So I've been living in NYC for over a year now, and I still haven't really made any friends. There are people at work who I am friendLY with, and who I will go out for drinks with after work, but I have yet to be successful in making that bridge to hanging out on the weekend. I think a lot of this is because I have a boyfriend to hang out with, but I am still a bit disappointed in myself. The one friend I did make turned out to be a bit of a mess, and a bit of an alcoholic, oh and also diabetic. In case you didn't know, alcohol and diabetes don't really mix. See, alcohol dehydrates you and diabetics get dehydrated easily. I found this out one morning after my new friend spent the night and I had to call an ambulance to take her to the hospital. Well, before I called the ambulance, I found this out from her boyfriend, who delivered a lecture to me via cell phone, which was really sweet. I had just woken up and had no clue what was going on, so I thought he was just being a jerk, but then my friend explained to me in a quiet croak that every time she tried to drink water she puked it back up. After she retired to the bathroom floor and refused to allow me and my boyfriend to help her downstairs to a cab, and after she repeatedly asked me to call an ambulance, I complied.
She was fine really, they just had to hook her up to an IV to get some fluids in her, and looking back at the event it was quite exciting for me to ride in the back of the ambulance with her to the hospital. We hadn't drunk a large amount really. In fact I'm fairly certain I've drunk more than that with her before. I think she would have been fine if she had just remembered to drink some water before going to sleep, but she hadn't, and I since I didn't know her condition, I didn't think to suggest it. However, she did mention that this had happened to her a few times before, and it made me begin to wonder what type of person exactly I had become friends with. I think she is a lot like I could have been if I hadn't gained control over my life sometime during my high school or college years. And this makes me wonder.
I've been thinking a lot lately about My Life and Where It Is Going. Not thinking hard about it but just stopping to reflect every now and then. When I was in high school and not doing so well, my Dad once told me in the midst of an argument that I was going to wind up "a bum dead in a gutter." Ever since then it's always been in the back of my mind that I had to prove him wrong. Not that I really thought that I would wind up dead in a gutter (I doubt he really thought that either), but I felt determined to prove that what I was was someone who was successful. Throughout the rest of my high school and college years, that weight was always on me, that doubt was always on me. When I first got my job and moved down to the city, I was incredibly frugal for the first few months. Although I knew that if I ran low on funds my parents would be more than willing to help me out, I was determined out of pride not to let that happen. (It was this same pride that prevented me, the summer after my sophomore year in college, to ask for a loan when I was broke and living out of the back of a friend's truck for two weeks in New Mexico.) After those first few months went by, and I found that I was able to put at least a little bit of money away in the savings account every month, it was like a great weight had lifted off of me. I felt incredibly empowered. And even though it has been a year now, I still have that sense of strength. My whole life is ahead of me, with a million glittering paths.
On Thursday during a late lunch break taken in the midst of a very busy work day, I turned my cell phone on to discover to my surprise that I had a voice message. The message was from my friend A who I have known since high school and who I hadn't spoken with since her wedding ceremony in October. A's message revealed that she was currently in NYC just for the night, and that she would like to get together. I immediately called her back and we arranged to meet at S's apartment in Morningside Heights. S is another friend who I have known since high school, but she and I had not kept in such good touch. I had seen her for the first time in years at A's wedding and we spoke briefly, exchanged phone numbers, but had not really spoken since.
After working late I came home and grabbed a bite to eat before heading up to S's apartment, which was pretty much as far away from my apartment as it could be while still being in Manhattan. It took an hour of walking and two different subway lines (it would have been three if I hadn't walked so far) to get there. When I arrived at S's apartment, A was not yet there as she had decided to attend an electric opera earlier that evening (an event which I wisely declined to attend). S and I easily fell into conversation as though little time had past. S's boyfriend is from Russia, however is very intelligent and speaks English well, so I found him to be an engaging conversationalist. While trying to communicate with someone who has a very limited grasp of the English language leaves me extremely frustrating and uncomfortable, I took great pleasure in explaining to S's mostly fluent boyfriend the meaning of gentrification and what the AmeriCorps program consists of (AmeriCorps was brought up later in the evening, when we were filling each other in on the status of other old friends' lives). He always had a very thoughtful question at the end of my explanations that I found thoroughly delighting and showed he truly grasped the concept that I was explaining. After I finished my dissertation on the nature of the AmeriCorps program, he thought a moment and then said, "So, this is something good to do, if you don't know what to do?" And I replied, "Yes, exactly."
After I settled into a large armchair with a hot cup of tea, A arrived, bearing flowers. The four of us engaged in animated conversation for a couple of hours. Around midnight S produced a batch of Russian pancakes, which are like regular pancakes but you put interesting things on them like sour cream and peach jam. Before I knew it, it was approaching 1 a.m., and I had to be at work by 10. I announced that I would have to leave and lamented that it would take me twice as long to get home as it had taken me to arrive, for the subway runs very infrequently late at night. At this point all three of my companions conjoined upon me to spend the night, pointing out that it would be more sensible to leave in the morning when the trains would be running much more frequently. It did not take much convincing: my chair was so comfortable, the conversation so lively, the new cup of tea in my hand was so warm, and the wind continued to howl quite fiercely outside.
And so we continued on until eventually the conversation began to pause frequently to entertain more than a few yawns, and the talk turned to sleeping arrangements. As S's boyfriend pottered about with the dishes, S produced a set of sheets for the futon where A would be sleeping, and an inflatable mattress with another set of sheets for myself. S was an extremely congenial hostess, and I soon found myself curled up in bed wearing a pair of S's pajamas, as well as a sleepy smile.
