To Have a Friend, Be One

Since my sister Felicia keeps insisting that all my friends are “damaged” people (she sometimes uses the word “losers”) perhaps I need to explore this topic. My first instinct (once I’m able to quell my fury) is to insist that all humans are, to some degree, “damaged.” We’ve all been children, we’ve all had disappointments and punishments, unfairnesses and handicaps. It’s just a matter of degree. The experience of living wears on a human. Habits of response and coping develop. At times these habits look like maladaptation. But “adaptation” to some norms can itself be damaging. Those are my initial thoughts. Now I’ll review my personal history of friendships.

The extra-curricular social world of kindergarten and early grade school is directed by adults, usually mothers. Dressing up and attending classmates’ birthday parties was a ritual that occurred more often than enough for me. I went along with the rigamarole uncomfortably, sensing the existence of some sort of unspoken hierarchy amongst both mothers and children. I don’t remember any actual “friends” except for Billy Duke, who stands next to me in a group photograph of the Laurel Springs School kindergarten class of 1956. Without knowing what it meant, he and I had agreed that we’d be married someday. Billy was not the smartest kid, and had a goofy demeanor. I suppose my taste in friends began there.
    Even early on, I was encouraged by my mother to become aware of, and to befriend, individuals who might be “different” or neglected; that is, to be an extension of my mother’s charitable impulses. She’d been on the receiving end of charity herself as a child. But isn’t “charity” simply a form of human kindness? A personal extension of warmth and understanding? It doesn’t start out necessarily as marking the recipient a “loser,” not in this giver’s mind.

From first through sixth grades, I attended St. Lawrence parochial school. The playground was divided: boys on the east side, girls on the west (adjacent to the convent where the nuns lived). Boys spent lunchtime recess fighting; girls organized activities and invented rules. There was plenty of social drama on the girls’ side. Older girls (7th and 8th grades) hung around in clumps rather than jumping rope or playing circle games. The sounds of transistor radios could sometimes be heard. Songs like “Lipstick on Your Collar” and “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb” puzzled me. I was busy running and jumping. I had a new best friend every day, it seemed. My diary records the breakups and makeups between me and a series of other little girls: Carol, Nancy, Maureen, Cassie, Deborah. I also took a younger girl, Christine, “under my wing,” and yes, it was because I thought she needed someone to pay attention to her. But perhaps I also wanted someone to look up to me.
    If any one of these youngsters were “damaged” I wouldn’t have known. I did feel, however, that it wouldn’t be right to pursue a friendship with a girl who was prettier than I was, or smarter. According to my report cards, I was close to the top of the crowded (50-plus) class, but not at the top. And by fourth grade I was wearing glasses, so my looks were compromised. In that sense, I was “damaged,” or thought I was. I had a crush on a very handsome classmate, Edward, for two years; after the glasses, I turned my attention to a squirrelly blonde boy named Thomas.

Outside of school and during the summers, there was another set of friends—neighborhood kids. This was a more diverse, all-ages group including boys, particularly my brother Michael, and of necessity, non-Catholics. Some of these kids I liked, some I thought were yucky, but we were all swarming in the same swarm.
    Meanwhile, my mother kept pressing the issue of helping others. She wanted me and my brother to start a lending library on the front porch (which we did, but we didn’t get many takers). She wanted us to be aware of the O’Briens down the street, who were poor and lived in someone’s attic. We gave them clothes, and my mother washed the lice from their heads. At Halloween, like many other children, we collected money for UNICEF.

When we moved to Massachusetts, I was sent to the Academy of the Assumption, a private girls’ school. I gravitated toward the two most odd-looking girls in my class, Veronica and Linda. Was this because I knew it was unlikely I’d be rejected? I don’t know. I became fond of them, however, and their looks (Veronica, a redhead, was covered with freckles; Linda was heavy and slightly hirsute) had no effect on their interests or abilities. They were as interesting and amusing as I could have wished. Veronica was the one who first told me the “facts of life.” (The Catholic booklet my mother handed me was frustratingly vague). Linda’s big Italian family invited me to gatherings during which we stood around a piano (who played? I don’t remember) and sang. My favorite was “Yellow Bird.”

Shortly after my first menstrual period (hormones kicking in) I involuntarily became an ardent Beatles fan, and joined another group of girls who were on the same adolescent wavelength. I became especially close to Connie, who had a streak of pure white in her black hair, which she wore in braids. Her face was long; her limbs were skinny. Connie exhibited an extreme case of confidence, almost an “attitude.” We had many fun times pursuing Beatles-related magazines and trinkets. I began writing stories about our “adventures” to make her laugh. Graduation from 8th grade ended all that, because my mother decided to put me in the public school system. I suppose the money was not available for me to continue at the Academy’s high school. It was just as well. I was losing my faith, which I think is a natural outcome of reaching the age of “reason,” if a girl has an inquiring mind.

