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It's my party, I can ask "why?" if I want to
To yeast, man's fair-weather friend: When you are nice, you are very, very nice indeed; and when you are bad, you are rotten.
The other day was my birthday, and all my friends are coming out of the works.
Birthdays are by definition life-affirming, and this is always a pretty good thing. As in years past, my mailbox overfloweth with kind sentiments from relatives, friends and miscellaneous well-wishers.
(My first birthday card this year came from my dentist. The card showed great restraint, I thought, in not mentioning my teeth at all, as if he were a real person with feelings and everything. Of course, his plaque treatments reveal otherwise.)
(I also received my annual coupon for a free meal at Flat Top Grill. The coupon is great, but honestly, this is not a gift for me. The real beneficiaries of this discount are my friends, who would otherwise be obligated to purchase my meal for me. I suppose I was at least able to soak my dinner companions for a tall exotic beverage. What are friends, after all, if not people you can take advantage of without feeling guilty about it?)
This year so far -- including IOUs and promises -- I've tallied 11 phone calls, eight cards, seven e-mails, seven gifts and three meals. This represents slight growth from 2003, when I received 10 phone calls, seven cards, five e-mails, four gifts and two meals.
You may think me shallow or cold for boiling these sentiments down to mere numbers. But remember, my birthday is always around Thanksgiving time, and we all acknowledge Thanksgiving as a mandate to count one's blessings.
Holiday aside, though, I have to admit that I do have a bookkeeper's spirit when it comes to friendships. Not only do I analyze and internalize every perceived slight, but I remember them, too. It's like I'm a vineyard, but instead of making wine, I ferment grudges.
At the risk of taking this analogy too far: At times, I have drunk from those bottles and gotten sick, gotten dangerous and hurt people. Some of those bottles I have poured down the drain or pissed away, and some of them I have traded for lemonade.
Then again, grudges, like alcohol, are not always such a bad thing. Some grudges, against people who doubted me and put me down, have driven me to this day. To those assholes I am eternally grateful, and to sip that champagne from fine crystal is sweet indeed.
So I have a long memory when it comes to relationships. If I wanted to think about it -- and I wouldn't have to think about it very hard -- I could easily rank all of my friends and acquaintances like the college football standings.
Of course, there would be the computer-BCS-style rankings, which take into account each friend's performance on various criteria as loyalty, reliability, generosity, shared experiences, sympathy, wisdom and social clout. These scores would be summed and multiplied by a factor indicating length-of-service.
Then you would have the coaches' poll, a more subjective measure of friendship with a premium on recent performance. Someone blows me off for dinner? They drop a few spots in the poll. Someone offers me a ride to the airport? Watch 'em climb. Someone just slept with my girlfriend? Get ready for a major shuffle atop the rankings.
I could release the poll on a weekly basis, post it on the Web site, and watch my friends jockey for position. There would be controversy, perhaps generating enough buzz for small newspaper coverage. The prize? That would be the holy grail: nomination as Best Man/Maid of Honor.
That always seemed to me to be the pinnacle of any friendship. You appear in front of the person's family and all their "lesser" friends, and you give the keynote speech about the guest of honor. Plus it's got that word "best" right in there. It essentially replaces the term "best friend," which no one should be allowed to use after the age of fourteen. And anyhow, after the bride/groom gets married, the race is pretty much over since mere friendships suddenly and increasingly become relatively unimportant.
Sure, there are flaws in this system. It doesn't properly account for inter-gender friendships, except in your more progressive ceremonies. And often, family circumstances dictate that siblings will assume this role. But the only other possible analog to being the best man is being the person who delivers the funeral eulogy. And what fun is that, if the main character has passed away and who-knows-how-many other rival candidates have already passed along with him?
Without the ranking system, the Best Man decision will be a difficult one for me. I am not prone to grand dreams about my future wedding. I don't have visions of tuxedo jackets or prime rib or flower arrangements. (I do think that Hungry Hungry Hippos would make for fun centerpieces, but I am resigned to flexibility on this point.) I have only two requirements: The marriage recessional will be performed to the last four minutes of "Layla," and I will get to bestow as many "best man" titles as I want.
