Emily is probably a root or a stump or something, in this metaphor.)

If there’s anything good to come out of Emily moving, it’s that I won’t be spending as much money. No more spontaneous late nights at June’s, no more ice cream sandwiches at Laundrette. I won’t have much of a reason to go to the Meteor, because I only like the Meteor when Emily makes me feel like I’m on top of the world at the Meteor. We won’t be staying at the 4-star Carpenter Hotel on her birthday, even though we always said we would.

——

Of the five girls in my elementary school clique, I was the only one zoned for Bel Air Middle School. I was shitting myself (literally) over the fact that I’d have to make all new friends, and the stress manifested itself into a mysterious stomach illness that would send me to the doctor’s office every August from the 6th to the 10th grade.

I made a few new friends, but the next year the boundaries changed again, and I had to start over. That’s when I met Samantha. Like all of my best female friendships, we hated each other at first. We only softened to one another once we discovered we secretly bullied the same people, though I’m not proud of it.

On top of her sophisticated sense of humor, Samantha was the child of an older set of parents with a collection of vinyl records and classic literature. She was the second child of Richard and Laura, a newborn when they lost their first daughter to cancer at 17 or so. This phantom sister hung in photographs, keeping close watch on the upright piano and the framed paintings as we laid on the couches binging episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

There was also a half-sister that lived in the basement with a 3-year-old son. This was Richard’s daughter from a previous marriage. When Samantha’s bedroom was upstairs, we played ukulele and illegally downloaded the Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy soundtracks. When her half-sister moved in with a boyfriend, Samantha took over the basement and we’d stay up late for SNL, watch episodes of Girls, and talk late into the night about masturbation and our lesbian friends. 

Samantha’s laugh was timid and uncontrollable. During an assembly at the Holocaust Museum, she totally lost it when a singer forgot the words to the National Anthem. We were both banished to the hallway, where we wrung out the rest of our giggles. When she was embarrassed by her laughter, which was often, she’d put a porcelain hand over her mouth to cover her silver-wired teeth.

Come to think of it, the only thing I really remember about my childhood friends is their laughter. Jess was melodic and jolly. Erin had a Shaggy-like laugh that rendered her eyes tiny slivers behind her round-rimmed glasses. Gracie had the laugh everyone laughed about, a silent vibration that ravaged her entire body and sent us gasping for air. Funny what your memory clings to.

Samantha moved to New York City for college. We hung out a few times during breaks, but each semester our lives drifted further and further in opposite directions. The full stop came around the 2016 election, for reasons I can’t fully remember but I’m 99% sure were something stupid I said. I’ve tried to reach out, but never got a response. Eventually she blocked me and I honestly forgot about that until this blog post. People come and go. 

—-

I’m starting to think my pursuit of lifelong female friendship is unrealistic. When I see a group of 70-something women in sensible shoes speed walking through the mall - that’s us in 50 years! - I can’t imagine my own version. I can’t see myself and an old friend setting up a stand at the flea market, driving out to Fredericksburg for a Wednesday wine tour, or taking a girls trip to Punta Cana, wide-brimmed sun hats barely fitting in the cabin doors of a Southwest flight.

How do they do it? I bet they talk on the phone instead of text. I bet they’re excruciatingly honest. I bet they know when to apologize and when to let it go. I guess it’s about driving miles to their apartment, however far, to kill a flying cockroach. I guess it’s about showing up, unannounced, and lingering for hours. There should be long conversations, and wine, and laughing and crying, and a healthy amount of shittalking.