The Unified Theory of Post-Modern Friendship

So I collect friends like I collect shoes. I have a few special pairs I’ll wear forever.  I pledge fealty to them and keep them going until they can’t stand it anymore.  The same is true for friends. I make them for life.  Distance and time may separate us, but I’m proud to say I have two types of friends: those I’ve known for a lifetime, and those I will know for a lifetime.  If one doesn’t fit into either of those two categories, then I’m sorry, but he’ll be nothing more than part of the backdrop of my life.

Luckily, things like email and Facebook are helpful in this regard.  These digital tools have helped me to stay connected with my beloved friends, and I must confess, it has also helped me expand their numbers.

Copley Hall, Georgetown University

Take for example Thomas, whom I quickly fell in with our first year at Georgetown.  Friendships formed deep in the dark bowels of an antebellum dormitory are hard to quantify or describe, but he and I, and a couple others, drew closely together like a tight, wet knot.  In the end, we marched drunkenly side by side up muddy hills in that final Senior Week, feeling like we’d all been in the same platoon in Vietnam.

The last time I saw Thomas was probably 20 years ago in Buffalo.  I had come from Honolulu and he from New York City, to stand next to our other bestie while he took his marriage vows.  We were there moments after Larry had his “talk” with his Eisenhower-era dad, who offered a few terse words before the whole shebang fired off:  

“Tonight’s the big night , Son.  Be gentle.”

Thomas and I looked at each other with bemusement so familiar …

Anyway, right, the digital age.  So we email on a semi-annual basis, and these messages serve as a more substantive exchange than those we enjoy every few weeks on Facebook.  Here’s a lengthy one that is, I think, emblematic of men just like us, who have followed this path to forty-something OnceWereBachelorhood.   It is mostly unexpurgated.

Three of Us at a Wedding, Plus Backdrop

TO: BEN

FROM: THOMAS

Totally random question that a) I should know about because it’s my field or b) I should have asked you about a long time ago, but do you remember this dude from Gtown, pretty sure his name was Ben Wallace — he was more my friend (for a brief time and never that close) around Village B time; he also lived in Village B with this totally wild crew who basically destroyed their apartment and lived like animals, with broken whiskey bottles on the floor, etc. — one of the dudes he lived with was like a [something infamous] and general problem child but was [vaguely well connected]; the other was some French dude who used to lie around naked in bed with this weird chick when I was over visiting. 

Anyway what I remember of Ben was that he had kind of dark ratty hair, a decent amount of it, and he was quiet and kind of writerly/literary, or maybe just an English major; he was from DC; and maybe that’s about it. We hung out for a small bit and then drifted apart I guess.

Anyway, do you think/would you recognize him from this shot/bio? All the details fit, I think, but it’s hard to gauge because he looks so “normal,” for lack of a better word, and without the big hair it’s hard to judge:

http://www.benjaminwallace.net/bio.html

Hope all is well with you. I’m at the tail end of closing/shipping/putting out Sine Qua Non’s million-page September issue. Insane. I’m handling 37 stories over 125 pages. Psycho. Kid #2 on the way, supposedly due August 4, don’t know whether boy or girl. . . Kid #1, Funicular, now 2.5 and he/she sings early Stone Roses singles by himself/herself, unprompted. Good times. . . 

All best//T

-- 

THOMAS BUTTS (a pseudonym)

Senior Editor

SINE QUA NON FASHION MAG (a pseudo-title, for perhaps the flagship of its kind)

1 FANCY STREET

13th floor

New York, NY 10036

TO:  THOMAS
FROM: BEN

Dude.  

One day I was driving and half-listening to NPR.  I tuned into the middle of an interview; they were talking about this ancient bottle of collectible wine that supposedly belonged to Thomas Jefferson.  Sounded interesting so I perked up and paid attention.  Turns out they were interviewing the author of a book focusing on that particular bottle.  THE BILLIONAIRE’S VINEGAR.  I made a mental note to get it used on Amazon because the curious subject sounded engrossing in an esoteric but entertaining way, and because the author sounded engaging and intelligent.  At the end of the interview, they ID’d the author as Ben Wallace.

