I need a drink and a peer group. [The ever delightful Douglas Adams]
The right peer group. I want to get drunk like it’s 1999 and it’s a hot summer’s night in a little shithole I like to call hell. Back before three of us fled and two of us bred and everyone else ceased to exist [the little group that always is]. Back before the degrees and the babies and the shithouse jobs and the debt and the adulthood that we surely cannot yet be ready for. There is something so special about those nights. Stumbling down the main drag of the nightclub area. The same places every weekend. And always all of them. Bumping into and avoiding those prats from school. The grog, the cheap vodka, that evil tequila fuelled Halloween, the chronic dehydration brought about by too much alcohol and 90% humidity. The hangovers in dark air-conditioned rooms that move and lurch as you lie upon your bed. Something so special about those nights that we weren’t even aware of. Back to the time when the friendships were still quite young and we were still quite young.
Only this time I want us as we are now. With the confidence a degree of maturity brings. The confidence that crying your eyes out in a strange city feeling totally unloved and like you are destined to fail brings. The confidence that life brings. The freedom that youth has. The freedom of a lack of obligation. The freedom of proximity. We won’t have it again, of course. Some things, once lost, are gone forever. I can’t even remember the last time we were all in the same town. It may never happen again, not through serendipity anyway.
I have watched my friends grow. Fabulous people becoming more fabulous. Distance being not the tyranny claimed but a way of bringing us closer. The differences and the different experiences aiding each and informing the other’s world view. Not necessarily liking each other’s decisions but respecting friends and loving them for who they are. All of which is great. This is friendship. This is love. This is life. It’s taken everything to bring us to this point and it’s not a bad point. But sometimes even the good things suck. The distances in Australia are appalling.
It would be nice to phone them up and get drunk together. Just like the old days.
4 comments:
Ack. I hear you loud and clear, Nails.
Ah, now I'm getting all nostalgic. That's a beautifully written little piece that closely chimes with recent thoughts of mine of old friends elsewhere. And of youthful boozing when there was nothing to lose but a little dignity.
You can lose dignity? Shit.
Yeah, I'm sure I left mine around here somewhere...
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