Wow I can't believe it is that time of year again already! Time truly does fly and it just seems like yesterday that we were celebrating your 25th. I can't believe you are 30! Not that you don't act your age (you don't) or aren't mature (you aren't) or can't pass for 30 (you can't), but none the less it is surprising to me. Having said that I am very easily surprised, but you know that - you are my oldest friend. I hope your birthday finds you well and in good spirits, or at least one of those. I was thinking about you during my dental surgery the other day and I said, as the nerve pain almost knocked me out, I need to send Darren an original piece of abstract art, and as the pain subsided and the room was full of the gentle, fatherly chuckling of my dentist, I decided to write you this letter instead. I'm not sure if it is melancholy or seasonal allergies or that chicken salad sandwich I had for lunch, but it is times like this when I am nearly overwhelmed by all the experiences we've shared - we've been friends for so long. Please allow me to take a trip down memory lane....
It seems like just yesterday when you busted my counterfeit designer handbag ring, probably because it actually was yesterday when I served my final hours of the court-mandated community service that the judge thought was necessary. I'll never understand why you turned me in - we had such a good thing going! All of those hours in my basement, slaving away, making counterfeit handbags, it felt like an actual sweatshop - probably because I insisted on making it so, by turning the heat up to ridiculous levels. We would arise from the basement dripping in sweat and covered with the bumps and bruises that are par for the course for those who make bags. I'm sorry if I wanted to work under those conditions, but I figured, based on minimal research, that sweatshops were necessary nay advantageous when mass producing handbags! And I''m sorry if those heating bills nearly blew all of our meager profits - I didn't think I had a choice and you never told me about your fungal infection that was exasperated by the humidity. There we were making bags in my basement - you manned the sewing machine and I brandished the scissors - and we were shipping those bags to stores all across the country. The money was good and we were raking it in, not literally, much to my dismay, as your father insisted on using the rake daily, even when there were no leaves on the ground. We were taking baby steps towards success and then you had to go and spoil the whole thing! I mean you've never come and and said that it was you, but as I was being physically restrained and stuffed into a cop car I swear that I saw you high-fiving and hugging the police and mimicking my walk and laugh, which really hurt especially because I've told you that my left foot falls asleep frequently and it is pretty insensitive of you to make light of that. And I laugh the way I do because my parents raised a bunch of particularly hilarious and noisy donkeys when I was growing up and I spent many of my formative, impressionable years among them. So, you took me down. Good for you. Were you jealous of me? Did I not give you a big enough cut? Did you morally oppose what I was up to or just not like the idea of undercutting the powerful handbag magnates we all admired as young kids? We could have been the kings, the wunderkinds of the counterfeit handbag making industry...I mean I'm over this now, but those three years in jail, the probation, and the community service did put a bit of sizable dent in our friendship and it took a long while for me to trust you again - but I did - I just can't say no to that schoolboy smile and those cute little puppy dog whines you make. You know I have a thing for whiny dogs.
Sometimes when I walk by the park I am whisked back to that summer when we were 18 and we learned to breakdance. If I recall correctly we spent a good month deliberating and debating between the foxtrot, the Finnish tango and breakdancing. We initially wanted to perfect the foxtrot and hit the competitive foxtrot circuit until your dad gave us that passionate speech after a Sunday faux-turkey dinner (times were tough) about his own struggles as a young star fox-trotter and how the pain and embarrassment had stayed with him and he didn't want to see us go down the same road and be eaten alive by the harsh and surprisingly cutthroat foxtrot machine.Though we were both afraid of the back-snappin' beats and, honestly, all things street, we turned quickly to breakdancing as our way of rebelling against the prophecy that was shared with us at the county fair when we were 7 that "we would dance the Finnish tango and occasionally the more popular Argentinian tango and, even less frequently, the Uruguayan tango, though we would struggle telling the difference between the three at the best of times". I can see you now with your high-top fade and me with my afro as we spent hour upon hour on the mat with our ghetto-blaster spinning, downlocking and freezing. We didn't get there without a lot of work -actually the first few weeks we mostly lay on the mat and waived our hands and said "Presto!" and hoped that we'd learn via magic. When we were ready we would prowl around town ready to defend our turf and to battle all suckas who would challenge us. We were a mean and lean pair of b-boys and the crowds loved us for our powerful styles and our never-say-die attitudes (except for that time when you said die for a reason neither of us could figure out). The end was near when I stubbed my big toe and couldn't stop crying in front of everyone belying our tougher-then-thou personas and then the other shoe fell when you decided to grow your hair very long and then straighten it making you look like the Afghan hound from your wallpaper in your room.