My first friend at Wellesley Junior High School (9th grade) was Janice. Another odd-looker, with crooked teeth and nose. She came from a huge family that lived on one of the more “working-class” streets, close to Route 128. We bonded over music and formed a folk duo, “Clyde and Percival,” modeling ourselves after Peter & Gordon. We also talked about boys. Though we privately dissed other girls' looks, we were not conventionally desirable ourselves. I now wore braces in addition to glasses. Skewed, superficial values were on the ascent.
    My friend Caroline, on the other hand, was a cutie with dimples. Her family had been missionaries in Japan, so she was slightly worldly. Caroline and I had common academic interests: we wanted good grades. When we all moved on to the main high school, I sloughed off Janice and began spending more time with Caroline. However, Caroline still wore ankle socks. Despite the exhortations of Janet, a new friend recently come to town from New York, Caroline persisted in her child-like mode of fashion. Janet was an aristocratic-looking, overly-animated person. I was very attracted, and she became the closest I’d ever had to a “best friend” since early grade school. Her “damage” began to come into view months later, when she spoke of her drunk father regularly crawling upstairs to bed. He happened to be Editor-in-Chief of the Boston Herald newspaper at the time; I’d known of his prestige. Janet’s mother was the typical long-suffering alcoholic’s wife, quiet and gentle. Their house was perfect.

My own “damage” was not yet evident, but it lurked in the background. I was well taken-care-of, but lack of directly-expressed parental affection and attention tore at me. Good grades were highly valued in my family, but I was losing the will to achieve that. My mother, overwhelmed with child care, suspected me of sexual activities long before I engaged in any. I wrote poetry, trying to create a world of words within which I had influence and could make decisions.
    I was becoming prettier, and used that to get attention from boys. I cultivated brief friendships with Robin, a Jewish girl who claimed to have an adult male lover in Boston; and with Erica, a serious music student (cello) whose progressive agnostic family lived near mine. Parents (mine) forbade me to see Erica after she lent me “Tropic of Capricorn” by Henry Miller. Parents (hers) discouraged Robin from seeing me, probably because I approved of her erotic adventures. Parents were the ones wreaking “damage” here, it seems.

Janet had taught me how to smoke cigarettes, which led to being caught puffing outside the designated “smokers corner” at school. Thus I met seniors Lynda and Sally in after-school detention. I never discovered if they were “damaged” or not, but Sally, who was beautiful, reportedly worked as an artists’ model, and came and went as she pleased. Eventually I was invited to a private party with college “men,” one of whom I allowed to deflower me after knowing him for 45 minutes. My thinking was that I would then not experience pain when I finally “did it” with my 19-year-old working-class boyfriend Ralph whom I’d also met through Lynda and Sally just two months before that party. That never happened, because I told Ralph all about the party and, dismayed, he quit me.

I never once looked around my high school social environment with objectivity or breadth of assessment or awareness of “status.” I never decided who would or would not be my friends. Friends simply happened, mostly amongst the members of my small “advanced” English class. I’m sure there were girls whose influence would have been better for my development, but I never thought of my development or future, and ceased to ponder the possibility of college. I wasn’t liking what I saw about the world, the war in Vietnam, or the pressure to conform. I did see that there was an escape: Hippiedom. One needed minimal credentials to be absorbed into that group.

You could say that the hippies, at least in Boston, were self-discarded individuals who could not follow the proper paths to “success,” having been “turned off” by various aspects of the American enterprise. Articulation of their reasons, or of any “damage” inflicted by their respective families was not forthcoming, merely understood. Occasionally the “damage” was visible, as with my cross-eyed friend Merlin, whose Christian-Science parents would not allow him to wear corrective lenses. But Merlin played lovely guitar, and his presence calmed me.
    Some of the older hippie-adjacent folks were entrepreneurs. I made some “psychedelic” drawings in turquoise fountain pen for The Avatar, an alternative newspaper whose office was near the Cambridge crash pad where I resided for a time. I pushed oily bubbles around under an overhead projector for a professional light show producer at the Boston Tea Party, but these occupations were transient. Additionally, any sexual involvements I might have capitulated to were one-time-only propositions, and I never did the proposing.

