I have no tag for "friends"

Delphine was a good friend.

Sadie was a close friend.

The person who just visited is not a friend, but an acquaintance from back home.

Blah, blah, blah. I was legally trained, so everything has to be defined and categorized. These aren't meant to be judgments on the people, just a defining of who they are in relation to me in an overly anal manner that no one else does.

Intended to define how far away I keep people beyond "arm's length".

Actually, my defining of friends was largely inspired by a song by Stephen Sondheim, "Old Friends", from his musical "Merrily We Roll Along", which although is now a fan favorite, it was a commercial disaster, running on Broadway for only 2 weeks. 

Part of the brilliance of the musical, although perhaps also a contributing point towards its failure by confusing the audience, is that it moves backwards in time. And by moving backwards in time, that's how the musical arrives at its happy ending, because the musical starts with the friendship of the three principal characters in tatters. But moving backwards in time, we get warm and fuzzies with the youthful characters looking forward to their lives and all the potential they had having just graduated.

And earlier in the musical is the song "Old Friends", which juxtaposes "old friends" with "good friends" (Good friends point out your lies/Whereas old friends live and let live/Good friends like and advise/Whereas old friends love and forgive), whereas later in the musical when they are younger, there's a song with a reprise of "Old Friends" (preprise?), but they exclusively refer to each other as "good friends" that they're "still good friends/nothing can kill good friends".

So old friends are the best that there is. They've been in your life so long that they tend to become old habit. And everything else keeps changing, but old friends get continued next week. They're the ones you don't have to explain yourself to and who you forgive more easily than family.

Madoka is an old friend. I still haven't replied to her email, but she friended me on Facebook and I accepted, but we haven't made any contact there, either. But once we start making contact, all should be more or less fine. If we don't, it's still fine.

Nobuko is an old friend. Unlike with Madoka, we've had a big falling out, but then got reconnected after a few years and since then we haven't been in constant contact, but we're always there if the other calls, I shouldn't wonder.

Old friends take each other as they are. There aren't expectations anymore.

Sadie is not an old friend. She was a close friend. We're currently not talking because we still have expectations and get pissed off when they aren't met. We've had at least one breakage before because of that.

She once used this blog as ammunition against me and I chased her away from this blog, and I still use that as ammunition against her. That was years ago.

But she graduated from being a good friend and became a close friend because we really enjoyed each other's company, made each other laugh, helped each other out, casually called each other, called each other to come out and play, felt comfortable discussing all sorts of things – just about nothing was taboo.

We psychoanalyzed each other and still enjoyed each other's company.

And I miss her when we're not talking or even when we are talking. The problem with close friends is that you want more. I wanted more from her. I think she wanted more from me. And neither of us was giving it. It still gets complicated with close friends, not so much with old friends. You still love your close friends, though.

Delphine was a good friend. She didn't become a close friend because there were still points of contention in our conversations that we couldn't get through. Many of the criteria of a good friend are the same as close friends, but lacking the intimacy of when you connect well with someone else and just get them.

Lisa and Chris, band members in San Francisco, I think are old friends. Just from the band experience, they skip over the good friend/close friend stages, because we regularly spent so much time together, worked together, strove together, and through it all I got to know them really well.

Then after the band broke up, I didn't think much of them. I didn't think much of the band. It was only after reconnecting years later I realized that I appreciated what I had gotten to know about them so well, that they are very caring human beings.

I realize now I would really love it if I were back in the Bay Area hanging out with them. I don't know if they hang out with each other much, but I would be trying to get us all together whenever possible. Maybe. I would be a much better friend to them now, and they never turned their backs on me or judged me when I wasn't such a good friend; I was very standoffish. Stealth old friends.

Anita was a friend I met early in my time in San Francisco, but despite the amount of time we knew each other, she only got as far as close friend.

We met in a theater group and eventually determined that I knew her brother from college. I remember she was wearing an Oberlin shirt one day and I said, surprised, "Hey, where did you get that shirt?!" "My brother went to Oberlin". Then after retrieving her last name from my memory banks, I said, ". . . You're Neal's sister?!" (Indian last names tended to stand out back then). That was a great starting moment for us.

November 3, 1996 - Anita with her Oberlin "People Becoming Fish" t-shirt. Negative unflipped so the words are discernable.

Anita was great, I loved hanging out with her. She was a pot-smoking, howl-at-the-moon, rogue attorney who was doing everything she could to not practice law. She had a killer CD collection that I would have totally raided doggy-style had the iPod been invented back then.

She was the one who got me my job at the law firm when her best friend Ritu moved to the Bay Area. I don't think our friendship lasted much longer after Ritu melted down and killed herself. We never got our old rhythm back. Sometimes people change their ways. And sometimes stories end that way.

But Most friends fade or they don't make the grade/New ones are quickly made/And in a pinch, sure, they'll do, or Some of them worth something, too. I've had friends in Taiwan. Hyun Ae was just a friend. Pierre's a friend. They are moments. They don't span time. Then there are acquaintances. Co-workers. Ex-coworkers. Internet friends (you never know when they're gonna disappear). Language exchanges. Family . . .

Hey, old friend, how do we stay "old friends"

Who is to say, old friends, how an old friendship survives?

One day chums having a laugh a minute

One day comes and they're a part of your lives