Friendships: The Stages of This Man

Stage One: From the onset of consciousness to the end of grade six, life seemed to flow seamlessly. Neighbourhood friends filled my time after school and on weekends; when daylight saving started, evenings were filled with joy. Now, I see no one from this time in my life.

Stage two was much shorter. High school presented me with a huge pool of peers to choose from and puberty made sex selection part of the mix. But the collapse of my family meant I had only one friend really: my girlfriend. Periodically I still see four people from high school and I think we all enjoy keeping the connection alive. This autumn we will celebrate our 50^th high school reunion.

Stage three was college. My friends during college came from much further afield but now I had a car with which to commute. Now closeted, friends were more important than a partner. There are two people I still see from this time in my life.

Stage four began when I started working. My first job was as a teacher at the high school I had attended as a student. Almost immediately, I met John who remains one of my closest and dearest friends. I loved John and hated teaching so I quit to become an arts worker. I went to the Arts Club, the honeypot. Being true to my core passion exposed me to a plethora of like-minded people. During this phase, I met the people with whom I would form the enduring relationships of my life.

Stage four, to most all my friends, involved marriage and parenting and I realized that for the rest of my life, single people were going to be important.

Stage five is my “quest for money” phase. I left working in the theatre to seek more regular and higher-paying work—still in the arts, but administrative and primarily in the visual arts. And I met Steve. For fourteen years, I had the life I wanted and for the first time in my life I bonded with someone.

To a great extent, you could say the visual arts world is about being “cool,” and that’s how I find it. I often found myself in an atmosphere I might describe as “heady” compared to the raw, raucous, passionate world of the performing arts.

Stage six began with the breakup of my relationship with Steve and the death of my only parent, my Dad. Steve and I remain profoundly attached but he left Vancouver soon after our break-up. Dad and I were not close; his loss is very hard to describe. It was a stage in which to concentrate on work.

Stage seven is proving harder than any previous one.  It is hard to fill 18 hours a day when you live alone. Retirement has removed exposure to new people and many friends have died. My friends with partners, children and grandchildren are more distant and my single friends spend a lot of their time travelling—some for the maximum seven months.

Between now and the end of the month, I have three dates with friends. That’s all. I will make some; I used to try to make a date a day with someone, now I work to make sure I have at least one a week—one more a week than my regular weekly lunch with Dwight.

Stage seven involves a daily challenge of killing time. That is why I am relentlessly creating things on or of paper—or walking.  I joined a French speakers group online @ Meetup, but it is impossibly scary  and I could not go back. It challenges my core shyness far too much; I need to meet people "organically" doing the things I love to do. I think about volunteering but that too.

Growing up in my fractured home, I had solitude imposed on me. I did not want it and I hated it. As I grew I started calling it “freedom.” I could not be an employee because it made me feel trapped.  I could only be the boss. Being the boss gave me a far greater sense of freedom—to be late, to be gone and to quit. Steve was my only escape. Since he left, “freedom” has become solitude again. “Lonely” is lurking in the shadows. In my advancing golden age, I am walking with the sun warm on my back and the shadows lie before me.

Thank God for Leon, the ideal pet.