Friendship

Here's a confession. Ever since I was a small child, friendship has been tied up with one of two things, if not both: sex and project planning. Just today I realized this and it is probably why friendship is so problematic for me as an adult. It's all fine and dandy when I have projects going on like putting on a play or running a spy club (childhood activities) or coordinating an activism effort or running a cub scout pack or planning some cultural event. Even ties that you think would transcend this rule, like the friendships I have made through the adoptee rights movement, can become strained and uncomfortable when not in the context of planning something.

Listening to other people's problems is something I do as a good deed, because I know I am supposed to, and friends are supposed to help one another. I know that if I should need to talk about some personal problem (which is extremely rare), or more pressingly, if I should need help caring for my children when I am unable, that my true-blue friends will be there for me.

This sounds selfish, and perhaps it's overstated. I enjoy having friends with whom to attend lectures, with whom to go to the movies and the opera. It is good for me and the kids to invite people over for dinner and parties, and it is good for us to be invited. Social ties are important and I enjoy and love all my friends. It's small talk that gets to me.

Small talk serves some critical bonding and information-transfer functions, I'm sure. Small talk about shopping or child rearing or home improvement or dieting is painful for me to listen to, let alone engage in. I tolerate it in some of my friends out of respect for our friendship, as I am sure they tolerate my cynicism and other odd traits.

My ideal friendship, alas, is not some comfy chair shoulder to cry on; it's not a health habit, and not a convenience. It involves common passion about something which is not mundane, something which is academic or artistic or activist, even something escapist, or at least something that involves tilting at windmills. Such a friendship seems to have a shelf life though, for, as passion wanes, so do the ties that bind. My family is a more appropriate vehicle for passion projects, which brings me to the subject of sex.

I started having sexual relations at an very young age with an uncle who molested me. He used to take me out for ice cream in his car. He died in a car crash when I was 7. Around the same time, if not earelier, my Haitian babysitters regularly molested me and I had a long-standing sexual relationship and friendship with the mildly retarded Irish-American girl across the street. When I was 9 we moved to Rome, Italy and I started up a relationship with an American girl there who was a complete mess, but our fantasy and sex life (and the fact that we didn't have anyone else), kept our relationship passionate and tormented. This relationship continued when we both moved back to New York City. I had many other sexual relationships and sexual friendships with males and females throughout my adolescence and basically until I got married at the age of 27.

It really is amazing that I'm not more screwed up. Perhaps it was the icing-on-the-cake of discovering, at age 13, that my mother was a topless dancer at the same club as one of my friends. Then again, my father loudly and obnoxiously coming out as a homosexual when I was 14 may have also contributed to my ultimate dedication to not losing control, to not being a persistent victim to other people's sexual needs and problems. Still, paranoia and delusions linger. I imagine that people are licking their lips at me, and making lewd suggestions. I force myself to try and be normal and even with the effort I make, I know it's only skin deep. I am afraid of people. Somehow I suspect that I share this trait with many other "leaders".