Something That You'll Never Comprehend
I've never been a jealous guy. Well, actually, that's not completely true. I haven't been a jealous guy since I wised up. Back in the early days of my dating life - specifically, when I was first involved with Pizza Girl - I found myself irrationally upset when she was talking to her male co-workers or other guys at parties. I'd never before been in a position where I had a lover to lose, so my innate crippling insecurities made me feel like an honorable mention trophy compared to all the other men she interacted with.
Oddly enough, I discovered that opposite-sex envy was a two-way street. One day when Pizza Girl was visiting me at college, I mentioned in passing to a female dormmate that she and I should to go see a movie at the student union. A couple of weeks later, Pizza Girl unexpectedly read me the riot act: how dare I flaunt my relationship with a strange woman, right in front of my girlfriend! I was completely caught off-guard. To me, I had been innocently making plans with a friend. Pizza Girl didn't see it that way, though. To her, I was cheating.
It was during the course of that argument that I came to understand the concept of having platonic relationships. To paraphrase The Kids, it's possible to be friends without benefits. I had been cultivating many friendships of that kind since even the first days of elementary school. I had friends that were male. And I had friends that were female. Until that disagreement, it never even occurred to me that my friendships were co-ed. They just were. It never even dawned on me that a girlfriend might have an issue with me hanging out with other women.
Had that been my mindset, my wife Suzie and I probably wouldn't have made it past our first date. Suzie has a deep bench of friends-only men that she's known all her life, from high school up to our time in Los Angeles. And she's all "Vice versa!" on this subject. She loves the fact that I've got the same thing going with my own group of incredible women bros. (Wait, what's the female equivalent of "bros"? "Bras"? No, that can't be right...)
In every stage of my life, from elementary school in High Point all the way to my editing jobs in Hollywood-Adjacent, someone's gender has never excluded them from my pack of pals. And my life's been so much richer because of those friendships.
In fact, it was one of my distaff buddies who unknowingly led me to that platonic friend epiphany. To this day, this amazing woman still doesn't understand just how instrumental she was to my development as an adult human being, even though I've tried to tell her countless times.
And to think it all started so innocently, on a cool winter morning when I stopped by to see her, to hopefully deal with a problem I was having. A problem that was solved almost immediately by a scrap of paper onto which she'd written a simple lyric from a chart-topping song by the biggest musical phenomenon of 1984...
...PRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION.
Despite my teacher Mr. Patterson doing his best to squash my oddball creative impulses, sixth grade was a blast.
When it came to pop culture, I was awash in 70s greatness. Following the release of Star Wars that summer, I had cobbled together a collection of action figures, posters, and trading cards featuring the greatest movie ever. My brother Jon and I pestered our parents until they gave in and bought us the Shogun Warriors Godzilla figure. We fell under the spell of KISS, rocking out to "Love Gun" and obsessing over their deluxe Marvel Comics magazine. When Christmas rolled around, Santa brought us the very first Lego Technics building set, the now-classic exposed car chassis. At the same time, Dad and I bonded over the extraterrestrial wonder of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Music, movies, comics, toys... sixth grade frigging ruled.
My social life finally kicked into high gear, too, as my network of friends expanded. Not only was I having adventures with my best friend George, the class assignment fairies also brought Jimmy and Glenn into my orbit. Within a very short amount of time, me and Jimmy and Glenn formed a fantastic bond. We customized and launched model rockets. We roamed around the golf course that bordered Glenn's house. We trekked into the untamed woods behind Jimmy's house to cut down free-range Christmas trees. We explored the abandoned cabin and pond in the woods surrounding my neighborhood.
But sixth grade wasn't just a sausage fest. Off in a corner, to the right of Mr. Patterson's desk, sat Nancy.
To the best of my knowledge, Nancy and I didn't interact a lot during sixth grade. I must have known her well enough, though, because in seventh grade, we struck up a great friendship. I remember hanging out with her almost every day at lunch, often with her friend Lynn. Somehow I got it in my head that the three of us could make a ton of money if the two girls were my "prostitutes". Despite the horrifying reality of my plan, Nancy seemed to find it hysterical. She saw the absurd humor in the idea of being sexually trafficked by the palest, scrawniest virgin pimp in middle school. That's when I knew there was something special about her.