Then there was the time when I filled my living room with an entire house of cards. You were initially quite supportive, but quickly grew fairly selfish, in my honest opinion. The dialogue switched from "Nice house of cards, dude" to "When are you going to pay attention to me? All you care about are those damn cards! I wish cards never existed or if they have to exist were much more bendy so house building could be rendered impossible or I wish that no one ever invented making multiple level houses out of them or that your room had either stronger air conditioning or was more drafty or the cards had funny expressions or pictures on them that made you laugh so hard that you were physically unable to construct houses out of them due to the laughter or you were more sensitive and decided that forcing the cards into unnatural houses was morally and ethically wrong." After awhile I just couldn't take your incessant complaining and I believe, after hours of introspection, that you drove me deeper and deeper into my world of cards leading me to not stop at one house, but to make a whole town of houses. The houses started very plain and simple but as I subconsciously started creating a barrier between us, I slowly starting drawing from Pre-Victorian and Cape Cod styles and eventually on to castles and monuments. After many weeks and countless trips to the games store for more and more decks of cards, I looked up and noticed that I had barricaded myself in the corner of my room with no route to escape. You suggested just blowing the cards down and I scoffed at the suggestion - "Blow down a house? Yeah, great idea smart guy!" I said thinking that you had gone a bit bonkers thinking that I could somehow use my lung capacity to demolish an actual house, let alone a city of houses. Suffice to say, I had gone a bit far and my lack of human contact and huge increase in card contact had resulted in me going a big loopy. Luckily you rescued me and dragged me back to reality when you vacuumed them all up. Vacuuming things up has always been your solution to everything card related.
We spent your 19th birthday lost in the swamp and it took us a week to get out. I still have the scars from scratching that rash to remind me - who knew that there were so many varieties of poisonous plant-life? Evidently you did. I found out after the fact that you spent much of your free time in high school as a member of an experimental group in a longitudinal study looking into the effects of exposure to poisonous plants. I came to realize that we were never actually lost and that instead it was your "present" to me on your birthday to bring me to the swamp. You claimed that I was growing a bit soft and was relying to much on modern luxuries and needed to "remember where I came from". Let me tell you, after an exhaustive amount of research and a trip to the old country to interview my oldest living ancestors, I did not come from a swamp, thank you very much! It was more of a wet marshland-like area that could seem similar to a swamp to the ill-informed, and I guess I was wrong to assume you would know the difference. I had always assumed, wrongfully, that you were wise in the area of physical geography. I am still, after all these years, not sure how to thank you. Before you get too excited that is meant to be sarcastic! (I am telling you as I know you are particularly bad at discerning sarcasm in writing, unless I use bold, italics, quotation marks and ketchup stains) Initially I was very unhappy, what with the rash and lizard bites, but now, looking back on the experience it is more the lasting psychological struggles that remain. I do appreciate that I developed a love for bamboo, both in stews and as a material for my new line of beds and cabinets that will be in stores in the fall, but I wish the night shrieks I developed during that week would just stop already. The time in the swamp was a challenge to say the least - when we weren't on the watch for alligators or swatting mosquitoes, we were setting traps for food or playing Freeze Tag and you know how much I detest all forms of tag or pretending to freeze.
I know we always used to bug you about being the black sheep of our friendship group which just compounded the fact that you were also the black sheep of your family. There is only so much black sheep-ing one person can take, I realize that now. At least you weren't the black sheep of your reading group, but that was probably due to the fact that the group put "no black sheeps" in their bylaws. Just so you know I was never a big fan of the label, as I knew it made you feel badly and resentful, and also because I didn't want to make the actual black sheep I own feel bad due to the comparison as we are in desperate need of the wool.
