I remember the shy, painfully self-aware boy from the country, but now his big laugh is ballooning out to fill the little Manhattan restaurant he has chosen for our dinner. We\u2019re having Italian food. I\u2019ve gone for spaghetti alle vongole. It\u2019s something of a stretch from when I was 17 and we would eat Supermacs out of the bag while sitting on the floor round someone\u2019s house. <\/p>\n
We met at school, which makes him \u2013 I believe \u2013 my oldest friend. There is no other person I knew back then who I still keep in touch with, let alone whose spare room I\u2019ll still visit to stay in, or who I\u2019ll meet for dinner whenever I\u2019m passing through. He\u2019s one of those people I could call and ask to stay with if it all fell apart, and we\u2019re all incredibly lucky if we have one or two of those. <\/p>\n
Neither of us felt comfortable at home, which I suppose is true of many teenagers. My friend was the most self-contained adolescent boy I\u2019d ever met: quiet, straight-backed, buttoned up. <\/p>\n
He left for New York in his 20s, where it was easier to live how he wanted to live; easier to be a gay man. This evening, despite the excitement of New York, I\u2019m not really in the mood to socialise. I\u2019m here for a week for work and I\u2019m jetlagged. It\u2019s been a difficult few weeks and I\u2019m anticipating the formulaic catch-up ritual that is much of modern friendship \u2013 when you don\u2019t see one another for extended periods, every meeting becomes an exercise in narrative storytelling. <\/p>\n
They fill you in on what has happened in their life since you last saw them, and you do the same. By virtue of this upload\/download information exchange, you are considered to be \u201ccaught up\u201d. The best elements of a friendship \u2013 in which you enjoy or do something together or actually connect meaningfully in the present \u2013 are often omitted. Then you return to your respectively overwhelming lives and promise to see one another in a few months. I often leave those sorts of lunches or dinners harbouring a small feeling of loss, as though an opportunity has been missed, or I\u2019m aware I\u2019ve been talking past someone I care about.<\/p>\n
This evening doesn\u2019t go that way. My friend fills the space across the table between us with warmth. He doesn\u2019t ask probing questions about the recent changes in my life. He doesn\u2019t volunteer unsolicited advice. This in itself is such a rare and restorative quality that I feel myself regenerating softly at the table just thinking about it. Warming up and leaning in. A spring bud feeling the sun. <\/p>\n
My friend is about to turn 40, he tells me. Something shimmers between us \u2013 an awareness of passed time. So much of it. I ask him how he feels about that number \u2013 40 \u2013 and he tells me he feels good. I believe him. He was an old young man when I met him all those years ago. He\u2019s finally moving into the time of his life that always felt like home to him anyway. I can see by his face that he means this. <\/p>\n
There is something about that number \u2013 40 \u2013 that relaxes something inside him. I think again of the impossibly tense, sombre boy with the straight back. He held in so much. This man across the table from me appears to hold nothing back at all. He laughs constantly. He makes the sort of appalling, maudlin jokes we\u2019ve always bonded over. He bought his own place so now he can finally get the dog he has always wanted, since he grew up with dogs. \u201cI pick her up from the shelter on Wednesday,\u201d he says. \u201cHer name is Noodle. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll change it. She has a brother called Squidge.\u201d<\/p>\n