Strange brew, brothers in arms or why can’t we be friends…

It is suddenly cold, and the supple viscose shawl that Kirsten and I bought last summer in Santiago de Compostela isn’t quite warm enough. And I am sticking to the varnished wood bench in the Puritan backroom, catching up on lurid details of lives that have touched mine, that have existed in this strange constellation of social connections that we call friendships, over time… and space. Arturo and I share a birthday though he is twenty odd years my senior. When I heard the news, the initial news, it didn’t surprise me. I thought he was dying, we all did. But here we are three years later, three summers past, and he is happy, and healthy, and we are drinking coffee, at least I am, with Bailey’s, an uncommon occurrence, but I am cold, and I have been drinking red wine in the afternoon with Joe and Abigail, exploring cartographies of places we have traveled, andIn the morning I met Melissa at the bagel place, with I., and in an hour downloaded all the details of her battle with immigration, her move back to Puerto Peñasco, and the difficulties of a bi-cultural marriage.

I made Joe a key-lime pie for his birthday, and when we drove up to Concord, Abbie made fresh pizza. The children ate vegetables. Dinner was a success. Will their house sell soon? Will the kids get to be in school together? How does one address poor clothing choice in teenage girls? These are some of the themes that we meander about, me and my dear libertarian friends. You don’t need and invitation, Joe says, just show up unannounced when you’re around. There is something so warm and comforting in old friends.

But I am simultaneously shivering, and my underthighs are sticking to the seat, and I wish that I could place the shawl beneath me, but then my shoulders would be cold, and we are gossiping, really, except that when it is about your family and yourself it is just considered “catching” up, and he confirms for me what I already know about myself which is that the boys that always catch my fancy (in this case the Colombian line cook with whom I shared exactly 25 words and a warm hand shake, but quite a bit of surreptitious eye-contact) are invariably swinging towards the middle of the Kinsey spectrum. Sigh. And so, love and marriage and a history of withholding sex and unwavering stubbornness, and children and pregnancy and disease and separation and work and it is so good to see you, give me another hug, are the topics of discussion until Martín is supposed to meet us. But he is late closing, and has misplaced his keys, so I drop Arturo at the house, the same house that 10 years ago was my refuge and escape, where I spent strangely passionate nights of unending foreplay and emotional rejection, where “Everything but the Girl” resounds in my memory, “I must confess, been hanging round your old address… and I miss you, like the deserts miss the rain” (and yet I don’t feel any of those same emotions, at least not for him, which, I think is a good thing), he runs up and down the three flights of stairs and I sing softly along with the radio, he comes to my window, holds my hand, gives me the spare keys, and I am off into the night.

Back downtown (all 15 blocks away) Martín takes the keys, moves his car and climbs into the passenger seat. Are you ok to drive? Yeah, sure. We look for a bar, something quiet, to talk, shoot the shit, unwind. We go down to the mills, to Milli’s Tavern, but there is an infernal racket of industrial music and the back bar is closed, so we circle the center again, park behind City Hall and wend our way to Strange Brew, where there is live, loud Blues upstairs. I have never been to the downstairs so he follows me, my curiosity leading me to the depths of depravity. Unfortunately it is just as loud but with a younger, more college-like crowd, you know, baseball jerseys and assholes that are so drunk they stumble over and burn me with cigarettes, or girls that spill beer all over one another accidentally. It doesn’t matter, he buys me an I.P.A. on tap, but it is too bitter for me, or my heart isn’t in it, because he is on his second, an hour and a half later, and I still haven’t made it past the halfway mark, at which point he pours out half of my drink into his glass, and I still don’t finish. He loves being a dad, his face lights up. We talk about Mexico city, wander through the streets, through our adventures, though mine are totally tame in comparison, stories we have told each other before, but in the retelling there is pleasure, and in the din of the dungeon-like cellar we laugh a little, and it is good to laugh.

Tonight my mother doesn’t hassle me, doesn’t ask whether his wife wants to see him, maybe it is because I am with his brother, and therefore it is a family affair? Really mom, I want to tell her, but I squash my aggravation, she’s my friend… and if he wants to go out and get a drink and catch up, what the hell is the harm? I swear, more harm is done by well-meaning “propriety”. Men and women should just be able to be friends, and relationships should be established on trust, and no one wants to be stifled or controlled or shamed or fenced in. Right? Right. So, my quarter beer is finished and we are kicked out of the bar at 1:30, and I am not ready to drive just yet, so he takes the keys and we look for places to eat or drink something, and the stupid kids that are pouring out of bars don’t look where they’re going, and the only places that are open are the club across the street from his restaurant, Liquid, where unflatteringly dressed twenty-somethings flock, The Red Arrow and another diner around the corner on Pine street, and ManchVegas is decidedly a dead town. We tell more stories, of initiation, prostitution, love, sex and death; every Dunkin’Donuts in a 10-mile-radius is now closed. There is a line of cars that encircles Taco Bell. What does this say about the city? I can’t even begin to articulate. And we hash over the details of our mutual and generalized need to wander, and by the time that we are back at his car, I am ready to drive home, and my hair reeks of smoke, so we hug goodbye, and I will see his family in Mexico long before he does, his family which is like my family because they adopted me so many years ago, before Dora died, and Arturo got sick, and Tania got married, and the New Hampshire babies were born. And maybe, just maybe, the next time around some of these things will be resolved, but then again, maybe not.