best friends

when i was young i remember i had a best friend named greg. i had just come to america so communication was hard, but most friendships are based on activities and shared interests, so
talking isn't always necessary. his mom picked me up after elementary school sometimes and even taught me the alphabets. he was my only friend for a long time since i couldn't speak to any of the other kids and when i look back i thank him for that because without him i would have been alone.

greg and i spent many afternoons together, playing video games, watching movies, exploring the outdoor expanse of his backyard. one summer we really got into mountain biking, the next he introduced me to footbll. somehow when i went to go visit him, i felt that my life was much more incomplete. his dad was a gadget junkie so his house was always furnished with newest toys, nestled cozily into the modern decor picked out by his stay at home mom. they always ate dinner together at the table, while their yellow lab, casey, begged imploringly with her doggie eyez.

at my house, it was me, my brother, my mom, and grandparents. pops was back in taiwan getting his grind on, and it was anything, but a typical american household. i remember wishing that my family were more like greg's, americanized, modern, normal.

greg was my portal to american culture since at my home, only mandarin and taiwanese were spoken, while my grandparents held stringent ties to the taiwanese green indepedent party. i remember wishing that i didn't have to miss weekend morning cartoons due to chinese school and church.

me and greg's were both made to learn piano during the 1st grade and i ended staying with it through junior year of high school, although at the end I could hardly stand it anymore. my mom even started making me play for her church on sundays and i began to feel very much like a highly trained show dog.

me and greg were pretty much best friends through all of grade school up through middle school and as a kid you don't realize that sometimes interests change and that friendships don't last forever. i remember during the '89 earthquake i was still in kindergarten and all of like 4 kids showed up for school the next day. it mostly kids with hard ass asian parents, and also oscar, but oscar was that kid who liked to eat his boogers and elmer's white paste so i didn't really hang out with him much. i remember wondering why greg didn't show up for school and i knew then that we were from different worlds.

we developed different interests through middle school and the only things we really had in common anymore was the advance math class at school and piano on wednesdays. i started playing little league baseball, while he joined the ultimate club.

i don't know what happened in high school. i tried to be good, tried to fulfill my filial duty, but something inside snapped and i just really didn't want to be a good little boy anymore. greg kept doing his thing, excelling at school, formed a garage band, won merit awards and national recognition. i began experimenting with drugs, sex, hung out with the wrong crowd and basically tried very hard to get into trouble, but never quite trying hard enough.

i still did pretty well in school, because to me high school was very much a joke. i cheated just enough in the classes that i hated to get by and thought that i could get by okay with sitting in cruise control through life. this ideology continued throughout college, a debilitating conceit, complemented with bouts of alcoholism and drug abuse.

me and greg stopped being friends in high school, but i think that is mostly due to my own proficiencies as a bridge burner. he has since continued to be a good, nice boy, graduating from a nice school, getting a nice job, finding a nice girlfriend, and buying a nice safe condo. but i suppose that is one of the many reasons that we stopped being friends in the first place.

sometimes doubt creeps into my head and i wish that i had lived that life and continued to be a nice boy. but fuck that asshole doubt.

maybe sometimes friendships are only made in times of circumstance and situation. maybe sometimes friendships are only made for proximity and necessity. maybe all things in life are only meant to be temporal.