A chill went up and down my neck, because I remembered the following:

Many years ago, you had a brief man-crush on a fellow named Ben Wallace, or at least that’s what Larry and I thought.  Maybe Don, too, but as with everything Don, that’s hazy.  You would come home and tell us about this guy who was intelligent and engaging and living what I subsequently learned was what could be described as a BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY lifestyle.  Much alcohol, debauchery, and hateful characters whom one would years later regret being associated with.  One of them, I knew through my friend, Laura, as a John Belushi-type.  Anyway, this Ben, like you, was nurturing some nascent literary tendencies. I think I remember meeting him somewhere, probably that bookstore/bar/coffeeshop that was enjoying some of-the-moment cachet.  Dylan’s I think it was called.  You both smoked Camel Uns, I think.  Possibly weeks later, Larry came home saying that Ben had begun researching a book he wanted to write about vampires and was turning up at Lauinger Library with all kinds of requests.

Your man-crush, as with many of your misadventures of the time, inexplicably faded, never to be acted upon.

So I found the book and paid $ 0.99 plus $3.99 shipping on Amazon Used*, eventually turned my full attention to it, and concluded that I was right, the author was engaging and intelligent and had written an engrossing, esoteric piece.  It was a great read.  And that he in fact was the fellow you had a man-crush on, many years ago.

I never highlighted this discovery with you because I figured that you, being a New York man of letters of sorts, would already know.  Guess I was wrong.

[Take care].

*Incidentally, I just picked up GOJIRO used for a similar bargain basement price, after being swept up in the giant lizard craze of summer 2014, remembering that in your first year at some publishing house, you had shared an excerpt with me.  I can’t be bothered to read it, but it’s nice to have on my shelf, a remembrance of 1990.

I also just finished EMINENT HIPSTERS by Mr. Donald Fagen, a loose collection of his writing.  Again, the low low price being the common feature of this footnote.  He sounds like an asshole.  Be careful not to meet your heroes.

TO: BEN
FROM: THOMAS

The whole thing is kind of nuts — I’ve seen his byline (off and on ... he’s been getting some good play lately at New York mag) for years now but never had the a-HA! moment until yesterday. (In fairness, it’s a somewhat generic name for a NYC writer, and there’s another more famous one named Ben Wallace-Wells throwing me off the scent.)

Your recollections are quite exact — more detailed than mine. I’ll cop to the man-crush and the literary vibe, and a big yes on the roommates, and the strange abandonment of friendship. (For no particular reason; I think we enjoyed each other’s company fair enough but we never really found like THAT THING that we were both obsessed with, or bonded over, or some such. And/or we weren’t secure enough in our literary man-crushes to be all “Hey — do you love William Blake and want to pattern your life on his work? Me too!") Don’t remember the meeting at Dylan’s (though I do remember the hot-spot-of-the-moment vibe of that place). I think I’ll look him up — though my initial note to him is bound to be quite awkward (“Remember some weird dude from Village A that you hung around with for like 5 minutes in 1987 and then never really saw again? Well it’s me!"

Anyways. . . GOJIRO! Yes. I remember everything about that book being kind of cool, though even I never read the damn thing. Have since become friendly with the writer, who’s a very cool cat. 

And Fagen’s book: It’s been on my maybe-I-buy-this-next list for a while now; frankly the only thing holding me back is what I have heard or read from reviews about the whole bummer/bitter vibe of the whole thing. Or maybe it’s just part of the whole thing. Though I think I do understand his frustration (I think I read some excerpt about his opinions of the crowds at his recent shows, and having seen he and Becker a couple years back at the Beacon Theater here, I second that emotion — I didn’t think the crowd would be filled with eminent hipsters per se, but I also didn’t think it would be filled with beefy men from Long Island in suits from 1982 with their wives dolled up like they’re seeing Frank Sinatra at the Sands in 1963.

