Chronology of a Friendship

[plumtreeblossom]

Pleased that I’ll be seeing Peter this afternoon, glad I called last night out of the blue to find out he’ll be in town today. We haven’t been able to get together since January, and it’s tragic-comic that it’s almost as cold today as it was that day. Whenever he’s in town I remember the huge hole left when he and Em moved to Northampton. I sorely miss the Tuesday night music jams; I miss the band that couldn’t continue without him because the rest of us had nothing in common socially or musically – he was the kingpin and the crixa, as is so often his role in things. Now that he’s gone, our friendship has taken its next evolutionary step, to the lifelong Famiglia level where we don’t need to see each other to feel each other’s constant presence out in the world. Like Tokyo John (whom I also thank for the long conversation last night), Peter is a voice of reason outside the day-to-day movie of my life, able to give logical perspective when I can find none on my own.

12 years is a long hike on a wildly twisting path. We’ve been different things to each other, starting way back in our old run-down neighborhood on the 5th of July. Artistic collaborators. Lovers. Rochesterian refugees in Boston, clueless and broke. Battling lovers. Friends healing from one another. Lifelong friends.

Maybe today we’ll flick fingerfuls of tea at each other at the Someday. That would be like us.