A letter to my closest friend.
I never knew how important you would become in my life. As with all things when you are young, it started out so small.
Remembering our origin is like remembering innocence. Where every experience felt like a potential beginning to something new and amazing and exciting.
I sometimes long for those days, when fantasies about the future came to me as swiftly as songs to a swallow.
I’ve been thinking about your friendship a lot lately…Mostly because of how much you’ve become a crutch, maybe. It honestly sucks to think that sometimes even your friends can hurt you in the long run by just being too darn helpful.
I have been seeing you regularly for over a dozen years and I got this new piano so we could be closer together. I’m learning how to play using only the black keys. On those days, I can get away with pretending that I have escaped my high school, that social purgatory where I would listen to you for hours on end planning my escape into adulthood.
I remember that time I wrote down a phrase I heard from you which said “Do the hot-dog dance!” and how that gave ammunition to my bullies and how it ostracized me from my peers. As if sharing a special part of our fragile yet blossoming friendship was effeminate or “kinda gay”. To this day, I struggle to introduce you to less involved friends. And I still wince every time I hear the word “faggot”.
It’s been a lonely day and so I want you to sing with me late into the evening once more. Let’s sing some wild tune, maybe a sad ballad, or that one bossa nova piece in Portuguese we know.
Do this for me and I will take care of the piano, the guitars, the bass, and the drums. I will take care of the didgeridoo, the harmonicas, and the electric violin. I will treat my voice with rich olive oil and keep all our instruments in tune.
I will do all this because I care for you. I care for you because you have been there when no one else ever was. You have been there to show me beauty and grace and forgiveness and rage whenever this world has pressed its cruelty and indifference upon me.
If I had to be stuck with anyone in this world, I am glad it’s with you.
Thank you Music for always being there for me.