She’s My Best Friend

A lot of people I hear from sound sad. Christmas and the New Year does that to people in a way that you don’t realize when you’re still young enough to look forward to presents and you’re barely able to stay up past midnight to watch the ball drop. They’re sad in a way you don’t really understand until you graduate college or the first year you spend a holiday away from home.

There’s a snack machine that sells lottery tickets at the grocery store. The last time I saw it, every roll of tickets — from Easy Money ($1) to Stars and Stripes ($5) — was sold out. The thought that the New Year will start while you’re living with the same problems of the old one makes people desperate. The open doors of infinite possibility for the future close a little bit more every January 1st. So what is there to be merry about this Christmas?

Living next door to a half-way house gives some perspective. Most days, out my window, I watch my neighbors live their lives of smoking and sulking. My bedroom faces out over their back porch where, rain or shine, they walk out two at a time and stand under the sun-umbrella to smoke. There’s a new guy or two every couple weeks. In some ways, the most recent New Guy is like all of the old guys: middle-aged, balding, and a smoker.

Their lives revolve around cigarettes. If you have cigarettes, it’s a good day; if you don’t have cigarettes, it’s like most days. The New Guy, like everyone else, talks about his money problems in terms of cigarettes:

New Guy: “Can I borrow a cigarette?”
[No response. Old Guy hands New Guy a cigarette.]
New Guy: “Yeah, alright! I’m gonna pay you back… Thursday.”
[No response. Old Guy makes a face at New Guy as if to say, “Is that so?”]
New Guy: “Yeah. Thursday. I gotta clean my sister’s house. Make 40 bucks. Get another pack of cigarettes.”
[No response. The two continue smoking in silence.]

At first, New Guy didn’t act much different than any of the old guys. A few days before that conversation, the old Filipino Woman (who speaks on the phone in Tagalog at 4am) approached one of the veteran Old Guys smoking on the porch:

Filipino Woman: “I wanted to trade you some coffee for some of your creamer?”
[No response from Old Guy]
Filipino Woman: “Do you want some coffee? I want to borrow some creamer.”
Old Guy (excited): “Cigarettes?”
Filipino Woman: “No. Creamer. For coffee.”
Old Guy (disappointed): “Oh?” His voice trailed off without answering her question. She walked back inside fed up.

While the old guys’ hopes and dreams are based primarily on the availability cigarettes, there’s something different about this New Guy.

The problem with eavesdropping through a window is that you don’t get all the details, so you have to fill them in yourself. You’re never listening until someone’s already said something out of the ordinary. On a Saturday two weeks ago, I caught the conversation at, “I love her. She’s my best friend.” That’s what made me look out the window. New Guy was talking to The Drummer: the guy who taps his feet when he smokes like a drummer keeping time. “After I got divorced. We met a little while after. I loved her from the minute I saw her, man.” It blew my mind. He had something to say that wasn’t about cigarettes. I kept listening in. “Yeah, man. She’s out there making money.”

Out “there”? Out where? He said something about truckers. He said something about Nevada. Vague bits and pieces stirred over the next few days of conversations until I realized that New Guy’s girlfriend works seasonally at a Bunny Ranch in Nevada. She’s a professional prostitute.

Every day I hear New Guy and The Drummer or any of the old guys are outside, New Guy pines over his girlfriend. “She’s my best friend,” he always adds to the conversation. The “conversations” are usually mostly one-sided because all everyone else talks about is cigarettes.

So what is there to be merry about this Christmas? What is there to look forward to this New Year? New Guy’s love and best friend travels from San Diego to Nevada to make money sleeping with strangers. New Guy might be employed. He might not be. Either way, he can’t afford his own cigarettes. But when he talks about her, for those few moments on the porch, he’s more excited than anyone has ever been in that house about anything. (Except for the night the woman shrieked in her bedroom for an hour, and we almost called the police).

The old guys eagerly anticipate getting the cigarettes they don’t have. When life doesn’t provide them, it gives them another reason to be unhappy. New Guy — middle-aged, balding, broke, living in a house full of transients — looks at what he does have: a best friend that took him over 40 years and a divorce to find.

Maybe January 1st would be less depressing if we concentrate on what we have instead of what we want. Some days you’ll have cigarettes, and some days you won’t. The new year doesn’t just close off possibilities, it’s creates new, unexpected ones. Maybe next year you’ll quit smoking entirely.