How Many of Us Have Them

I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want any more friends.

Wait, I take that back, I have recently re-opened enrollment for new ones, but realize that the friends I got are an effing handful. In a good way.

My best friend Wiz and her husband were in town the other day. We always manage to miss each other on these weekend visits, and we almost did this time, but we managed to slide in a few margaritas after her midnight flight in, before my 7am flight out.

She and I took this photo (which I been trying to post, but blogger be trippin) in 1986, at the Air and Space museum in Ottawa. [Raise your hand if you didn’t peg me for a black girl with a white best friend?] The remarkable thing about it is that neither one of us looks much older today than we do in this pic. And I think we both knew that 20 years later we would still be as close as two grade schoolers in a mock space shuttle.

Fast fwd to last weekend. 4th of July. Houston. I went under the guise of the Essence fest, when in essence I barely made a cameo at the damn event. Sure I had some clients in town and all that, but really, I went for rehab purposes.

My college buddy Entourage has a corporate crib down there and was nice enough to let me crash while he lived it up with his boys in Vegas for the weekend.

You remember your last few weeks of undergrad when you found yourself getting drunk with mad white kids (ok…unless you went to say, Grambling) and other nameless folks you never spoke to in four years? Well, we had a habit of nicknaming, and it was mad nostalgic for Entourage and I to spend our last night of college in the bar looking around at “Soccer Boy,” “Fresh Face,” “Dick Still in Her” and the like. So imagine our surprise when “Porn Star” comes over to us and says, “Dude, I just have to tell you guys, you two are the cutest couple on campus. And that’s what we’ve been calling you for four years…”Cutest Couple on Campus.”

We didn’t have the heart to tell him we weren’t boning. EVER.

So I stayed in Houston an extra day after he got back to town from Vegas, just so we could hang out. My last night in town, instead of hitting up downtown like we had planned, he and I ended up on his couch watching all three discs of that Denis Leary show on FX “Resc.ue Me.”

Forget that the show is effing brilliant, the company was worth every minute I was laid over traveling back to NY. I would travel around the world for his friendship.

Rewind to before Entourage got back, I met up with my girl Mack from Dallas by way of Little Rock. She’s a relatively new friend, a couple years deep, but a real one nonetheless. I'll never forget the time my ex-biz partner cleared out our biz account a few minutes before I had made it to the ATM that morning. It was rent time, and I was on my way out of town, so needless to say I was distraught. Then after the confrontational phone call, punctuated by threats of a lawsuit, I made a phone call of my own...to Mack...who stayed on the phone with me all night long, because my nerves wouldn't allow me to rest.

She and I have been thru lots, so hanging with her in Houston was right on time. We were under the assumption that Houston would do its best New Orleans impression and host sexy black folks drinking in the streets until dawn. Didn't happen. In fact, not the even the normally generous, hot Texas sun had the decency to show up.

But we made a phone call and got the hook up on the haps for the night. The directions were on point, and when we pulled up and were shut out of the already packed club, me, Mack and Ms. Living Single made do. We navigated through a full azz parking lot, a long azz line, a high azz cover charge, and a heavy azz downpour...and found a our way to tequila.

Then we managed to find a party that was relentless in pumping that NY shit...ya know, Biggie, Jigga, WuTang, Tribe, Busta. Biz on the wheels. And it was at this spot that this boy with one crazy grey eye, came up behind me, holds me by the hips, starts dancing, while trying to subtly unzip my pants. [Had it been a different club in a different city with a different ngga, I mighta been wit it...]

I can honestly say that I feel like I've found a new friend in LS. First of all, she's beautiful, which always makes for a good time out. But the girl can party! She brought the spirit of N.O., her town, to Texas, and I had a ball dipping in and out of clubs with her. But she will be the first to tell you that Houston is on some bullshit packing up the liquor at 2am on the dot.

It's not always easy to find kindred spirits. People who appreciate quality television, quality margaritas, offer quality compassion, and like a quality party!

I don't know about you, but most of the people I've met in the past five years, just been on some other shit. Trying desperately hard to be what they're not. Hating. Having no clear goals beyond retail gratification and tricking. No balance.
I admit that most of my friends were prefabricated. I either grew up with them, or went to grade school alongside them. Lifers. And those friendships have all grown and morphed into entities that reflect the growth and metamorphoses of our lives. I don't talk to them daily, or even weekly in most cases. But when we get together it still feels like home.

To the point where I feel like I don't know how to make new friends. First off, I'm an enigma...people can't figure me out. I'm an anti-social party girl, fluent in Latin and hood, a conservative slut, a liberal celebate, a drunken church girl with a dirty mouth, a generous heart and anger management issues. A writer who'd rather watch reruns than line edits. An ambitious procrastinator. Sincere and sarcastic. A Jamaican who don't smoke.

If I could be my own best friend I would.

I saw Whodini live the other day...they inspired me to emerge however briefly from my blog slump. I could go on forever about my(self) Friends.