I remember the time we were on that nature walk - you love nature walks! We had a wonderful afternoon out in the fresh, mountain air and enjoyed a picnic overlooking the lake. After enjoying a feast for the ages complete with multiple varieties of gourmet cheese, fresh figs from my mother's tree, a baguette we purchased that morning, beautiful in-season peaches and spam (you were worries that if we ate food that was solely high class we might attract a more aggressive, conniving ant far from the run-of-the-mill ants you see raiding picnics on TV shows) we were walking back to the car when we saw that deer. Now, this was no ordinary deer, cute and doe-eyed, pulling Santa's sleigh with a hint of a smile. It was a wild, rabid deer that seemingly had been placed on the mountain with the sole purpose of removing me from it. What could I have possibly done, I wondered as this angry, angry deer chased after me for what seemed like hours. Later on in the hospital, while I was laying on my stomach, with my pants down and a team of surgeons were attempting to remove the last shards of antler from my upper thigh you came clean. I guess you felt something verging on remorse, but let's not be silly, it wasn't remorse. It came out that you had been the person who had found the deer after its parents had been lost in the fire when the deer was only a few months old. You essentially raised this foal and were its de facto parent, which makes it even harder for me to understand why you decided, after he had become an adult, to feed it a seemingly endless stream of growth hormone pills, daily shots of adrenalin, and even spiking his water with deer antler spray (doesn't he already have antlers!?!?!). On top of all of that you showed him spliced videos alternating images of fires invoking within him the fear and anger involved with his parent's tragic death and me eating steak after steak of venison, often wasting the good parts. Yes, it was you who bizarrely created this monster-deer whose main purpose was to drill me repeatedly with his antlers. You enraged it for some reason I'll never know and what topped it all off is that after the attack and your obligatory hospital visit you gave the deer the brotherly hug that I've been hoping for at the time.
One of my fondest memories was the summer after grade 11 when we were both in that acting class. We learned from one of the best, the legendary Mr. Warren from the nearby dilapidated community theatre, who continued gracing that stage years after the place had been shut down. Among his interesting quirks were his demand to be called "Sire!", our daily warm-up of miming the construction of an unbreakable box with which to trap an actual mime in, and making absolutely stunning flower arrangements, even after we reminded him countless times that the flower arranging class was next door. He insisted on calling you "Twinkle-toes" for reasons that never became clear and he just completely ignored me, often walking into me as if he didn't see me at all - the ham! But he did bring out the best in us, helping us tap into emotions we were unaware that we had (mine was a combination of ferocious and sleepy), daily placing us in uncomfortable circumstances and forcing us to "act or die" and unveiling why cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches should never be served to mixed company. That summer we were to perform Mr. Warren's version of the classic Hunchback of Notre Dame, only with no Hunchback. The entire play involved dynamic song and dance numbers all revolving around the really appropriate questions "where is the Hunchback?" and "shouldn't we have renamed this production seeing as there is no Hunchback?" and "what is with all of the elephants?" I'll never forget the dance we performed together at the end of Act 1. Or should I say, I'll never forget dancing with you, somewhere, possibly on a stage and maybe in front of an audience, but I have no memory of any specifics aside from how you made me feel when we danced - thirsty.
And how could I forget the time we went through group therapy together. We sat there in the circle, week after week, sharing intimate details of our lives, learning how to trust, how to cry, how to live. Those other 8 people walked in the first day as strangers and left as true friends. I mean they were all pretty weird and we spent so much time laughing and poking fun at all of their problems and hangups - "your mommy didn't kiss your boo boo when you were six?", "your boyfriend insists on wearing matching outfits?" - man, that was funny. But they were good people. I really felt like I was making actual progress and that I was finally going to arise from my "winter of discontent" that had lasted a number of years. But, you were always mocking me when I revealed my secret fear of being abandoned. And right in front of me as well -couldn't you have at least waited till I was wiping away my tears or hanging my head in shame? Did you need to get up and do a very thinly veiled impersonation of me grasping for a hand? I guess you did, and I think, after all of this time I know the reason - it was probably due to that period of time in grade 8 when I too heavily critiqued your drama performance as a too thickly veiled impersonation. So, from the context of veiling you have swung to the opposite extreme - maybe some day you will be properly veiled. A man can only dream.