That said, F@CK IT!!! If I judged bands solely based on the attire, demeanor and hipness (with minus points for the dark side of the hip coin, douchebaggery), I would have precious few bands to listen to. I’ve already doubled down over the weekend and downloaded lossless audio files of the entire Steely Dan discography, the better to nerd out on their particular genius of artistry, virtuosity, and production. Long live the Dan — though I may skip that book.

Rock//T

Magnus Walker: Early Porsche Aficionado and Life Architect

So everyone, especially the male of the species (which means bachelors and OnceWereBachelors), has a vision for their life formed early on, before the restraints of reason and common sense take hold.  If you were to ask boys what their ideal life would look like, I bet we can all speculate accurately about what answers we'd get.

"I want to grow up to be a man of adventure, who travels the world, fights evil, makes lots of money, has a jet plane. And my mom makes me brownies and my favorite spaghetti and meatballs everyday."

"I want to be a scientist who has his own lab and invents things that help the world."

"I want to live on an island with my friends and hunt and fish for food and surf and swim all day."

Whatever that vision is, it involves an element of freedom and desire to be left alone by others - perhaps grown ups - to write one's own script, to be an architect of one's life.  No one envisions a life with a mortgage, private school tuition, and high overhead.

I wonder if, when Magnus Walker was a young kid he said "I want to live in a large warehouse with tastefully wild furniture, and a tattooed bombshell for a wife.  I want to make that warehouse available to Hollywood to use in edgy movies and music videos.  And I want to take the fabulous amount of money I make doing that, and spend it on restoring or modifying dozens of early Porsche 911s.  And I want to not have to bathe or observe norms of male hygiene too much."

If so, his dream came true.  If you have an odd half hour of free time, and you like old cars and interesting living spaces, watch this.

OnceWereBachelors Careers: International Airline Pilot

When you're a bachelor airline pilot flying international routes, you've literally got the whole planet stretched out before you. Possibilities are endless. Your life is a William Holden movie unfolding. You leave home, go someplace exotic, mingle, and return refreshed. When you get married and have children, as my father eventually did, not much really changes except now you miss home, you return to your wife, and you make sure you've got toys in your flight bag for the kids to rifle through in your den.

Before I was in preschool, my father flew routes between Manila, Honolulu, San Francisco, New York, and London for Philippine Airlines. Back in the late Sixties at PAL, that meant Douglas DC-8s. Flying to the States enabled my father to keep his hot American cars, as well as those of his race-car-driver pals, excellently equipped with Goodyear tires he had loaded in the cargo holds of his planes. Corvettes. T-Birds. Mustangs. PAL would send him to flight training with KLM in Amsterdam. That's where he acquired his French aviator sunglasses, Harris tweeds, pegged pants, and Florsheim shoes. The gold Rolex Day-Date Oyster Perpetual he also acquired while travelling, I believe in Hong Kong.

For the PAL pilots back then, Hawaii was a significant touchstone, a waypoint in more ways than navigation. Investments were made here. Real estate. Life insurance policies. Friendships. And of course it was so very much like Manila. So when airline management got chintzy with the pilots, and a strike they organized collapsed because of scabs who crossed the line, my father resigned from PAL, packed up his whole OnceWereBachelor life, and moved us all to Honolulu. He traded the large Metro Manila home with the den and bar and the maids and houseboy for a small cottage on hospital grounds where my mother became a resident physician, a profession she barely needed to practice while dad flew the endless skies.

My father considered a few options, the least promising of which was American International Airline Pilot. Something about quotas for non-American-trained flyers, despite the fact that KLM training was top of the industry back then. Next least promising was bartender. My father has never been very talkative or hospitable and smoky places make him irritable. Eventually, he settled on life insurance, which he turned into a nearly thirty-year second career. He barely looked back during those three decades. Once I asked him if he regretted ever leaving PAL. Without hesitation he scoffed at the thought and pointed out that if he hadn't he doubted he would have a lawyer son or a surgeon daughter. I tend to agree. Privileged Manila Kid is a dicey upbringing to have, but I digress.

Selling life insurance sure wasn't the same as world travel, hands at the controls, thousands of pounds of thrust at your command. So it is not lost on me that this was one of many, many sacrifices that my father made for the better of our family. In this day and age, where I myself espouse quality of life, insisting that I couldn't work at a job I was unhappy doing, my father's sacrifice is even more remarkable.

