An Acrostic Essay on Friendship
co-published with brothmonger
B eginnings often feel romantic. Ours is no exception.
R ead her entire newsletter archive on an evening during the time of year when I forget how soon the day concedes to night and I neglect to turn on any lights in the house, relying on a sun that has already descended beyond the hillside. Lit by the halo of my laptop screen, I’m down the rabbit hole of soup. I scroll. I scroll. I scroll. Earlier this week, my friend’s boyfriend asked me if I've ever heard of the brothmonger? He knows her from his neighborhood, where she sells soup out of a pizza shop. She’s a writer, too, he offered me, and still I’m uncertain if this statement was meant as a form of connection (writer to writer) or a condemnation (that as a writer, in this city, I should already know of her). I left my sales job to allow more space for writing and for sanity and one year later I still hate writing and I’m skint. But reading brothmonger makes me hopeful to write again. Her voice is urgent, familiar, hilarious. Maybe we could meet for a coffee or for a drink and this city would feel less lonely, or I’ll find joy in writing again? She signs off each email I love you and I think I love you, too.
O n Galentine’s Day, I chug a mimosa and hype myself up in the bathroom mirror of a friend’s apartment. The brothmonger is here. My writer crush is here. On this holy day celebrating friendship between women! Is this a sign? This is my chance. I’ll tell her that I’m a writer, too, even though I don’t believe it. I’ll tell her that I love her, even though I don’t really know her. But I do love her. I love her curls piled on top of her head and her red lipstick and the generous warmth that radiates from her skin as I’m stood beside her on the balcony.
T hree months later, she invites me to a party at her friends’ house in my neighborhood. You’re my date, she texts me. I stand under the large tree on the curb outside my house with a dairy-free honey loaf covered in a striped dish towel. Familiar insecurities return: unanswerable questions I haven’t asked since I was actually dating five years ago. Does this outfit look exceptional without trying too hard? What does it mean that our first time hanging out is with a group? Is this a test? & how do I pass? Which parts of me do I reveal & in what order? I look down at the twisted uneven roots under my feet. I hate that you can see my faded toenail polish but it’s too late to change out of my birkenstocks. Sarah pulls up with her friend and I buckle myself into the backseat beside the largest bowl of potato salad I’ve ever seen. When we arrive, we slide off our shoes as we enter/exit the immaculate kitchen from the patio. The house looks like it could be featured in a magazine, like maybe it has already been featured in a magazine, with shelves of curated personal affectations like vintage cameras, dried flowers, ceramic candlesticks. I take a photo so I’ll have a reference for my aspiration. Outside, the group is arranged in a lopsided horseshoe that becomes larger and more demented as more guests arrive. My seat faces the sun and I raise my hand to my forehead and squint in the direction of whoever is speaking. I consider moving but I conclude this would risk offending the kind strangers sat on either side of me. Everyone here refers to me as Kelsey Pizza and I watch their collective idea of me disintegrate in the air between us like a puff of smoke. How old are you? someone asks me, and I reply. I’m embarrassed to be this young even though I’ve never been as old as I am today. Sarah reaches across the horseshoe-now-circle and hands me her sunglasses. Don’t you need these? I offer a polite hesitation that she ignores. Once I open my eyes fully behind Sarah’s sunglasses, she’s looking at me smiling and I laugh because we are the only two here who know that it’s hilarious that I’ve been staring straight into the sun and still decided not to do anything about it.
H ow many stories have you been told about falling in love? & how many of those are about friendship, not about partnership?
M eals we’ve shared: chicken on the fire, sloppy (sloppy) joes (joes), bar marco with bonus pasta, steak au poivre - so nice we made it twice (thrice), tuesday chicken followed by pavlova, NYE prime rib and boiled potatoes, birthday hibachi and the missing ice cream cake, gyros and lemonade at the st nicks festival, anything that is served with her potato salad, everything on the menu at how lee, cheeseburgers at tessaros, football food, sheet pan pizza buffalo chicken & taco dip, root beer floats and lamb stew,
O ver time, I strain to remember what my life in Pittsburgh looked like without Sarah. Probably like in The Wizard of Oz when your world is all black and white and then you’re in Oz and everything is in color. What really kills me is that you don’t even know that you’re only in black and white when you’re in Kansas, because it’s all you know. You think it’s fine and great except for the tornados, but once you see the colors you can’t believe it was so gray for so long. It’s insulting to consider we only met two years ago. I think about those two strangers: one who knew of the other, such a millennial condition. We would have met eventually - at another party, probably. But what if we never fell in love? I’d never know that her birthday is the day before mine, that she texts exactly like she speaks, that she has vivid dreams and sometimes I’m in them.
N ostalgia is the keystone of our friendship. We tell each other detailed recollections from our past lives. Our families, our jobs, our first boyfriends, our favorite songs from eighth grade, our past and present insecurities, our secrets. Sarah’s memory is rich. Her pitch rises as she is in the grip of a story and I feel like I’m in the pool at her parents house and I feel like I’m in the passenger seat of her car and I feel like I’m in the hallway of her high school. It’s not just the act of reminiscing that is nostalgic. Our friendship vibrates with nostalgia for being young, maybe because we were at this tipping point when met, our friends are having babies and we aren’t carded when we order martinis. We scream our favorite lyrics at each other, we laugh until we cry, which sounds cliche but it’s simply the truth, we text back and forth all day most days, we try on each other’s clothes, we pee together at the bar and make silly faces in the mirror.
G ilmore Girls is one of our shared languages. I love that I can text her with my observations as I re-watch the show for the sixteenth time, like, There is no fucking way that Rory starts in the middle of the year and gets a D on a paper, misses a test that's worth 50% of her grade, and then finishes the year in the top 3% of her class and she’ll reply Why not!?! She works harder than everyone else and she's smarter than Paris.
E ver think about what you count as the milestones in your life? The graduations or weddings or career accomplishments? But also the broken hearts and new addresses and the babies and the funerals. The moments when you knew your life would be irrevocably changed. What about friendship? When does friendship get to be a milestone? Especially the friendships that are not born of circumstance but instead of a commitment to each other, to this relationship that we will continue to make space for as long as we may live.
R eading this? Sarah — you’re generous to the point of delusion, you’re available, you’re honest and unafraid of being yourself even when you’re not feeling your best. You’re funny without being self conscious. You’re sexy and cute at the same time. You’re a girl’s girl who can hang with the guys. You’re interesting and interested. You’ve proved to me that the best friends are really just supportive role models. You’re someone I want to be with all of the time and you are someone I want to be more like. I love you.
Recently, I sent Sarah a voice note and asked if she wanted to co-publish something with me? Because I love her so much? And she replied of course, I will do anything! Just tell me what to write about and I’ll do it! You can read her work, and and learn more about brothmonger below.
