I spent the day with someone who I am going to call friend. They have a name but that name is not as important as the overall concept of friendship to me.

Many of you don’t know this but I have 3 brothers and a sister, I am the youngest of 5. Well 5 that we know about, Lewis is a whore. I mean I *think* he’s still alive, I haven’t noticed the one brother I follow on Facebook mention his death yet.

I am my mother’s only child and the youngest [known] of my father.

I was one of only 2 girl grandchildren, my uncle had 5 boys, my aunt 1 son and a daughter. After the death of that male cousin I would never meet my aunt, my mother’s twin had a breakdown and was never the same again. It caused her to be estranged from my grandmother so there I was all alone. The only girl, in a family of women. The women in my family didn’t make great spouse choices, and my Uncle while loving had his own issues with a wife who the women of my family would not accept.

There I was all alone until we moved to Limekiln Pike. I remember when Bonnie finally moved me into that house, I think it was the first day, she sent me to the corner store to get a loaf of bread. I was 6. I walked down the street and as I almost got to the corner I saw two other little girls playing on their front steps. Little me waved excited and said hi, they appeared to be my age. They waved back. I remember running as fast as my chubby legs could carry me to the store then, and back. I burst into the house and told mommy I made 2 friends.

I didn’t know really what friendship was then. I didn’t know then that I could have been rejected by those 2 girls. It never occurred to me that we would not be friends, I didn’t know that could be a thing. Of course I would learn it later in life but little me, saw commonality and in a world that hadn’t conditioned me yet I took a leap of faith.

40 years later those two girls aren’t an active part of my life. It’s not that I ever stopped loving them, its that our paths had to diverge. One after a troubled teen/20s found a faith she could believe in and she holds it tight. That faith doesn’t make room for a queer kinky chick. The other moved to a different state and we kept in touch and in love for many years until Bonnie had her stroke. The things that I had to do to keep my family afloat after that weren’t something she could handle and like happens with humans sometimes we leave when we don’t know what else to do.

I am sure that if you lined up all of the people I’ve called friend over the years some would say that I am not a good one. That’s been on my mind heavy the past week. Not those who I’ve had to distance myself from, or have distanced themselves from me, but those who are here this day. I want to be a good friend. I want to be a good person. Of course good is subjective, but I try to live my life in a way that I do the least harm….to others. I haven’t always done that for myself but I am learning.

When you earn the ‘title’ of friend I am over a cliff. I do all that I can to accept you as you present and even when some of that presentation doesn’t align with my personal vizion, I stay. I mean how incredibly boring would the world be if there were. 7 billion mes? If you are true to yourself, if you didn’t vote for Trump, if you don’t torture animals there is a lot of other shit I will overlook in a friend. I don’t ask you to give me the same level of friendship I give to you, and that might be something that I need to alter. Right…because I am not changing enough right now hunh?

This is important though, because the relationships I am going to make moving forward, always forward, are going to have to be different than the past. Everyone just can’t be my friend. I’ve drawn a moratorium on what I am going to tolerate in an intimate relationship, and friendship is intimate. It is at least the way I do it.

As I sat in the bar Friday night, on the tour I didn’t know I was taking until I was inside it, I sat with someone who I’ve been intimate with even though we’ve never had sex. She knows most of my secrets over the past 20 years and she’s pulled bee stingers from my labia. I think that qualifies as intimate. Even though I didn’t have the best of intentions when I sought her out, she being who she is accepted me.

Nothing I did in those first months/years made her blink. The me that you know now is in part because of her. She met me an angry kid in flannel and steel toe boots. She was there last night with my shiny bald head an fashion heels. She’s seen every version of me in between and like many of you see a version of me that is typically outside my vizion. As I make the next move and do the next thing she’s there. I can’t share everything we’ve done, in some cases literally because the statue of limitations is not up. She told me a story today, one that I’d absolutely forgotten, but it was a reminder that friendship for me means if we have to, then we are going over a cliff. I am there holding your hand as the bottom of the Grand Canyon waves at us, if that is what I know you would do in return. Shit, I’ve been prepared to do that even if I know you would not in return but that is a version of me that I am going to allow to retire.

I am not ready to share all of the particulars, and in the end I may not share them all here. Some of it perhaps, but my gut says I am just going to move forward and allow what was to be and what is to come a way to exist. This isn’t about what went wrong, this is about what is right. About the realization to me that the advice I give so freely also applies to me, that it is acceptable to make myself a priority. I am worth going over a cliff for, or even spending 12 hours in lock up. Mind you, I am going to all that I can to avoid either, but life happens and when it does those by my side matter.

It doesn’t mean that I will love those who I have to distance myself from less. That’s not the way my love is set up.

But a very good starting place for these new standards that need to exist in my life is would they be allowed to use the bathroom? I know the answer to that question with this one person I have in my mind, and that is a yes. Hell she might even be allowed to take a shit in the bathroom 😂 If for some reason I am totally wrong about that, although I have to say my best friend does some of her best work on the toilet….[pause] — well we’ve peed in some strange places over the years it won’t be new to us.

Aphrodite Brown