Having been “invited” by my parents to commit myself to a stay at McLean Hospital in order to “get out of that environment” (that is, the people with whom I was indulging in drug-taking), I was suddenly catapulted into different surroundings, full of adolescent girls like me. It was inevitable that I’d bond with one or two. Pat was the first; we giggled and talked about sex and astrology. After she went home we exchanged letters. I was surprised to find a high-school contemporary at McLean’s—Marci. We’d not been friends in high school, merely knew of each other. But when we were assigned to share a room, we became inseparable. We both were skeptical of the powers that be; we both had a sense of mischief. We filled our room with furniture and objects collected from other rooms. It was cozy and companionable. Marci dismissed her situation by explaining that she’d been doing some “cutting.” She was somehow “damaged,” we would thus suppose. Marci’s mother later committed suicide; her wealthy father seemed cold when I met him. During the next few years Marci married, and her husband Larry and I, and Larry’s bass player friend, formed a folk band. We actually opened for other performers a few times at a Boston coffeehouse. One of those musicians was Drew, my first live-in boyfriend, who I’d also met at McLean. “Damaged” wouldn’t have applied to him, you might have thought, but even while I was with him he showed tendencies to alcoholism. The Cambridge neighborhood where we lived was full of McLean alumni.

When Drew moved back in with his parents to recover from a motorcycle accident, I sought a cheap place to live, and met the crew that became “The Marsh Folk.” For two years, nine of us shared the expenses of a contemporary house by the sea in Marshfield, Mass. Eventually I invited a friend from Cambridge, Susan, to move in. We were close, but not without difficulties and disagreements. We drove to and from Boston in her Dodge Dart to attend art school; I majored in filmmaking, she in printmaking. I could never untangle what “loyalty” meant to her. I was too free with her secrets, and she was too critical of my choices in life. I was obsessed with her for a while, wondering what I’d done wrong. She introduced me to Anais Nin, and to free-form cooking. I had married a Marshfield roommate, Bob, and she did the same (Mike) a year later. I would say now that Susan was a bit wacky, but very creative, and I don’t know what sort of “damage” she suffered, unless her family (in Maryland) had been too indulgent.

I will admit that “friendships” for me were mostly dictated by my environment. I have kept up with Marci and eventually re-contacted Susan, but other friendships depended on shared workplaces or classrooms. Subsequent exchanges after the shared experiences would fade to occasional phone calls and then nothing. Even Janet has disappeared by now (although we exchanged letters for years).

A big landslide of life changes for me came in 1978. Divorce, being fired from my job, moving several times, having an abortion and breaking up with another boyfriend, and seeing my hired “feminist counselor” be taken to McLean’s and put in a high-security residence (for physically attacking her brother-in-law) were destabilizing events. Again, I had lots of roommates, but none I considered close friends except for Erica, who was a LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation). When we first met she was studying violin at New England Conservatory and seeing a woman named Peggy. She advised me regarding the abortion, for which I later angrily blamed her (in a fit of regret that was not repeated). I met Erica’s parents in Memphis once, and did not detect any “damage” sources. Erica became a psychiatrist, married a man, moved to NYC, had children and made money. Evidently there was a “path to success” that she’d been intending to get back to all along. I never detected this, and never understood it, and we no longer communicate.

It begins to seem that I am the “damaged” one, since I am still repelled by conventional ambitions, disdain a focus on money, and reject the idea of having children. I remain quite “counter-culture,” except for lapses such as when I worked for the staid Huntsville Museum of Art and tried to fit in with the ladies of the Women’s Guild there. I wrote publicity for the museum, and had to twist my brain around to praise exhibitions that I didn’t like. That was my job. Trying to get along with everyone was also my job. I did not succeed entirely. Still, it was one of my longest-lasting jobs up to that point.

But we’re talking about friendships here. I met Joy because I’d been singing with an “acoustic eclectic” cover band in town, and she’d been playing bass in a rock’n’roll band, and she wanted to talk with me about dealing with an egomaniac band leader. We had coffee. I suppose it started there. It was the seed of a sometimes-close friendship that still exists, although it’s been very much pruned down since the early 2000s. If someone seeks me out, and they appear interesting to me, I’m going to pursue it as far as it goes. Their social status or job or appearance has nothing to do with it. A friendship has its own life, and I will nourish that life to the best of my ability (though I don’t go overboard and give what I don’t have or pretend to be someone I’m not). I do not ask, Is this person “damaged”? Should I hang out with them and risk “contamination”? My friendship with Joy has been both rewarding and distressing. I met her mother and sensed a reluctance to express affection or approval that reminded me somewhat of my own mother, though there were probably different causes. As a young girl Joy was molested by her stepfather’s sons. This is definitely “damage,” but it does not fully define a person. I am amazed by the changes Joy has weathered, and she seems settled now, un-partnered, self-sufficient, politically active, still writing poetry.

