That Peaches & Herb Song
Twilight Singers - Verti Marte
Warning: I’m in one of those sentimental moods. Macho image at stake.
I went out for dinner / buka puasa with the old college gang last night and I must say, I forgot how much fun it was just to sit around and chat (or rather, mercilessly tease and insult the living daylights out of each other) with those jokers. I haven’t seen some of them for months (and some, I see every other day. Bless you Zher!) and a few months is a long time considering I used to see them every single day, 8 hours a day, for a period spanning over two years. It was nice for all of us (or at least, nearly all of us – Jeff, where the fuck are you?) to be back together again, just like old times. We laughed so hard all throughout dinner, I’ll be damned if we didn’t develop tighter, firmer abs by the end of it (checked my abs this morning. Still look like Jack Black. Dammit!). It was inside jokes galore last night, jokes no one outside the “Circle of Trust”(oops, another inside joke) will get.
There were lots of rehashing and reminiscing of old tales and experiences. Two and a half years is a short time considering that the average lifespan these days is like what, 70 years but somehow those two and a half years felt like a lifetime. Ah, the nostalgia –the Salem Revelation Rave at Genting Highlands where the strange feeling that I was about to die was immediately followed by a sudden and utterly temporary ecstatic feeling that I was in love with everyone (including the giant glowing plastic fruits they hung up in the lobby of the hotel we bummed at after the rave) and where a friend got his first experience of a male-on-male pseudo lapdance. There was also the time we skipped class and drove 45 minutes to the Ulu Yam Waterfalls for kicks, in the pouring rain with the half of us drunk on cheap whiskey. I remembered one friend standing in a tiny pair of shorts, hairy-legged on a rock in the middle of the river, flexing his arms in all its skinny glory, a sight another friend described as one of the most disturbing moments of his life. Then there were the birthday parties, oh, the debauchery. But most of all, it was the little moments that mattered the most, moments when we did nothing but sit around and laugh, laugh at things that logically speaking, couldn’t possibly be funny, moments like last night. I think we all got a little sentimental by the end of dinner but being the macho fucks that we are, no one could muster up the balls to say it. One of them did mention however, that this, will probably be one of the last times we’ll be together in a long time and that caused a moment of silent melancholy.
The Cosmic Order is a master of separation, and already some of our friends have left the country, chasing the young adult dream, chasing degrees and jobs and lives we aren’t even sure we want to have. By next year, the other half of us will disperse to far separate corners of the world, chasing the same bloody thing in different ways. Our paths are quickly diverging and though we joke about getting together at our weddings in 10 years time, who is to say that we’ll even remember to invite each other to our nuptials by then? (By the way, I don’t plan on getting married so don’t hold your breath for an invite)
We’re good friends, but some of us, we aren’t the best of friends. Our friendship is based on the immediate moment, the present, on a shared sense of humor and environmental circumstances, which is not to say that it’s of any lesser value than friendships based on ….I don’t know, sharing of a kidney? The half of us might not ever be crying on the other’s shoulder, we might not share our deepest woes and darkest secrets with one another, some of us might not even know the other’s full name (though we have about 5 nicknames each to make up for it) but heck, we laugh a lot, and laughter is perhaps the most under-rated aspect of friendship. If you only find yourself laughing when Jack Black reveals his butt crack for the billionth time then err….well, I feel sorry for you. But hey, if it makes you happy who am I to pity you?
I’d like to think I’ll be at their wedding.
I’d like to think that my kid (the one that I won’t have) will be the one teaching their kids how to smoke and insult random strangers. The little bastard.
I’d like to think I’ll be at their wedding.
