CRAIG IS IN TOWN.

He’ll be staying at our place until the middle of next week. I have no idea where he and Graham are right now, but I guess I should expect to have the house to myself for a few hours, until they either get arrested or realize they should be home when the streetlights come on.

Courtney and I bought a share in a CSA this summer. The first pickup isn’t until early July, but we saved over $100 by joining in March plus we get invited to a members picnic in the farm’s strawberry field in June. I chose a Saturday pickup at a market a neighborhood away; one other market was closer, but their pickups are only on Sundays and Courtney has 2 band practices on Sundays so I’m sure there’d be days when she won’t want to haul ass over to the market for produce and then have to do more important things. On Saturdays, either one of us can pick up the box.

“Or we could go together!” she said, and we were both silent for a second.

“You know we’re going to look like the biggest lesbians in the world,” I replied.

“Ha! What if we bring Melody?”

“Dude, if we show up with a dog, we’ll be drowning in the pussy.”

Because we kiiiind of look like lesbians, anyway. We both dress like tomboys, we laugh like stoner dudes, and I’m the bigger, butchier one while she’s smaller and daintier. Also, I don’t know if it’s a lifetime of being taller than most people or repeated viewings of Hook, but I have a deep impulse to stick up for anyone smaller than me, and I suppose my posture around Courtney is a little more protective than it is around, say, Graham.

So yeah. We’re in lesbians with each other.

Before I moved to Seattle, I was warned that it was hard to make friends here. Apparently there’s a thing called the “Seattle Chill,” where it takes people about 2 years to decide if they want to be your friend. Before then, they sort of freeze you out. They’re not rude or mean, but they’re not overly friendly, either, and if you find yourself wanting to hang out with people on a friend basis (rather than just bump into them at the same show or whatever) you’re going to have to wait a long, lonely while.

To which I said, “Pfffft, I’ve got friends in Seattle.”

And I did. We already had Luke, Courtney, Mike 1 and Mike 2, and we made friends with Josh, Chris, Dylan, and Rachel pretty quickly (perhaps because all but one of these people are native Midwesterners, and I find than whenever I meet native Midwesterners anywhere else, we seem relieved to find someone else who says “We’re from the Midwest…and that’s okay”). Also I met Rod and Danielle. Then Graham made friends with people at his job, and although I don’t really want to make friends with people from my job, I’m satisfied with being on polite terms with them. While I imagine that it can be hard for people with no existing friend structure to find homies in Seattle, I guess we were just the lucky ones and I do mean lucky, because I leave every interaction with my friends feeling like a better, happier, more fulfilled person for knowing them.*

That’s what I think friends should do. It sounds shallow, but to me, a friend should be useful to you. They should serve an actual purpose in your life. I don’t mean they should be rich or have drugs or perform a service to you, but if you don’t feel like someone fills a space in your life just by being themselves, or if someone’s presence makes you feel more exhausted and frustrated rather than satisfied, then why would you even bother?

I think that a lot of people confuse friendship with an agreement that you always have to be nice and accommodating and accept all of someone’s faults and love them unconditionally, even though you’re not actually required to be nice to someone who isn’t nice to you, and that some people’s faults are really shitty and shouldn’t be tolerated, and why on earth would you love anyone unconditionally when a condition could extend to them sleeping with your spouse or being a serial killer?

Friendship is an agreement, but one that can be fiddled with and ended for any reason whatsoever, but the most important part of the agreement – at least if you’re an adult with friends instead of a child who has to hang out with the booger kid next door because they’re the only one on the block – is that you get to choose who becomes and stays your friend. I choose who I want influencing the way I feel. I choose who to kick out of my life because I don’t like who they are (anymore). You’re a grownup. You can do whatever the fuck you want with whomever the fuck you want.

If someone thinks you’re a lesbian in the process, then it’s just something you’ll have to accept.

*Word of advice: buy Cards Against Humanity and play it with your closest friends. If you lose, then you’ll definitely feel like a better, happier, more fulfilled person because losing means you’re not the worst person you know.

Also someone will laugh until they choke, and everyone will wipe tears from their faces, and it’s really a terrific game and you should definitely buy it.