Tuesday, March 30, 2004
The Limits of Friendship
He was my director at the JCC in my first real play. He continued to lead me in two or three improv classes after that. When the JCC put a theater unit into their summer camp up at Barton Flats, he was both my director and my counselor. His cabin - all of us actors together - grew more close-knit than my family, so close that we had reunions at Disneyland for two years afterwards. He might have been as old as his early 20s, rotund and falstaffian, a bowling ball with thick stubby pins for arms and legs; and he was fast, as fast as the fastest sprinter at my high school - I know because I saw them race twice to a tie at Barton Flats. My point is, he was exactly the guy I wanted as a friend. I was proud to call him one.
Later, when he had to take a day job to make ends meet as an assistant manager at Arby’s, he got me my first job along with three other guys from the improv classes, which meant we got paid to run around like wanna-be comedians, trying to make people laugh and entertaining ourselves and our boss. He took a lousy job and made it fun - one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, even to this day. Good guy. Good friend.
Eventually his most ambitious production at the JCC crumbled before we got to the run-through stage - it was a big musical with a big cast, and the ragged group of once-a-week high school actors just weren’t able to realize his vision for him; as his dreams for the show became more grandiose and the show itself deteriorated, he became frustrated and depressed and the actors just walked out. Including me, once the end was obvious and unavoidable. And I wound up quitting my job at Arby’s, too; it was too far from home and I didn’t like working with all the grease and garbage. Plus, the opportunities to advance on that track were both limited and distasteful to me. The result was that we didn’t see much of each other anymore, my friend and me, but we started using the telephone to stay in touch - not something I did often or for many people, but I valued this friendship so I made the extra effort.
So it came to pass one evening that I was sitting on my bedroom floor, stretching the cord from the phone on the wall out in the hall down under the door I was leaning against, having one of those great deep rambling conversations. But I start to notice that it’s getting a little one-sided - I’m doing most of the talking. I ask him a question; he answers briefly; we go on. I go on. He’s really quiet. I can barely hear him breathing.
“Dude, you there? What’s going on?”
“I’m okay, nothing’s going on.” His voice sounds a little strained. I try to engage him in conversation; every answer comes back tight, like he’s doing some kind of physical exertion, wrestling or manipulating something, working with his hands. His breath is coming in rapid shallow puffs. Like he’s pumping something.
Oh. No.
“Dude, you aren’t doing that.”
“What do you mean? I mean, I’m okay, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The words come fast in short stuttering spurts. He knows. He knows that I know, too - more than he wanted me to know.
“Okay, dude, I gotta go now. It’s been good talking.”
His end of the line was silent again, but with a different kind of silence - that of realization, rather than preoccupation. “Okay, Dan. Goodbye.”
And it was.
