Old Friends

Occasionally, I meet with an old friend of mine. We grew up together, dated the same boys, sunbathed nude, and she even taught me how to french kiss without going YUCK and wiping my tongue on my shirt. Yep we were close and have been since the day we met.
It saddens me, though, that she is still the same, maybe that is why I feel comfort around her; maybe not. Maybe that is how it is supposed to be, old friends like old comfortable shoes that you don’t have the heart to toss out. We don’t have anything in common. The last book she read wasn’t even a book; it was an excerpt out of a book that we had to read for our English class in high school, I know because I asked her. She doesn’t have time to read she says.
We talk about our kids and our sisters, that is what we have in common, kids and sisters. She is bulimic, weighs under 100 pounds and she gripes about no clothes fitting her. He wrinkles, and there are many, have changed her beautiful face and because of years of smoking her voice is old. I tried to talk politics with her but she could only mention that Clinton was a better looking president than Bush, religion was out of the question, since she believes the entire Bible is true and is to be taken literal, and I wonder why she hasn’t cut off her hands for all the evil she has done in her life or why she is still eating pork, although it only stays in her stomach for a short period, maybe that is how she justifies it. I don’t know. I told her I am studying Buddha (a great way, by the way, to become a better person) and she thought I was doomed for hell (maybe to join our favorite rock store who died of an overdose leaving us a few good songs and a great style of clothing and glasses) and I told her I didn’t believe in hell (which really scared her and pissed her off), and then I mentioned that we are organic (a word I had to explain since her thoughts on organic mean organic raised food and that to her was just too stupid) not meant to last forever so how could we burn forever, and she said it is our spirits, and I said if there are spirits they can’t be organic because we don’t see them so they are not made up of all of those elements that cause visualization. It was so consuming trying to enlighten my friend but I kept on.

I told her that I liked the idea that once we die, there might be a chance that we just decompose and are gone, or that we have a chance to come back in a better life; my hopes are to come back as a sperm wale, so I can keep my fellow pod mates from getting beached, or maybe a turtle to keep them from crossing the road, or a hawk and I would keep them from eating road kill in the middle of busy highway. I like owls too and might like living in a tree and watching life with huge eyes although the thought of eating mice isn’t too appealing, but I would like them being an owl.

I told her if I had life to live again, I would have gone to graduate school many years ago, joined, while I was healthy, the peace corp. and donated all my time to making a difference in the world, making it a better place for the individuals that I would have met. I told her that I would have remained a virgin and kept my sanity, I said to her joining the Buddha monks would have been nice, although, I would have had to shave my hair and hide my sex, easy to do when I was younger, or at least wearing those baggy robes, it would have been easy.

I don’t know if she knows me any better or if she still thinks that I am the girl who sat on top of her car while she had sex with the wildest boy in school, the girl who got sick on rot gut wine, the girl who hid her report card for fear of being called a geek, the girl who smoked pot to think not to act stupid. I don’t know. I am sad that we have so little in common other than meeting for coffee and talking about the women in our lives, daughters and sisters. I wish she knew Faulkner or Morrison or Dunbar, or Chaucer, or Stokes, or even Alcott or Wilders. I would love to discuss something interesting with her, just once.