High school came along, and our relationship became even more solid. Nancy and I had mostly the same core classes (honors classes, because we were a couple of brainy nerds), so I spent hours with her every single weekday. Over the span of four glorious years, we got each other through the drudgery of the school day with an endless onslaught of stupid, goofy fun. Impersonating our persnickety but lovable English teacher Mrs. Grana during sentence construction drills. Marveling at the actual lizard our English teacher Mrs. Boyles caught and allowed to crawl around in her lacquered copper-hued hairdo. Playing endless good-natured practical jokes in art class on our friend Dewey.. I mean, James. (He doesn't want to be called Dewey anymore. My bad!) Every day I spent in Nancy's company, I got to experience her genuine laughter. She was the best audience a ham like me could hope to have.
And then... college happened.
Nancy and I offering ourselves as presents to our friend Angie.
Only a small handful of kids from my high school graduating class went to NC State. Luckily for me, Nancy was one of those people who also decided to head east to Raleigh. Her dorm, Metcalf, was just a stone's throw from where I lived in Alexander. So the Friday before our first freshman semester started, she came to the Alexander school year kick-off cookout. And for the next couple of years, we saw each other pretty much every day.
It wasn't because we were in classrooms together, though, like when we were in high school. Whereas I had decided to dive head-first into the Computer Science curriculum, Nancy was talented enough to be accepted into the prestigious Design School. On top of that, Metcalf was a "living/learning program", where every resident attended one or two classes in the dorm itself. Combine all that with the sheer size of the university's course catalog, and you can see that whatever overlap our education could have was minimal. It would seem that our daily school interactions couldn't continue.
Except... they did! As Fate (or lack of space on campus) would have it, my first year computer labs were located in the cramped basement of Leazar, the freshman design building! While Nancy was cutting and gluing foamcore in the lofty two-story expanse of the studio space upstairs, I was clumsily typing out Pascal code under oppressive fluorescent lights just a few feet below her. When I'd finished up for the night, or if I just needed a break from the monotony, I'd climb the back stairs and hang with Nancy and her eclectic mix of fellow “designos”. She'd let me doodle all over the sheet of paper that protected her desktop as we gabbed away until the sun came up and it was time to shamble off to our 7:50am classes.
Nancy's creative urges didn't stop with her design work, though. She was also keen on photography. She had one of those fancy professional cameras, with different lenses and flash attachments that all fit into a big nylon bag. And when it came time to shoot pictures for her photography class, she turned to the most willing subject she could find: me! We ran all over campus finding goofy ways to fulfill her class projects. While she was swapping lenses and changing stops and adjusting focus, I was hanging from railings, molesting helpless trees, and generally being her trained monkey. She exposed roll after roll of expensive black and white film on me, her the nascent Mapplethorpe to my eager Croland.
We even got to eat together most mornings. On any given weekday there was a revolving door of her friends and my dormmates at the table, but Nancy and I were the nucleus of our own personal breakfast club. (No jocks, no bad boys, no popular kids... just nerds and foreigners.) Nancy would roll her eyes as I evaluated the female "talent", granting only the hottest of babes a coveted "four stars". One morning, falling asleep in my institutional eggs after two sleepless days in the computer lab, Nancy kept barking "Donald!" to snap me back to consciousness. Getting up before 7am every day was a drag, but knowing I'd be kicking off my day with my good pal made the trek across campus worth it.
And we both loved music. The thing is, we had very different tastes. While I was rocking out to the epic tunes of Queen or swaying to the synth pop jams of A Flock Of Seagulls, she was basking in the warmth of Fleetwood Mac or grooving to the sleek moody vibe of Glassmoon.
