Thankful for friends
2003-10-11 | 4:09 p.m.

Last night I did a double take at work when Joe walked in the door. He ended up catching a flight down from Thunder Bay after all so YESSSSSS my prodigal Joe has returned home!

AND SO HAS KAITLYN! but I didn't really need to say that. She looks so cute and she's really funny still and is luckily keeping the snobbery to a minimum. It pisses me off that some people think taking a year off before university is the slacker thing to do. When in reality, I think I'm doing the right thing, because they're just falling into line 95% of the time by going right into college or university. It takes fucking guts to pack up and haul off to the other side of the planet for a while. Besides, I dare them to compare grades with me. Yeah, I said it.

Anyway, Joe, Ben, Marissa, Kaitlyn, this Anne chick who totally rocked my socks, and I all had a few beers in my kitchen and headed over to a party around 11. It was a beautiful night. The moon is so full and bright right now that you can't even see the stars.

There's not much to say about this party, I didn't have a really fantastic time because it was rather segregated. You had to travel to all these little groups and crash their conversations to talk to the people you wanted to talk to. Not laid back and/or wild enough for my tastes. Somehow it managed to get crashed around 1 a.m. That's ridiculous, because there was 100 people there at best, no keg and no music. Wait, maybe that's why it sucked.

Anyway, a good time was still had. I've got pictures! Well, Joey's got them on his camera, but I'll have them soon enough.

While everyone was doing the mad scrable to avoid underage drinking charges, I palmed a six pack of Busch, jammed it into my Superhero purse and walked calmly to the car. Score! I'm an asshole.

The night ended beautifully. We lost Anne somehow, which was a shame because I was just getting to know her. She's odd. She looks like the kind of person who would care about making appearances by pretending to care that some random people you went to highschool with are still important to your life somehow. But: she's doesn't care. Which made for awesome conversation between her, Kaitlyn and I while Marissa made the rounds anyway. haha.

So yeah, eventually Kaitlyn took off, and Ben, Joe, Marissa and I were heaped into one giant, lazy, contented tangle of bodies. I love my friends. We listened to Janis Joplin and I thought Joe was gonna cry when "Me and Bobby McGee" came on. What a sweet, happy, beautiful song that is. This chick with a really wonderful voice sang it for him when her band was playing at the Elephant's Nest, just before he moved away.

Joe lost some weight, but he's still super huggable. Haha, that knob got the hugest tattoo on his shoulder. It's a fucking beer logo, he didn't even try to hide it. He's on the Molson Canadian site! It's a beautifully shaded maple leaf, red with hints of blue, and it's actually quite stunning. Across it says "I am Canadian" in the beer type. It's awesmore. He's gonna regret it for sure when he's older. He told me so. But for now, wow, he's a fucking rock god.

With my face was buried in his skinny college guy, beer-shirt clad chest, Marissa's head in my lap and Ben's feet beside my head, Joe said the saddest thing I've ever heard: "I wish I had more friends like you guys."

It must have just been the way he said it, or the fact that he is a really likable guy who's perpetually surrounded by ten thousand people. Either way, it was the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth. It was then that I realized: I wish I had more friends like this, too.

I don't see them every day. I don't need to see them every day. Because I know that once in a while, when the moon is full and the music's right, we're blessed with moments like these. It's quality, not quantity. Moments like those, 4 a.m.'s, warm beer, reassuring backrubs... there's just something magical about it. I don't need to commit every detail to memory, because nights like that make me believe that the time between nights like that is completely unimportant. Nights like that last and last, even after they've come and gone.

-S

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