My brother will have to be the ceremonial best man, the guy who stands at the altar and pretends to lose the wedding band. Family comes first. But I reserve the right to designate an executive committee of the top half-dozen or so friendship candidates. Within this committee it will be decided who has the responsibility for the toast, for acting as master of ceremonies, for arranging the bachelor party, for providing pre-wedding counsel, and for hitting on all the bridesmaids.
Then again, by the time I get around to a wedding, most of my friends may well be irrevocably alienated, or perhaps dead. So maybe I should just have a birthday party one year where I tell all of these people to get together and figure out how to show me a good time.
Actually, every year since I was about ten, I hold out a little bit of hope that people will throw me a surprise party. In recent years I have even gone so far as to resist making plans, just in case someone was showing the initiative to plan something behind my back. But it never happens, and I'm starting to think it will not happen before the risk of heart attack renders a "surprise!" party somewhat unsafe. It's disappointing, but I'm familiar with disappointment. Besides, it's not fair for me to blame my friends for failing to make this dream come true.
People keep telling me that my standards are impossibly high. I expect everyone -- family, friends, women -- to not only live up to but exceed my own personal standards. Inevitably, consistently, they fail. This creates two seemingly contradictory phenomena:
1) I develop an inferiority complex, because my emotionally spastic brain perceives these natural human flaws as intentional snubs, and my sense of self-worth crumbles.
2) I develop a superiority complex, because I start to think that I am an idyllic island surrounded by a sea of cruelty and stupidity, and I must uphold my impossible standards lest I be swallowed by the repugnant water.
Here's the twisted part: I've become so damn good at converting my low self-worth into fuel for comedy and tragedy and other entertaining drama, that I totally buy into my self-concept as a misunderstood, lonely genius. Essentially, I have an inferiority complex, and a superiority complex about it.
This is a very difficult thing for my friends to deal with, because if they tell me to cheer up, they risk threatening the comfortably cynical identity I've crafted for myself. And if they try to push me off my high horse, they risk insulting me. And in the event they accidentally violate one of my precious tenets, they're rarely aware of it. The people who know me, and the people who like me, my friends, put up with a lot of shit. Fuck, I should be throwing them a party.
But on my birthday, they tell me they love me anyway. And lucky me, I can turn right around and give thanks for each and every one of them.
Here's to you, friends of mine. Bottoms up.
The other day was my birthday, and all my friends are coming out of the works.
Birthdays are by definition life-affirming, and this is always a pretty good thing. As in years past, my mailbox overfloweth with kind sentiments from relatives, friends and miscellaneous well-wishers.
(My first birthday card this year came from my dentist. The card showed great restraint, I thought, in not mentioning my teeth at all, as if he were a real person with feelings and everything. Of course, his plaque treatments reveal otherwise.)
(I also received my annual coupon for a free meal at Flat Top Grill. The coupon is great, but honestly, this is not a gift for me. The real beneficiaries of this discount are my friends, who would otherwise be obligated to purchase my meal for me. I suppose I was at least able to soak my dinner companions for a tall exotic beverage. What are friends, after all, if not people you can take advantage of without feeling guilty about it?)
This year so far -- including IOUs and promises -- I've tallied 11 phone calls, eight cards, seven e-mails, seven gifts and three meals. This represents slight growth from 2003, when I received 10 phone calls, seven cards, five e-mails, four gifts and two meals.
You may think me shallow or cold for boiling these sentiments down to mere numbers. But remember, my birthday is always around Thanksgiving time, and we all acknowledge Thanksgiving as a mandate to count one's blessings.
Holiday aside, though, I have to admit that I do have a bookkeeper's spirit when it comes to friendships. Not only do I analyze and internalize every perceived slight, but I remember them, too. It's like I'm a vineyard, but instead of making wine, I ferment grudges.
At the risk of taking this analogy too far: At times, I have drunk from those bottles and gotten sick, gotten dangerous and hurt people. Some of those bottles I have poured down the drain or pissed away, and some of them I have traded for lemonade.
Then again, grudges, like alcohol, are not always such a bad thing. Some grudges, against people who doubted me and put me down, have driven me to this day. To those assholes I am eternally grateful, and to sip that champagne from fine crystal is sweet indeed.
So I have a long memory when it comes to relationships. If I wanted to think about it -- and I wouldn't have to think about it very hard -- I could easily rank all of my friends and acquaintances like the college football standings.
