I used to have this friend. He was doing fine by himself, had a decent career and a decent style. Sometimes at night, when he was slightly drunk or felt like talking to someone who wasn’t really a friend, he talked to me. Sometimes in that sometimes, he dropped me a link to quite excellent music. I always ended up adding that to my favorite playlist which was mostly and already made of his.
Things never changed. Always this same excitement and this need of trying. Trying to have the conversation going, trying to outsmart, stretch the nighttime longer before sunrise, or simply to stay awake. He amused me. All of the experience, the common and contrast, the sense of humor and the critics. I was attracted to this intelligence without knowing. Part of the way, I fell for him though the distance between us was a three-hour flight.
But it was never about the silly kind of love between a man and a girl. I liked this person because he understood exactly who I was and constantly, I received a mutual, man-to-man respect. At 1 p.m. someone could find me laughing over the phone screen because my friend was desperately seeking for cigarettes while I calmly enjoyed the night with a bowl of rambutans, and we were talking about some designers we never understood. Sometimes, he surprised me by revealing his one-time friendship with Christophe Lemaire or his short relationship with one of the Chanel muses. It was the sophistication and exotic experience of his that gave me such an addictive satisfaction. I had thought parallel universes was a theory until I knew him.
The most satisfactory feeling of all was imagining he and I smoking at a windy balcony as the night went by, talking about how I wanted to make my clothes and how much he enjoyed his perfume-making workshop.
We haven’t spoken for half a year, I guess. I stopped everything we had by a spur of words and have never regret it. At that moment, I needed my own time to lick my wound and anything reminded me of what I had missed needed to disappear. I probably faced the situation like a child. It probably cost me a friend. But I hope along the way, maybe on a day, I’ll see him again. Perhaps when I finally have what I want and my career finally goes in line, the past tension will be gone. Or I’ll grow up a little.
Earnest Hemingway said: “Write the truest sentence that you can.” This is what happens when a person is being honest. Words won’t stop flowing. I’ve felt distant from myself for a while and my favorite playlist hasn’t been updated for a much longer while. Tonight, I suddenly see what’s new and what’s gone. There are things I should let go and there are also things I should admit wanting to have them back. I miss having a friend who doesn’t see me either young or old. I miss having a conversation with absolutely no boundaries. All those possibilities are one decision away from me and the best thing about them is the fact that I always feel right thinking about it.
If the god of all universes decide to prove his sense of humor, even parallel universes would have to cross each other one day.
