In the fall of 1992, I said something mean to a very nice transfer student. Nevertheless, a year later, she invited me into her home to have a weekly lunch with her and her mother. We were nothing alike—I was an awkward outcast who thought Kurt Cobain was the height of fashion, she was a pretty, popular, academic achiever. In that time together we became very intimate, not as in romance (or attempted romance), but as in people who were incredibly comfortable being themselves together. Crushes were destructive for me, especially as my mood swung from manic to depressed, but I never developed a crush on her. I saw her for what she was, an incredibly close friend who welcomed me into her life.
Spring of my senior year, I was going to ask her out as a prom buddy, but she already had a date. I spent the evening with Shane, shoveling quarters into fighting games at the local pizza parlor, and calling it an early night. I don’t regret missing prom, since my friend was the only one I would have had fun with. That summer, I stopped by my friends’ houses with a camcorder (whatever that is) and asked them if they were evil. She was the only one who said she was not.
When we graduated, we promised to keep in touch. We didn’t.
Eight years later, after getting off the PATH train in New York City, I spied her getting off a different car. She looked exactly the same as she did when I’d last seen her, and I wasn’t going to let her escape. This was a challenge because I looked like I was in the witness protection program. I was wearing button-up shirt that wasn’t made of plaid flannel—actually buttoned up—and had cut my hair, grown a beard, and filled out. It took her a minute, but she recognized me. We had dinner on Halloween at the Tick Tock Diner on Thirty-First Street, and the magic was no longer there. She didn’t feel like the same person I knew, and I was well aware that I wasn’t tha same person she knew. We didn’t keep in touch.
The next spring, a mutual friend from high school got her number from me and set up a dinner with her. I tagged along (much to his dismay), and that evening, the magic was back. Broke and frustrated with dating, we spent weekend after weekend finding free things to do and cheap places to eat, often accompanied by her best friend who shared her name. This included Coney Island, where a walk on the beach led to a guy with a telescope showing us Mars when it was closer to Earth than it had been or would be in our lifetimes.
I was right on Halloween of 2002—she was different. When I knew her as a teenager, she was studious and reserved, but she grew into an artistic free spirit. I never saw that side of her before, but it was always there. She was also the same, having always been curious, serious, and focused, like Alice in Wonderland. I saw more of her in the coming months than I saw her best friend, who was my roommate. She met a number of my friends and got along with every one of them, who were all impressed with her.
But eventually, she left town for the Southwest, and we didn’t live near each other again.
I’ve seen her a few times since then, including her wedding, when she made a little bit of time to hang out with me (which was, I am well aware, more time than she had), and on the tenth anniversary of September 11. There were a few reunions with her, her best friend, and me, but it always ended with my old friend and me walking around New York, keeping each other company.
I haven’t seen her since October 2014, and we’re both don’t text well. When, at a deep low of depression, I took to Facebook to confess my shame of having taken a retail job, she called me on the phone (which is something you can do with phones, I guess) and made me feel better. I’ll always remember how much I needed to hear from her, and how it parted the clouds over my head.
I prematurely wrote my memoirs in May 2022, and each of the chapters was about an influential figure in my life (Kate got two). There’s an introduction about me to tell the reader who I am, but before that, like the pre-credits scene in a TV show or James Bond movie, is the history of my friend, the pom-pom girl who looked past my asshole tendencies and opened the door to her life.
Inspired by my relationship with her, I wrote an unfinished novel about two socially opposite teenage girls who find each other, lose each other, then find each other again as completely different people in New York City. This is my mockup of the cover, which will need to be redone, after I’ve had some time to work on some other drawings. The background looks great, but the figures didn’t come together like I’d hoped. Their proportions are off, and their poses and expressions are stiff. But if I can get it right on the next try, it will hopefully communicate in one image the kind of relationship my friend and I had.
I will always love her, with all of my platonic heart.
