Rick's December Tirade
On the Uses of Friends
Why do we find them so valuable, these casual interlopers in our
private lives? They criticize us, cajole us, and give us grief about
our politics. They conveniently forget to return the books they
borrow. They snicker at our eccentricities and gloat inwardly as we
sprout gray hairs. When they're not trying to improve us, they're
knocking us down — probably so they can try to improve us again.
A friend offers companionship, yes — but so does a dog. And the
dog does it for life — for better or for worse, without malice,
scorn, resentment, or the need to lecture us about our dorky shoes.
Unlike a friend, a dog won't drop you to make a good career move.
So why do we find ourselves envying the George Baileys of the
world, whose living rooms grow humid with densely-packed
confederates celebrating this or that festivity? Why do we pity
those wayward souls who buy single movie tickets and pass their
evenings alone? What purpose do friends serve, anyway? What are
their USES?
For single people, friends are all that separates them from the
social disgrace of solitude. Equipped with a ready supply of
friends, you don't have to dine shamefaced at a tiny table
surrounded by cooing couples. You don't have to endure their
half-imagined stares and gossip. You can hold your head up in the
midst of the mob and justify your right to overpay for a meal.
A second consideration for single people is the longevity factor.
Romantic entanglements tend to sputter out within a year or two;
friendships generally sputter out later. Maybe you can't take
friends to bed, but at least you can squeeze a few more productive
years out of them.
In the absence of families to raise, friends also provide single
folks with instant relief from introspection. The prolonged
examination of one's life can be a deadly pursuit for the
chronically single; on the other hand, attending a Knicks game with
a few comrades will put an abrupt end to all that nonsense.
Couples need friends for one obvious reason: so they don't have
to talk to each other when they go out for a good time. The average
marital duo spends approximately 16 minutes a day engaged in
conversation, by which time they've already exhausted their best
material. How can poor Fred and Lara be expected to survive a
five-course restaurant meal, staring stony-eyed across a clean white
tablecloth? Enter Ned and Tara, the indispensable dinner-mates.
While Fred and Ned swap golf yarns, Lara and Tara are free to dish
the dirt on their friend Sara. All four of them can then return to
their domiciles refreshed and ready to endure another day of virtual
silence.
The problem with couple friendships is the statistical
unlikelihood of their success. What are the odds, when you calculate
them, that all four parties will take a shining to both members of
the other team? If one of the men is a vice president and the other
isn't, you can cut those odds immediately. If one of the women is a
redhead, cut them again. In any foursome you're looking at eight
opportunities for a grudge.
The very young and the very old have an easier time making
friends than those in the middle. By the time we reach middle age,
we've already diverged into hundreds of little subcultures and
lifestyles that throw up barriers to new friendships. A fifty-
year-old investment banker has nothing to say to a fifty-year-old
tattoo artist. But the young and the old simply exult in being
alive, and that's reason enough to join souls in friendship.
Women are reputed to be more adept than men in the care and
feeding of friendships. They greet each other with squeals and hugs;
they do lunch together; they unburden their bosoms, figuratively
speaking, in heartrending confidences whispered over the phone. Then
they hear their confessions being broadcast on the ten o'clock news.
All right, all right — I've picked an egregious and
unrepresentative example. Cry foul if you must. But I suspect that
even under optimal conditions, a woman uses her female friends
essentially as sounding boards for her own relationship issues. Is
her boyfriend a gap-toothed loser? Is he genetically incapable of
commitment? Should she dump him forthwith and get on with her life?
"Yes, YES, Y-E-S!," her allies reply in orgasmic waves of
righteous accord. (A word of caution to any young man just embarking
on the business of love: beware the single woman who hangs out with
a pack of female friends — especially if her cohorts tend to bare
their fangs excessively.)
Men, by contrast, are content to bask quietly among their
companions and slowly uncork the tensions of the day — preferably
in an environment that serves beer and ale by the pint. They require
no shoulders to cry upon, no round-table discussions of intimate
feelings and aspirations; just nudge them to check out the hooters
on the woman in the next booth, and you've made their day.