I wish I could be partying with you tonight on your 30th, but there is that little thing called a restraining order that you got to protect yourself from me. Was that really necessary? In fact this birthday card could be circumventing that order too. Maybe as you read this, I'll be either in front of the judge and about to be locked up with some of our resident gang members only looking for one excuse to extract my wisdom teeth. Look - I was joking when I told you to watch yourself or I would "get you" and "follow you home" and "gather" a "gang" of "tough guys" to "visit you at work" and "train" a "pack" of "dogs" to "jump" you "where you sleep". I'm sorry if you couldn't see the humour in my saying these things, but on the other hand, I do see now how these jokes could be misinterpreted as threats. Let me reassure you, nothing could be further from the truth. Me hurt you? Me want something bad to happen to my oldest buddy who not only sent me to jail, abandoned me in Asia in that small, dark room with all of those crazy monkeys, took all the credit for our proof of that mathematical theorem, but also stole my girlfriend and then stole her again after I found her wandering around aimlessly in the warehouse where you tried to hide her from me. Plus, just say I did want to hurt you, have you seen me recently? I did get a few tattoos while in prison, but they are just meant to distract everyone from my dancer's physique. I'm just saying you have nothing to worry about - I love you like a brother, and after all we have been through, I always will. Anyways, I hope you don't read this card and think I am harbouring ill will or hatred. What is in the past, is in the past. I wrote about these stories to make you smile and to cover some steps in my recovery program I am in. Today I am trying to let go of grievances. How did I do? Really, please let me know - I need to achieve at least an 8/10 to move on. Next up is metaphorically repaying for any damages or stolen property. Something for you to figuratively look forward to!
Cheers!
Xavier
We spent your 19th birthday lost in the swamp and it took us a week to get out. I still have the scars from scratching that rash to remind me - who knew that there were so many varieties of poisonous plant-life? Evidently you did. I found out after the fact that you spent much of your free time in high school as a member of an experimental group in a longitudinal study looking into the effects of exposure to poisonous plants. I came to realize that we were never actually lost and that instead it was your "present" to me on your birthday to bring me to the swamp. You claimed that I was growing a bit soft and was relying to much on modern luxuries and needed to "remember where I came from". Let me tell you, after an exhaustive amount of research and a trip to the old country to interview my oldest living ancestors, I did not come from a swamp, thank you very much! It was more of a wet marshland-like area that could seem similar to a swamp to the ill-informed, and I guess I was wrong to assume you would know the difference. I had always assumed, wrongfully, that you were wise in the area of physical geography. I am still, after all these years, not sure how to thank you. Before you get too excited that is meant to be sarcastic! (I am telling you as I know you are particularly bad at discerning sarcasm in writing, unless I use bold, italics, quotation marks and ketchup stains) Initially I was very unhappy, what with the rash and lizard bites, but now, looking back on the experience it is more the lasting psychological struggles that remain. I do appreciate that I developed a love for bamboo, both in stews and as a material for my new line of beds and cabinets that will be in stores in the fall, but I wish the night shrieks I developed during that week would just stop already. The time in the swamp was a challenge to say the least - when we weren't on the watch for alligators or swatting mosquitoes, we were setting traps for food or playing Freeze Tag and you know how much I detest all forms of tag or pretending to freeze.
I know we always used to bug you about being the black sheep of our friendship group which just compounded the fact that you were also the black sheep of your family. There is only so much black sheep-ing one person can take, I realize that now. At least you weren't the black sheep of your reading group, but that was probably due to the fact that the group put "no black sheeps" in their bylaws. Just so you know I was never a big fan of the label, as I knew it made you feel badly and resentful, and also because I didn't want to make the actual black sheep I own feel bad due to the comparison as we are in desperate need of the wool.
I remember the time we were on that nature walk - you love nature walks! We had a wonderful afternoon out in the fresh, mountain air and enjoyed a picnic overlooking the lake. After enjoying a feast for the ages complete with multiple varieties of gourmet cheese, fresh figs from my mother's tree, a baguette we purchased that morning, beautiful in-season peaches and spam (you were worries that if we ate food that was solely high class we might attract a more aggressive, conniving ant far from the run-of-the-mill ants you see raiding picnics on TV shows) we were walking back to the car when we saw that deer. Now, this was no ordinary deer, cute and doe-eyed, pulling Santa's sleigh with a hint of a smile. It was a wild, rabid deer that seemingly had been placed on the mountain with the sole purpose of removing me from it. What could I have possibly done, I wondered as this angry, angry deer chased after me for what seemed like hours. Later on in the hospital, while I was laying on my stomach, with my pants down and a team of surgeons were attempting to remove the last shards of antler from my upper thigh you came clean. I guess you felt something verging on remorse, but let's not be silly, it wasn't remorse. It came out that you had been the person who had found the deer after its parents had been lost in the fire when the deer was only a few months old. You essentially raised this foal and were its de facto parent, which makes it even harder for me to understand why you decided, after he had become an adult, to feed it a seemingly endless stream of growth hormone pills, daily shots of adrenalin, and even spiking his water with deer antler spray (doesn't he already have antlers!?!?!). On top of all of that you showed him spliced videos alternating images of fires invoking within him the fear and anger involved with his parent's tragic death and me eating steak after steak of venison, often wasting the good parts. Yes, it was you who bizarrely created this monster-deer whose main purpose was to drill me repeatedly with his antlers. You enraged it for some reason I'll never know and what topped it all off is that after the attack and your obligatory hospital visit you gave the deer the brotherly hug that I've been hoping for at the time.