This is barely the story of my father, really. I mentioned the maids and houseboy? In this new, non-airline pilot life, dad did most of the feeding and cleaning and grocery shopping and bill paying, while mom built her medical practice. He drove us to and from school. And he sold life insurance with great success.

Dad's in his early seventies now, and thanks to grandchildren, I truly believe he's getting younger and younger. He hasn't worked in years. When they can pry themselves away from our kids my parents travel often, mostly to Madrid and Manila, anywhere we have family. But for the sake of my dad, even though he retired from Equitable Life, I like to think of him as a former airline pilot and I always will.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. There will never be enough of them in my lifetime and yours together for me to be able to express my love and gratitude to you.

Top: My dad in the right seat of a DC-8 cockpit.
Bottom: My dad and his red 1955 T-Bird.

He Lives Vicariously Through Himself

Right at the top of the list of OnceWereBachelor careers is Beer Spokesman. As I've often said, "Love Beer. That is all." But seeing this gentleman, I feel the bar has been raised so high that this is another of those unattainable goals. Meet The Most Interesting Man in the World.



Why do I idolize him so? Well, didn't I just say what I said about beer? Weren't you listening? Besides that, he is Johnny Quest. Mr. Roark. Ponch. Sam Malone. Steve Zissou. 007. Chuck Norris, opening up a Can Of. He dresses well. He is a jai alai master, a friend to animals, and a grand raconteur. He was probably a bachelor once, but most certainly he is something more now.

Shake his hand. It's as soft as brown suede.



He is so interesting that he doesn't limit himself to one beverage. Even though he's a beer spokesman, he doesn't drink just beer. "I don't always drink beer," he says, "but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis." He is a man of variety, then. Moderation perhaps. Standards definitely. By saying "prefers", we know he's not a beer snob who will be boorish about what you put in front of him, and certainly that is more than polite. I wonder what else he drinks. Probably not mojitos or whatever-tinis, unless it's the original. He is a discriminating individual, then. Just listen to his position on rollerblading.

How do I measure up? Not well, really. What follows is a list of seven true statements about me, if marketers were to hire me for this career:

1. He once bit through his own lip.
2. He speaks fluent Russian.
3. He has been to the back room of a morgue, where he saw a corpse with the top of its skull removed like an open pickle jar.
4. He had a knife pulled on him on the London Underground and diffused the situation.
5. While building his own office, he ate a Big Mac that had been sitting in the back of his friend's pick up truck for over 24 hours.
6. He has been handcuffed and arrested.
7. He is currently a white belt in karate, alongside his wife and son.

Stay thirsty my friends.

OnceWereBachelors Careers: High Stakes Thief

Meet Neil McCauley. No wife. No kids. No Mortgage. So what makes him a OnceABachelor? Well he's got a nice shiny unfurnished home overlooking the bioluminescence of the City of Los Angeles. He's got the "crew", ready to rock and roll, who will do anything for him and vice versa. And he's forgotten more ways to rip off people than many of us will ever know. He knows how to deal from the bottom of the deck, to enter a building through a roof, drill or burn open a safe, and get in and out, on the prowl or strong.



He's got no time for nonsense. He's married to his job and his job is High Stakes Thief. He's ready to do what it takes to take down scores but he's also ready to walk out on everything in 30 seconds flat if he spots the heat around the corner. That's the discipline. But look what happens when he lets a doe-eyed graphic designer with a needy gene into his life.

Yeah, we're talking about the Michael Mann movie Heat, with Robert De Niro playing McCauley. I'm tempted to fail to mention Al Pacino's Vincent Hanna, because I haven't been a Pacino fan since his last good performance in Godfather Part II, but I digress. Watch Heat if you feel you need to be reminded of what it takes to be a man on a mission.

Incidentally, I know that the first embeded hyperlink is to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, with Robert DeNiro portraying Harry Tuttle, not Neil McCauley. But the idea is the same: go anywhere, travel light, get in and out, a man alone, wherever there's trouble