We did find some common ground, though. We discovered the video for Utopia's song "Crybaby", which had the most incredible visual ever: an electronic drum kit mounted on a rotating motorcycle chassis! Different people introduced us to the immaculate jangle pop of Mitch Easter and Let's Active, but the end result was the same: we fell in love! She got a kick out of how I inserted Mick Jagger's creepy "Look at me!" from "State Of Shock", his collaboration with The Jacksons, into every conversation.
And then there was Prince. Despite Purple Rain - both the album and the movie - being everywhere, I still hadn't climbed aboard the Paisley Express. But I was very taken with the intro to the song "Computer Blue". Wendy and Lisa's sultry opening exchange got my boy parts tingling like crazy. Nancy was the first person to play it for me, because she knew I'd have some sort of reaction. And she was right! What she didn't expect, however, was that I'd comment on their sexy exchange all the time. To the point where she was sick of hearing me talk about it. (Let this be a lesson to everyone out there: don't push me. I will always take things too far!)
That first year in college with Nancy was fantastic. Back in Alexander, I was usually hanging with Erik or Steve or Frank or any combination of my new friends. But out in the wilds of the campus environs, I found myself spending a lot of time with Nancy, a groovy gal with oodles of talent who put up with my immature nonsense and treated me like an equal. She was the best kind of friend a guy like me could have.
I covered Nancy's design desk with cartoons of Michael and Mick. "Look at me..."
There were forces at work behind the scenes, however... forces that were trying to harsh our mellow. Okay, so maybe that's a little dramatic. It's more like we had a bunch of yentas getting all up in our business. See, one of the downsides of having a really good friend who's a member of the opposite sex is that friends and family start dropping hints - some subtle, some overt - that the two of you should get together.
My mom was the worst. Sometimes she'd try to be sly. "You know, that Nancy is so nice." "That Nancy is so smart." "That Nancy is so pretty." No duh, Mom. But then... dear God, there were the times she'd just brute-force hit me with "You and Nancy would make a great couple", or "Why don't you and Nancy go out?", or "I think you and Nancy are going to get married!" I'd scoff and try to wave her off, but Mom never gave up. She was relentless.
Some of my high school friends would prod me, too. "Hey, why don't you make a move?" "She's hot, dude. Go for it!" The more I poo-poo'ed their suggestions, the more they egged me on. It seems like everyone had an opinion about our friendship, and how things would be so much better for the two of us if we'd just take the next step.
Now, when we were in college, I received a much different reaction to our friendship. You know that bit from Seinfeld, where Jerry complains that people think he's gay because he's single, thin and neat? Well, because I was single, thin, and artistic, everyone in Nancy's design studio thought I was gay. (Not that there's anything wrong with that...) It got so bad that one night two of her fellow students scampered past me, smacked me on the back of the head, and called me a "little queen". Two actually out-of-the-closet gay guys, were gay-bashing me! Just for hanging out with a female friend I wasn't dating.
None of that noise affected our situation, though. I was happy just being Nancy's pal. We'd known each other since we were eleven years old. We were almost brother and sister. I mean, sure, on paper, she was the perfect girlfriend - smart, creative, funny, classy, gorgeous - but once a friendship has been established, you can't take it to the next level. You never, ever "cross the streams". It's just not done.
...Or is it?
Violating Nancy's personal space at our friend Angie's wedding. October 1999.
Maybe it was the constant needling from my family and friends. Maybe it was the loneliness I felt creeping in around the edges of my heart. Maybe it was the ocean of sexual-prime hormones sloshing around inside me. Maybe I was just stupid.
But at some point, my mindset changed. Shifted, just a little. I started rationalizing with myself that maybe, just maybe... Nancy could be my girlfriend.
I really, really didn't want to start going down that mental road. I did my best to banish any us-as-a-couple thought from my fevered brain. But it was no use. That big mistake of a horse had escaped from the big mistake barn.
That dumb idea started affecting the way I acted around her. Gone was the loosey-goosey goofiness that I always exuded. Now I was becoming nervous in her presence. I was having trouble making eye contact. I think I did an okay job of not making it too obvious that I was fighting an internal battle every time we were doing something together. But for days, my mind kept running through every possible scenario in which I could organically pose that most momentous of questions: "Do you wanna go with me?"