One of my fondest memories was the summer after grade 11 when we were both in that acting class. We learned from one of the best, the legendary Mr. Warren from the nearby dilapidated community theatre, who continued gracing that stage years after the place had been shut down. Among his interesting quirks were his demand to be called "Sire!", our daily warm-up of miming the construction of an unbreakable box with which to trap an actual mime in, and making absolutely stunning flower arrangements, even after we reminded him countless times that the flower arranging class was next door. He insisted on calling you "Twinkle-toes" for reasons that never became clear and he just completely ignored me, often walking into me as if he didn't see me at all - the ham! But he did bring out the best in us, helping us tap into emotions we were unaware that we had (mine was a combination of ferocious and sleepy), daily placing us in uncomfortable circumstances and forcing us to "act or die" and unveiling why cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches should never be served to mixed company. That summer we were to perform Mr. Warren's version of the classic Hunchback of Notre Dame, only with no Hunchback. The entire play involved dynamic song and dance numbers all revolving around the really appropriate questions "where is the Hunchback?" and "shouldn't we have renamed this production seeing as there is no Hunchback?" and "what is with all of the elephants?" I'll never forget the dance we performed together at the end of Act 1. Or should I say, I'll never forget dancing with you, somewhere, possibly on a stage and maybe in front of an audience, but I have no memory of any specifics aside from how you made me feel when we danced - thirsty.
And how could I forget the time we went through group therapy together. We sat there in the circle, week after week, sharing intimate details of our lives, learning how to trust, how to cry, how to live. Those other 8 people walked in the first day as strangers and left as true friends. I mean they were all pretty weird and we spent so much time laughing and poking fun at all of their problems and hangups - "your mommy didn't kiss your boo boo when you were six?", "your boyfriend insists on wearing matching outfits?" - man, that was funny. But they were good people. I really felt like I was making actual progress and that I was finally going to arise from my "winter of discontent" that had lasted a number of years. But, you were always mocking me when I revealed my secret fear of being abandoned. And right in front of me as well -couldn't you have at least waited till I was wiping away my tears or hanging my head in shame? Did you need to get up and do a very thinly veiled impersonation of me grasping for a hand? I guess you did, and I think, after all of this time I know the reason - it was probably due to that period of time in grade 8 when I too heavily critiqued your drama performance as a too thickly veiled impersonation. So, from the context of veiling you have swung to the opposite extreme - maybe some day you will be properly veiled. A man can only dream.
I wish I could be partying with you tonight on your 30th, but there is that little thing called a restraining order that you got to protect yourself from me. Was that really necessary? In fact this birthday card could be circumventing that order too. Maybe as you read this, I'll be either in front of the judge and about to be locked up with some of our resident gang members only looking for one excuse to extract my wisdom teeth. Look - I was joking when I told you to watch yourself or I would "get you" and "follow you home" and "gather" a "gang" of "tough guys" to "visit you at work" and "train" a "pack" of "dogs" to "jump" you "where you sleep". I'm sorry if you couldn't see the humour in my saying these things, but on the other hand, I do see now how these jokes could be misinterpreted as threats. Let me reassure you, nothing could be further from the truth. Me hurt you? Me want something bad to happen to my oldest buddy who not only sent me to jail, abandoned me in Asia in that small, dark room with all of those crazy monkeys, took all the credit for our proof of that mathematical theorem, but also stole my girlfriend and then stole her again after I found her wandering around aimlessly in the warehouse where you tried to hide her from me. Plus, just say I did want to hurt you, have you seen me recently? I did get a few tattoos while in prison, but they are just meant to distract everyone from my dancer's physique. I'm just saying you have nothing to worry about - I love you like a brother, and after all we have been through, I always will. Anyways, I hope you don't read this card and think I am harbouring ill will or hatred. What is in the past, is in the past. I wrote about these stories to make you smile and to cover some steps in my recovery program I am in. Today I am trying to let go of grievances. How did I do? Really, please let me know - I need to achieve at least an 8/10 to move on. Next up is metaphorically repaying for any damages or stolen property. Something for you to figuratively look forward to!
Cheers!
Xavier
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