839 Friends
I wouldn’t be who I am if I’d been born somewhere else, at some other moment. All these people—I’d have missed them entirely, and that would have meant missing out on the mess of actually knowing human beings. Some of them opened up to me, some fucked me over, all of them left marks. That’s what I’m thinking about now: how many different characters move through your life, burning bright and then disappearing into memory forever.
Here’s what I know about them. Martin’s actually hung up on Nicole. Sarah was thirteen when she lost her virginity. Maike’s boyfriend is a dick. Manuel is short. Helena wore green socks. Klaus is better at Warcraft III than Manuel, which Manuel will never get over. Some of these people have had anal sex on New Year’s Eve, some have had abortions, some have been raped, some have cheated on their partners so many times they’ve lost count. I know about the people who are dead now, the ones who’ve left, the ones who’ve completely changed. I know about the guy who almost lost a testicle, the girl who took four guys at the same time, the girl who was deflowered on a playground, the one who sent nudes to a stranger and regretted it.
I know who’s slept with who, whose body looks like what—the small breasts, the soft ass, the burn scars, the arrow-shaped shave between the legs. I know about the blow jobs and the orgies and the girl who bit her ex-boyfriend’s dick. I know about the sexual preferences nobody admits to. I know the emo they kissed, the lesbian they’ve become, the guy who stripped in front of a stripper. I know about the people who are rich and the people who are fucked and the people who are just trying to survive. I know about the bullying and the betrayals and the desperate things people do when they’re lonely.
And here’s what I know about myself: I’ve cheated on every girlfriend I’ve ever had. That’s the secret that anchors all of this—that I’m no better than any of them. I’m the one doing the hurting.
But this is what friendship actually is. It’s knowing all of this. It’s being woven into people’s lives so completely that you learn the things they’d rather keep private. It’s the ugly, beautiful weight of carrying someone else’s secrets, of knowing people not as they want to be seen but as they actually are. That’s the real intimacy—not love in the greeting-card sense, but the knowledge that comes from being there, from paying attention, from refusing to look away.