One-on-one male friendships are a trickier issue, especially in
the current socio-cultural climate. The very qualities that once
signified a civilized human being — wit and whimsy, gentlemanly
manners, a sensitive and articulate mind, an appreciation of books
and art — now serve to warn you, more often than not, that your
prospective chum probably harbors a lavender gene or two. Even if
the fellow has outperformed Kennedy and Clinton in the annals of
heterosexual combat, you still feel a tad queasy about stepping out
in public with him. A vacation together — something female friends
have always enjoyed with impunity — is unthinkable for a pair of
single men, the ultimate eyebrow-raiser. For maximum comfort, two
male friends require a third stooge.
Friendships between men and women can be deeply satisfying,
provided that one or both of them can detect a subtle scent of
sexual chemistry. Too little chemistry, and the relationship turns
as flat as a ten-day-old bottle of Coke. Too much, and the
relationship overheats to a full boil — and eventually goes the
way of most such fizzy concoctions. Remember, you want the thing to
last. Find that delicate equilibrium, and you can create a charmed
liaison that actually approaches the platonic ideal of friendship.
Does such an ideal exist? In theory, friendship is supposed to
warm our innards and offer sanctuary from a chilly and indifferent
world. The ideal friend is a mirror of our soul and a guide to life,
someone intimately acquainted with our fears, foibles, dreams and
desires. Cicero, who knew a thing or two about the subject, observed
that "a friend is a second self."
In practice, a friend is more like a second HEAD, with its own
opinions on how to steer the communal body that looms below. The
closer the friendship, the greater the likelihood of dueling heads.
One head yearns for the silence of wild places; the other longs for
the happy commotion of city streets. One head wants to grow and
explore; the other abhors change on principle. They bristle, they
squabble, they clash at close range. And soon they're biting each
other on the snout.
A friendship without occasional strife is hardly a friendship at
all. If you want the real thing, you grit your teeth and pay the
maintenance fee. But more of us seem to be shedding those deep and
demanding bonds in favor of convenient, low-cost pseudo-friendships.
A pseudo-friend is the social equivalent of fast food: a useful
creature who can be called upon to deliver a tasty illusion of
friendship without the expense and bother. We use pseudo-friends to
relieve boredom, furnish us with professional and romantic
connections, reflect our socioeconomic aspirations in the presence
of our peers, and enjoy transient companionship for sporting events,
movies, bar-hopping, or trips to the video store. We can tell a
pseudo-friend about our jobs but not about our souls, and most of us
seem to be content with that unwritten code.
Potential pseudo-friends lurk everywhere: at taverns and health
clubs, in the workplace, at professional and religious gatherings.
You can acquire them by running for town council, joining Mensa or
taking a class in Tae-Kwan-Do. Pseudo-friends pad your Christmas
card list and help you feel less friendless. But when they get
transferred to Kalamazoo, you cross them off that list and forget
about them. Pseudo-friends have one remarkable trait that
distinguishes them from real friends: they're virtually
interchangeable. You say goodbye to one, you say hello to another.
No net loss.
What about the curious phenomenon of online friendships? Are they
genuine or pseudo? Can you establish a lasting bond with someone
whose nose and teeth you've never seen? Such friendships lack
texture, I'll admit. You can't clasp your arms around these bodiless
intimates or share a pepperoni pizza. You can't watch them squint or
scowl or beam a smile into your eyes. You can't chase them with a
squirt-gun or hear the way they laugh at your brilliant e-mails.
But the best virtual friendships come perilously close to that
platonic ideal: a happy confluence of minds and souls, shorn of
outward garb and ephemera, indifferent to facial peculiarities or
the accents that delineate class. Virtual friends are less inclined
to impose impossible standards of behavior; they tolerate you as you
are — even if you're lounging at the computer in a stale sweatsuit,
unshaved and unflossed. Finally, they adhere admirably to my own
definition of a friend: someone who appreciates you even if you're
not useful.
Too bad you can't sit on a porch with them, open a bottle of
wine, and watch the moon emerge from a bank of clouds. Maybe
real-life friends have their uses after all.
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
