For the last 10 years, I could always count on Mike to be my friend. And I think that I will for the next ten, too.

I met Mike when I started dating his best friend. Then we broke up. Mike remained my friend, which is impressive considering we were in high school (oh! the drama!). It didn’t matter. In the face of high school drama, boyfriends and girlfriends, different colleges and different interests, marriage, kids … we remain friends. Considering how many friends I’ve lost over the years due to those circumstances, it’s remarkable to me.

Other than my husband, he’s the only person whose phone number I have memorized.

We have one of those comfortable friendships; we’ve known each other so long, and through all the awkward periods, the rebellious periods, and now, this, the finally starting the rest of our lives period (at least, that’s sort of how it feels to me).

We had dinner the other night. I asked him what sex toys he uses with his GF and he told me. I let him read this blog AND I don’t feel censored for it. We are comfortable in silence and we are comfortable drunk. I trust him to drive and I tell him my secrets.

There are few things better in the world than a good friend.

Mike, thanks for being my friend. Thanks for teaching me the word “gaggle” and inspiring me to write a song. Thanks for good hugs and Jimmy Eat World. Thanks for punk covers and someone to reminisce about high school with. Thanks for a connection to the past and something to look forward to, in the future.

You rock, dude.

The game starts off innocently enough. Everyone holds up all their fingers in the air, and you go around the circle stating “Never have I ever…[fill in the blank]” Anyone who *has* done it puts a finger down, and depending on how you play, either all fingers up or down wins.

Once your group gets bored of crap like “never have I ever been to Nebraska” you’ll inevitably move onto the juicer stuff.

“Never have I ever touched a penis.”
“Never have I ever French kissed.”
“Never have I ever let a boy touch my boobs.”
“Never have I ever given a blowjob.”

My sixth grade self always ended up with no fingers left.

It only got worse in high school:

“Never have I ever given a blow job.”
“Never have I ever been eaten out.”
“Never have I ever been caught by my parents. ”
“Never have I ever been caught by his parents. ”
“Never have I ever kissed a girl.”

But at least if I were to play today, I would have a few doozies.

“Never have I ever woken up, hungover, and not known where I was.”
“Never have I ever slept with someone without knowing their first and last name.”
“Never have I ever wondered if I were pregnant, and guessed that if I were, it was either that guy Matt or his cousin.”
“Never have I ever bailed on rent.”
“Never have I ever had a speeding ticket.”
“Never have I ever thought POW MIA was a black power mantra.”
“Never have I ever agreed to have sex with my (current) boss.”

Ok, comment time. “Never have I ever… ” ?

We had been practicing for weeks, readying ourselves for the big Spring Sing performance. It was one chance every year for everyone and anyone to shine.  Performing was nervewracking, but it was a chance to really show off your pipes, your stage presence, your talent. We were to perform a duet “Sing!” from A Chorus Line.  Two parts comedic monologue, one part sung, it was hilarious and surprisingly challenging.  The week prior we had finally begun to really get it together. It made sense for us to perform a duet. We were best friends. It made sense, but I hated singing with her.  I should have said no.

One afternoon, in her typical dramatic fashion, Sarah decided she wanted – nay, needed – to switch parts. She didn’t want to do the sung part anymore. She wanted the monologue. I doubted her ability to learn all the words – the performance was in less than a week! – but she insisted. Fine. One more nail in the coffin of our friendship. I sullenly agreed, and we reversed roles. I failed to be surprised. Sarah was not a great singer or performer, but she did manage to do one thing with ease – drama.

Fast forward.

The night of the performance, we were ready. Sarah and I stood side by side in the wings, waiting for our cue. I leaned against the curtain pulley and inhaled the scents of the backstage. A little musty, a little heavy with makeup and perfume and nervous sweat. Sarah wasn’t wearing enough deodorant; she always under-applied. I thought about our duet coming up, and nursed the little angry part of me that said we should have stopped being friends years ago. It was our Senior year. I only had to make it through a few more months, then I could be done with this sham. She always took more than she gave.

The piano struck our opening chord and we strutted out onto stage, blinded by the bright lights, blissfully unable to make out faces in the crowd. The stage always seems more expansive as you walk across it. From the wings, it seems manageable and from the audience, practically minuscule, when compared to the experience being front and center, traveling with your heart beating so heavily in your ears you can hardly hear the harmonies. I tried to swallow my anger as she prepared to perform the part that had originally been mine.

I could hear Sarah beginning the monologue, breathless and slightly nervous, but it worked well for this performance. At my cue I sang a note, then another, then one more – the vocal part of the song is challenging because you have to pluck the notes seemingly out of thin air and let them hang there with nothing else to support them. It’s perfectly right or glaringly wrong. I thrilled in it. Being on stage was invigorating – anything is possible.

We walked through our carefully choreographed stage movements, and then Sarah faltered. She forgot a word, then two, then a line, and I couldn’t hit my notes, the timing was off, the choir teacher couldn’t modify the chord progression fast enough to catch her mis-steps…. We stopped. We stood on the polished, shining wood of the stage and stared at each other, glancing down in the pit at our choir director as he marked time with basic chords, and we realized we couldn’t continue. We were too far gone. We’d have to start over, we couldn’t start over, we were on stage… hundreds of our peers, teachers, family, friends. We stared at each other.

I stared at this girl whom I’d known for most of my life, and all of my school years. Through grammar school, elementary school, middle school and now high school. We had been inseparable. I stared at her mousy brown hair and her too-small eyes, now reflecting the panic and fear in my own, and I burst out laughing. We laughed.

We laughed. We laughed, and laughed, and slapped our knees and gasped for breath and forgot that we even had an audience. We couldn’t stop, not for anything. We stood on that stage, and bent over and held our stomachs and laughed so hard our faces might shatter into pieces from the strain of it, and then we finally limped off stage.

We made it to the wings, still giggling, laughing, chortling, chuckling, as the reality of what had just happened dawned on us. We had just completely fucked it up. We failed. We failed, and then instead of finding a way to recover, or exiting gracefully, we laughed ourselves off the stage!

From the other side of the curtain, hastily closed by stunned stage hands, there was first silence. Then a small titter of laughter spread across the crowd. Then from the corner, a smatter of applause. It spread, and grew, and within moments the entire audience was cheering and whooping and laughing, not at our failure, but because they thought it was all part of the act.

We had fooled them.

We had fooled them even as we fooled ourselves into thinking that perhaps our friendship wasn’t dead, after all.

———————–