At this minute I am sad.
My very good friend is moving away and I greatly underestimated just how hard it would be. (He's never seen this blog in his life so I can freely gush without embarrassing him.) I'm happy he got the job he wanted, and that he'll be in the vicinity of L.A., his hometown, but...but...
He told me I need to stop thinking of it as losing a friend; instead, I was gaining a city.
Tony told me he knew we could be friends the first time I told him to "Suck it." I actually can't remember the particular context of that incident, but I know that I've told him the same thing many, many times since then. He's one of the most cantankerous people I've ever met! Two prime examples that just occurred this past Friday:
[Background: San Francisco is just finishing up Gay Pride Week/Weekend. Don't get me wrong, I love it. But by the end of it I feel like, 'If I have to see one more goddamned rainbow or pink triangle..."]
1. Friday was a glorious day, and we elected to take a longer lunch in order to walk to the Ferry Building to sit by the water while we ate. (Plus, I can get mango gelato. It's so good it makes me want to do terrible things.) Tony was complaining about how sick he was of everyone saying to him (and he imitated them in a whiny voice), "'Oh! What are you doing for Pride Week? Are you going to this? Are you going to that? What are you doing to celebrate?' I just want to tell them to go fuck themselves." I couldn't help it; I threw my head back and laughed and laughed at this.
2. We returned from our lovely lunch and went back to our respective cubes. Tony's cube is located on the other side of the wall from mine. Being in such close proximity, you can't help but overhear absolutely everything. There was a Pride Awards Ceremony getting ready to start where awards were being given out to people we work with. I heard someone come to Tony's cube and say, "Tony, you're coming to the Pride Awards Ceremony, aren't you?" He responded in a resigned and flat, deadpan voice, "Yeah, give me a minute to get my gay on." I cracked up over in my cube.
Okay, so perhaps I haven't really given a description to do him justice. But let me say that I've grown very attached to him in the last couple of years, and have particularly valued his friendship, sarcasm, and humor in the last several months--particularly from November through February, which I've come to think of as my "Blue Period." We've had lunches and dinners and desserts and drinks and karaoke; we've taken walks in the rain and in the sun; we've given professional and personal advice; we've seen movies and concerts; we saw the "Spook-a-Motive"; we've sat through endless meetings and exchanged looks of boredom, disbelief, and frustration; we've made tentative travel plans; we've worked side-by-side in coffee shops on our laptops; he's pulled up in front of my house hundreds of times to pick me up; he gave me a 45 minute lesson on driving a standard (I failed to learn in that amount of time. Big shocker.); we took a nap in his car in a parking garage with our feet on the dashboard because we were too tired to do anything else.
This evening I packed up his kitchen. I came home with one of his shirts, a book on Japan, a blanket, and all the food in his freezer that didn't involve chicken. I gave him a CD spanning all the music that represented our adventures together. I wanted to smack him over the head with something to knock him unconscious and make him stay. Instead, I think I'll just tell him I'll miss him. And I'll be down to L.A. in a few weeks.
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