I’m unable to cite any general principles here. My tactic has been to reveal details of my own friendships so that I can explain to my younger sister why I seem to surround myself with people who appear (to her) to be "damaged." But there are at least two things wrong with this view: one is the lack of a criteria to measure the extent to which these people are actually “damaged” (or simply unconventional and quirky); another is that I have not consciously pursued these friendships. I gravitate toward people who have approached me and seem intriguing, not because they have a prestigious job or are conventionally attractive. Often I am interested because they, too, are writers; or they, too, are musicians. Much to talk about! My friendships include men, especially now that flirtation would be a parody amongst us elders. My circle of friends, with its offshoots, has been a gradual development and has as much to do with my husband’s choices as with mine. Russell has told me recently that his response to requests for rides and other sorts of help from his “damaged” friends Dave and Kim is simply that: a response to a request. He doesn’t refuse to help them. It’s that simple. He has had to take a break at times, but rarely for long. Russell likes to drive; he also enjoys Dave’s conversation when Dave isn’t drunk. Kim is safe in a “halfway house” now, but Russell has sent her things from her storage unit upon request.  Russell also responds to Vicki, a long-ago friend of ours from the Unitarian Church who is now struggling with bipolar disorder. I have backed away from this friendship because I do not have tolerance for her rantings. So there ya go: I won’t put up with TOO MUCH “damage.”

Speaking of bipolar disorder, my own family is quite “damaged,” I dare say. My sister Camille came down with bipolar disorder in her mid-thirties. This was disconcerting, and I did my best to help. She had to give up her busy Seattle life of teaching philosophy and working as a forest ranger during the summer. Her brief marriage to an Army buddy had already fallen apart. She’s now doing OK on medication and has returned to Wellesley where she lives in a government-subsidized apartment. She still reads philosophy books that most of us would not want to tackle.

My one-year-younger brother Michael eschewed anything “respectable,” and now lives and works on a farm, but owns very little. He managed to have three sons, however, during his long relationship with their mother. He has farming skills. This is nothing to sniff at (although he might occasionally smell of manure).

Our youngest sibling, Ray, has a touch of “Asperger’s,” and did not finish college, but has made the most of the opportunities he did have. He’s a bicycle enthusiast and has bonded with his fellows in that arena. Our sibling Brian has clearly been “damaged,” but no one is sure how except for his being left with our father in Huntsville, Alabama for two crucial middle-school years. Brian also dealt with too many deaths of close friends and lovers in too short a time. He took his decades-ago divorce very hard. He’s gentle and scholarly by nature, but uses that passivity to reject and dismiss all attempts to communicate and help, at least from family. He does not take basic care of himself. He recently moved out of my house after nearly four years (at age 64) and is living down the street. I have no answers to his problems, and he won’t seek answers elsewhere. If you met him in a coffeeshop, he would seem to be the most personable, undamaged socializer ever. He’d ask you lots of questions. He’d call you friend and find things you had in common. The only clue that he was “damaged” would be his lack of teeth (if he let it show). Something happened there, and it was not taken care of until it was too late. But he hides it if possible.

There was an “ideal” time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, perhaps, when all my younger siblings were having what I saw as a great, fascinating lives. I was so proud of all of them. Felicia (the sister who criticizes me for having “damaged” friends) was establishing herself as an English professor in Seville, Spain. Camille was thriving in Washington state. Brian was pursuing internships in industrial geography and public history in exotic locations. Ray was participating in the annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. I was simply living and working in Huntsville, Alabama with Russell, and enjoying my own activities, but I admired my siblings and thought it would last forever. I idealized them as I would new local friends whose lives I thought interesting and creative, and who I wanted to continue to know. But as life goes on, “damage” either occurs or surfaces. Nothing goes well (or stays hidden) forever!

Felicia has spoken of choosing her friends carefully, and making sure they are people she’d want to “emulate.” I never had that notion at all. I have let my friendships just happen. I have let some people go, but I’ve clung to others. I’m good at making temporary bonds based on proximity or shared projects. I don’t aspire to join social circles that I cannot fit into without strain, and that would include people with considerably higher incomes. I will tolerate differences of opinion up to the point where a potential friend seems to approve of political cruelties inflicted by the current administration.
    Since moving to Huntsville in 1981, I’ve realized that I am not going to fit into the general Southern populace, so I’ve had to find friends where I can, and that would be out of the mainstream. Wealthy people, seemingly attractive people, conventional people, have some advantages when it comes to being able to hide any “damage” that they’ve suffered or continue to suffer. They can put on a good show (as brother Brian does sporadically).
    People who have had to scramble to make a living (Jane), or who have never been asked to marry (Joy), or who have difficulty making themselves understood (Paige), are all friends of mine BECAUSE of the way they’ve dealt with their “damage.” They remain interesting to me, and they remain creative, and my affection toward them (though not effusive) is not faked. This is an achievement on all sides, and I feel that I, too, deserve some accolades.