Last time I wrote about graffiti → when grey urban landscapes turn into colorful kaleidoscopes.
This entry is about an individual who is basically like, um, like my Id. Or at least I’m convinced our friendship unlocks my Id and I love it. Too much lechery and debauchery with this one to document, so consider this just a drive-by cliffnotes version.
“Nobody cares!”
👋😒
Cheeky Devil. I love her. But I ‘hate’ her sometimes, because she drives me nuts. But just for 5 minutes or through a couple of tersely worded texts from yours truly….but then I forget. And she knows that.
Cheeky ageist brat, who thinks I’m an old man although we’re in the same age group (and I’ll have her know just tonight I got an ID check, I always do still!!).
😈
“Nobody cares!” is what she’d often say after her tongue was liberated by two or three glasses of vino.
It is annoying AF when you’re trying to get a point across to this woman, but also I think this encapsulates what’s so endearing about her. She’s disarmingly easy-going.
We met when she crashed a night-time rooftop cookout I was hosting a few years ago. She blended right in mingling with the crowd and casually helping herself to the edibles. Three things happened out of this serendipitous meeting:
- She met me at a…well, let’s just say an interesting time in my life. And to a lesser extent, the same is true vice-versa.
- She talked about futbol. Like she talked about it properly. She knew the lingo, the teams, players, the correct banter, and all of that 😍.
- She was my neighbor, she lived in that same building a floor below me.
If any one of those three things are even slightly different….like if she is only a casual football fan rather than a die-hard….or if she lives a couple of miles away rather than a couple of feet…my life is very different now. Not better or worse, just probably very different.
The next weekend after that cookout, we went to a bar across the street to watch her beloved Manchester United. For those of you that don’t know futbol, Manchester United — and not that I’m biased whatsoever — is this wretched, corporate, joyless club that’s the antithesis of Liverpool . So she and the Egyptian fratboy support this plastic club. Anyway, I overlooked that huge gigantic black mark, plus I didn’t necessarily know that we were going to be friends. However, during the game she started talking, and asking me about my life, like genuinely — look I’m not easy to talk to, and I have a rather reticent personality. But she was able to draw me out and vibe with me. That day it rained heavily but intermittently, but she was down to scurry across the street to watch soccer, not worried about “her hair getting wet” or such. That was an early foreshadowing of how cool she is.
We’ve had some memories and some fun time these past few years. Like a lot of them. It’s like fifteen years worth of fun condensed into these few years.
So over our first year as friends, she would help me become the Mayor of the U Street in DC. We’d go to clubs and thirsty hating Indian men are asking her in Hindi “Why is she hanging out with the black guy?” and I’m right there! 😂 ️We’d just laugh about that. Or more recently the time we went to a local neighborhood bar in gym outfits and she talked the owner not just into letting us in, but not even having to pay cover. Crazy girl.
Why do we get along so much? She lets you be an adult. And she lets you be yourself. Because listen now, people are who they are, not who you, or I, or others want them to be. Other people don’t belong to us, and also we’re not entitled to peoples’ feelings or thoughts. And this is something she instinctively gets. I don’t have to “behave myself”. This doesn’t mean you get to be some oblivious out of control douchebag intentionally creating negative karma! No it’s, just that with her you can walk through the world with ease, without being shackled by her expectations of how you need to act or be to satisfy her.
What else?
Oh yea, she has a mischievous sense of humor, the type of humor that deserves a good smack I reckon, such as sending me Maluma harem’ posts on social media, or dedicating Latin songs to me. See, I’m not really into Latin music, and as you know from the dance post, I’m terrified of Salsa — obviously she knows that, so she knows exactly what she’s doing here.
“Nobody cares!”
Except that she clearly does. I’ve seen how tormented she was in a difficult situation recently, when she made a painful decision, where someone that didn’t give AF wouldn’t have been as tortured as she clearly was — there are things you can’t fake. I’ve seen how she carefully chooses gifts for friends, meticulous in the detail of the presentation, intent on personalizing it just for that person. I’ve seen how she will never forget her friends birthdays, not just a “HBD” text, but she wants to honor them.
Early in our friendship, there was a situation with a third party that she handled with admirable restraint, where it would’ve been understandable for her to just exit the stage. But she stayed, despite relentless pressure from others advising her to distance herself. We were already close due to all the intangibles I’ve already described, but she didn’t cut-n-run when she could’ve easily. So I do feel a sense of loyalty to her, as in I choose to give her that loyalty (I get that it appears unconditional on the outside looking in but also I’m my own individual with agency too, it’s this way because I choose for it to be😊) .
See friendship isn’t only about how long you’ve known someone (although it certainly can be a big aspect of your friendship). It’s also about the experiences you’ve shared, and the mutual understanding you have, which is not a function of time only. And I think we’ve always accepted each other, imperfections, faults, and all.
In ending, I know I’m calling her devil, “crazy” and stuff like that…but I’d like to stress I’m not saying is that she’s irresponsible or juvenile at all. First of all, she’s a brilliant scientist, which is mad dope, she’s so smart that much of what she does goes over my head, but I know she’s brilliant, and gets published. She works on serious cool stuff in the bio-research industry. I wanted previously to say she’s full of herself (haha, she herself would say the same thing about herself), but I have an anecdote on this: We used to be workout buddies, and I remember how she was when she started going to the gym, I think it may have been her first time ever really getting into weightlifting, and I was impressed by how she listened to instruction. Like she was just trusting and “ok, show me how”….. She’s now athletic and bad-ass, a regular at the gym, and has worked herself into her own active lifestyle routine. She’s definitely stubborn when she’s already decided what she thinks, but before she gets to that point, she’s fairly humble about being open to trying new things and meeting new friends.
Is she the best of the best?
No jokes or anything ironic here: She absolutely is.
Street Art of the Day — Lion (Berlin, Germany)