Of course, there would be the computer-BCS-style rankings, which take into account each friend's performance on various criteria as loyalty, reliability, generosity, shared experiences, sympathy, wisdom and social clout. These scores would be summed and multiplied by a factor indicating length-of-service.
Then you would have the coaches' poll, a more subjective measure of friendship with a premium on recent performance. Someone blows me off for dinner? They drop a few spots in the poll. Someone offers me a ride to the airport? Watch 'em climb. Someone just slept with my girlfriend? Get ready for a major shuffle atop the rankings.
I could release the poll on a weekly basis, post it on the Web site, and watch my friends jockey for position. There would be controversy, perhaps generating enough buzz for small newspaper coverage. The prize? That would be the holy grail: nomination as Best Man/Maid of Honor.
That always seemed to me to be the pinnacle of any friendship. You appear in front of the person's family and all their "lesser" friends, and you give the keynote speech about the guest of honor. Plus it's got that word "best" right in there. It essentially replaces the term "best friend," which no one should be allowed to use after the age of fourteen. And anyhow, after the bride/groom gets married, the race is pretty much over since mere friendships suddenly and increasingly become relatively unimportant.
Sure, there are flaws in this system. It doesn't properly account for inter-gender friendships, except in your more progressive ceremonies. And often, family circumstances dictate that siblings will assume this role. But the only other possible analog to being the best man is being the person who delivers the funeral eulogy. And what fun is that, if the main character has passed away and who-knows-how-many other rival candidates have already passed along with him?
Without the ranking system, the Best Man decision will be a difficult one for me. I am not prone to grand dreams about my future wedding. I don't have visions of tuxedo jackets or prime rib or flower arrangements. (I do think that Hungry Hungry Hippos would make for fun centerpieces, but I am resigned to flexibility on this point.) I have only two requirements: The marriage recessional will be performed to the last four minutes of "Layla," and I will get to bestow as many "best man" titles as I want.
My brother will have to be the ceremonial best man, the guy who stands at the altar and pretends to lose the wedding band. Family comes first. But I reserve the right to designate an executive committee of the top half-dozen or so friendship candidates. Within this committee it will be decided who has the responsibility for the toast, for acting as master of ceremonies, for arranging the bachelor party, for providing pre-wedding counsel, and for hitting on all the bridesmaids.
Then again, by the time I get around to a wedding, most of my friends may well be irrevocably alienated, or perhaps dead. So maybe I should just have a birthday party one year where I tell all of these people to get together and figure out how to show me a good time.
Actually, every year since I was about ten, I hold out a little bit of hope that people will throw me a surprise party. In recent years I have even gone so far as to resist making plans, just in case someone was showing the initiative to plan something behind my back. But it never happens, and I'm starting to think it will not happen before the risk of heart attack renders a "surprise!" party somewhat unsafe. It's disappointing, but I'm familiar with disappointment. Besides, it's not fair for me to blame my friends for failing to make this dream come true.
People keep telling me that my standards are impossibly high. I expect everyone -- family, friends, women -- to not only live up to but exceed my own personal standards. Inevitably, consistently, they fail. This creates two seemingly contradictory phenomena:
1) I develop an inferiority complex, because my emotionally spastic brain perceives these natural human flaws as intentional snubs, and my sense of self-worth crumbles.
2) I develop a superiority complex, because I start to think that I am an idyllic island surrounded by a sea of cruelty and stupidity, and I must uphold my impossible standards lest I be swallowed by the repugnant water.
Here's the twisted part: I've become so damn good at converting my low self-worth into fuel for comedy and tragedy and other entertaining drama, that I totally buy into my self-concept as a misunderstood, lonely genius. Essentially, I have an inferiority complex, and a superiority complex about it.
This is a very difficult thing for my friends to deal with, because if they tell me to cheer up, they risk threatening the comfortably cynical identity I've crafted for myself. And if they try to push me off my high horse, they risk insulting me. And in the event they accidentally violate one of my precious tenets, they're rarely aware of it. The people who know me, and the people who like me, my friends, put up with a lot of shit. Fuck, I should be throwing them a party.
But on my birthday, they tell me they love me anyway. And lucky me, I can turn right around and give thanks for each and every one of them.
Here's to you, friends of mine. Bottoms up.
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