I am lucky because in addition to having a caring family and a loving partner, I also have wonderful friends. One of them, who rises above the generic label of friend into some nebulous description no one has quite succeeded in defining, is Danny.
I have known Danny for 14 years since we both attended summer camp/school at a prep school in Connecticut the summer before our senior year of high school. In the same program, we ate dinner together with a bunch of our classmates one night when the dining hall served chicken. The chicken was a little undercooked, so Danny and I took the lead in trying to reincarnate the birds, figuring they were closer to living than to dead. You can see how that would cement any friendship.
We spent a lot of time together during those six weeks. He dragged me on an amusement park ride I didn’t want to go on at Riverside. I got both of us in trouble at The Met in New York.
We kept in touch through first letters and then phone calls senior year (my mother probably really wished I’d made good friends with someone in the local calling area), and then it became de rigueur for me to drive up there on Saturdays. We saw a lot of movies and spent a lot of time at the mall, hanging out in the inadequate bookstore and watching snippets of videos at the Disney store.
We adopted a cat together, which we then had to give up (he, because his grandparents wouldn’t let him keep it, and I, because I was too chicken to ask my folks, although the kitten did come home with me for the night, much to my own cat’s dismay).
We invented a rule of absolutes that would suffice as a universal law for why things had to happen the way I said they did. This came in handy with math proofs. (It does not come in handy with Rudi, who refuses to believe that I should be endowed with such power.)
Danny and Karen gave me my nickname, soe, although they are amongst the few friends who do not use it.
We made a pact that neither of us is allowed to die, regardless of whatever stupid things we do or that happen to us. (This rule makes some other people feel left out; it is not meant to. It also is meant as more of a fail-safe than as carte-blanche to test its boundaries.)
Our friendship has survived late night phone calls, hurtful emails, four years of college, self-destructive behavior, secrets, revelations, a cross-country move, a vacation, two car breakdowns, my senior prom, and family woes.
We have a bond that is unlike any other I have — one that is bound through time and space and lifetimes. We are lucky to have found relationships that are accepting of and unthreatened by this bond, but I suppose that’s part of why we picked the men we did — because they could respect such a powerful love.
So, Danny, I wish you a happy birthday today. It’s been a wonderful friendship so far. And luckily we have the rest of eternity for it to continue in.