The Trouble With Spikol: Print Edition: “Dying to Know”

Why do I think a lot of TTWS blog readers will understand what I mean in this one? Maybe because, in a way, you all are my true friends.

Not long ago I started to obsess over who’d be sad if I died. The question came on like a malevolent flu, and wouldn’t get out of my head. I scrolled through my cell phone address book. I looked at old birthday cards in my attic. I checked my email inbox and sorted names.

Things got morbid when I went to lunch with my ex-husband, who’s now my closest friend. “Would you be sad if I died?” I asked him over a steaming bowl of pho.

Ever the master of understatement, he shrugged and deftly speared another vegetable with his chopsticks. “I guess,” he said.

You guess? You guess?
I racked my brain for an appropriate response, then reminded him that if he died I’d be devastated.

I demanded equal devastation in return. I got the feeling he’d think about it and get back to me.

Later I realized the reason I’d be devastated is because I have so few friends. I’m a warm and open person, and I seem to be well liked by co-workers and intermittently at parties. But I’m not truly close to people.

This has long been remarked upon by my mother, who has, at any given moment, at least 50 true friends. If she gets a cold, the phone is busy for days with people calling to know how much her throat hurts.

Does she have a fever? It’s all right—they’ll hold on while she checks. And they actually care. And she actually cares about them.

My father, on the other hand, is more aloof, and I guess that’s where I get it. His closest friend in recent years was his dearly departed Yorkshire terrier Sugar. Now he has a finch.

“You’re a Spikol,” my mother tells me. “I worry about you.”

In her estimation, my father, the originating Spikol, is saved by her aggressive geniality. But what about me, floating on a lonely raft without a shore to land on?

She actually used that metaphor. Credit where it’s due.

All this is why I was thrilled to find the book Friendship: An Expose by Joseph Epstein. Epstein is the former editor of The American Scholar, and the author of books like Snobbery and Envy.
I thought I could learn something from Epstein, who professes himself “overwhelmed by friends.” But I’m glad I’m not on his radar. Here’s his account of an interaction with a poet:

“[He] talked through the meal about himself, his small triumphs, his enemies, his good works, his plans for his brilliant future. At the end, I wanted to touch his hand and say, ‘Forgive me, but you have spoken way too much about yourself, especially in the presence of someone who, in our puny literary world, is much better known and more important than you. A serious mistake, especially if you plan to have lunch with me again.”

Wow. Harsh. The Philly version of that, I suppose, would be if I had lunch with John Grogan and talked too much about my hamster. Which I would certainly do.

The best part of Epstein’s book is the first part—the chapters in which he talks about friendship in the history of philosophy. But putting Aristotle aside—as I did so many times during the years of my higher education—I find more wisdom in a yearbook signature from my best friend in high school Abby Gross:

“Do you remember that McDonald’s commercial? This 12-year-old girl is there with her friend and she says, ‘This is Chrissy. She’s my best friend in the whole world.’ And then you see all these scenes where they’re dancing in the rain, and pretending they’re rock stars, and laughing hysterically, and at the end she says, ‘What I like best about Chrissy is … she’s my best friend.’ I don’t want to compare you to a McDonald’s commercial, but you are the ‘Chrissy’ I always wanted.”

Beat that, Epstein. I’ll bet he doesn’t even go to McDonald’s.

I wrote something sweet to Abby too, but like Epstein’s book, it was agonizingly pretentious, quoting not McDonald’s but Dickens. How shameful is that? I hope she destroyed it.

Abby lives in Seattle, and we see each other only once a year. I’ve never visited her there, despite repeated invitations. It always seems too hard, too overwhelming, as though she lives in Jakarta. But to me (though probably not to her), she’s as integral to my life as she was in 1986.

I emailed Abby to flesh this out. I reviewed my other closest friends and realized vintage is a problem. The three other people I care most about in the world are people I met in 1968, 1975 and 1986, respectively.

What happened since then?

I got sick. People dropped out. I lost my ability to form healthy friendships. And why improve upon perfection? I’ll never have friends like the ones I started out with.

Sometimes I think, “I’m a loner,” and imagine myself in a Tom Waits song to make it all seem cool. But I do want people to be sad when I die.

Will you be sad? If yes, give me a call. I have a yearbook for you to sign.

liz | 3:03 PM | Uncategorized