Fallible Friends

My oldest friends and the ones I’d like to consider my best friends have always reliably disappointed me.  I get burned so frequently it’s bewildering and, at risk of sounding unnecessarily soppy, upsetting.

One of my earliest memories of this was aged fourteen or fifteen, being dropped by a parent at the cinema of a small town where we’d agreed to meet, only to discover that plans had changed but I wasn’t informed.  They weren’t there.  There were no mobile phones.

I went to see the film anyway, the first of many cinema screenings I would see alone.  At the end of Congo, a largely unmemorable film about a mountain Gorilla, I cried buckets.

There was the time not long after when I was dropped outside the house of a friend.  A big party was on, these parties had developed cult status, the host had a freer leash than most of us.  He was allowed to smoke at home.  I had finally been invited to one of these parties.  I had ARRIVED.  I found the house completely empty.  I was suddenly alone in a small countryside hamlet I didn’t know.  I walked for miles to find a phonebox.

I’m the last informed, the one people forget or don’t bother to tell.  Of course I can speculate (like you can), but I’ve never understood why.

They remain my oldest friends, but they’re inclined to do this even now I’m now back in the same city as several of them, a short walk away.  And I knew they would be.  Old friendships have been renewed.  I’ve been for drinks with a couple since returning; one has visited my new place: everything done at my instigation.  It was the latter guest’s birthday on Sunday and they all went for a pub dinner, another friend informed me by email.

“If you are offended at not being asked, dont be,” my friend’s email instructed.  “He barely wanted to have that and didnt invite anyone else either cos he's not terribly fussed on his birthday.”

I did practically nothing at the weekend and had asked if one of the group fancied meeting up for a pint, only to receive a belated ‘too busy sorting for holiday’ reply.

You can do little more than accept it, raise an eyebrow, curl a lower lip, shrug.  Given my hopelessness with females, I’m not unfamiliar with borderline excessive inward-looking, what-the-FUCK-is-wrong-with-me? analysis.  But this sort of thing doesn’t exactly help to plump up the ego either.  It gets really bloody cold out here.