It was one of those nights, when my vision was blurring from hours spent staring at the cheap green-tinted monitors in the computer lab, that I made the regular climb up Leazar's back stairs to Nancy's design studio. But this time, I wasn't just looking to kill time... I had an agenda. With each step, I was rolling ideas around in my head. Having practice conversations with my mental Nancy avatar, trying to find the perfect way to drop a hint.
When I entered the studio, there she was, in the middle of a confab with one of her fellow classmates. After a quick wave of acknowledgment, I nonchalantly strolled over to her desk with the intention of starting another epic cartoon. I grabbed one of her pencils and got ready to start drawing...
...only to be stopped dead in my tracks. In between all the doodles and scraps of foamcore, written in Nancy's distinct loop-heavy handwriting, there was a snippet of lyrics. Surprisingly, they weren't from Queen or Fleetwood Mac, they were from a completely unexpected source: Prince's song "I Would Die 4 U", from Purple Rain. Just three short lines:
I'm not your lover
I'm not your friend
I am something that you'll never comprehend
I'm not your friend
I am something that you'll never comprehend
Holy crap. I felt faint. There it was. There was the answer to the question that I'd let others plant in my soft, malleable brain.
Did she just absentmindedly scribble down those lyrics in a moment of distraction? Or did she know what was going on in my head, and purposefully hoped to put the kibosh on my intentions?
In the long run, it didn't matter how those words worked their way out of Nancy's brain, down her hand, and onto that sheet of paper. Whether by way the Universe or her own volition, all that matters is that I got it. Right then and there, in that split second of a moment, my dilemma came to an end.
Nancy would always be more than just a lover or a friend. To me, for me, with me... she would always be Nancy, as the Universe intended her to be.
And that was just fine with me.
Me, Paul D., Suzie, and Nancy at my 50th birthday party. She traveled 3000 miles just to celebrate my big day.
A few months after I'd graduated from college, after Nancy and I had spent an evening roaming around Greensboro, we stopped for a stroll through a small park. When we settled at the lone picnic table, she dropped a bomb on me: in a few weeks, she'd be starting a new job in Washington D.C.
Her announcement hit me like a runaway truck. We'd gone through high school together! We kept each other company in college! I mean, for Pete's sake, we'd been knocking around as pals since 1977! I guess I had this wacky idea that we'd be starting our "adult lives" together as well, commiserating about our workplace travails over dinner every weekend at each others' apartments.
Nancy had other plans, it seemed. After all the years of being geographically available at a moment's notice, she would be gone. She was leaving. I mean, really leaving. Hundreds of miles away leaving.
I remember looking at her in the half-glow of the streetlight as I tried to wrap my brain around her completely unexpected declaration. Here was this vibrant, college educated young woman who was taking the reins of her future. But all I saw was the girl with the fringed leather purse who I kept in stitches during seventh grade lunch. She was anxiously waiting for me to say something. And I was trying to say something... but my brain couldn't put the words in order.
To be honest... I was upset. My life at the time was a mess. My long-term relationship with Pizza Girl had come to an ugly end. (Spoiler alert: she'd be back...) Despite having a brand-spanking new computer science degree in hand, the recession that was brewing made it impossible to find a position anywhere in my area. My family was driving me nuts with their complaints about my lack of job hunting success. My bank account was empty. Nothing was going my way. And then, out of the blue, one of my best and oldest friends, one of the few people bringing a little fun to my stressful life, tells me she's leaving me behind.
That was the last straw. Nancy was going to go be happy, while I was stuck in a quagmire of despair I couldn't free myself from. I was upset. I was hurt. I was jealous as hell. (Yes, in the moment, I was making it all about me.)
Now, I could have let that initial surge of envy run away with me, causing me to unleash all my frustrations on her. I could have challenged and doubted her decision. I could have done a lot of unintentional damage to our friendship.
But I didn't. How could I not be happy for her? She was awesome, and she deserved every success her talents could afford her. So I told her how excited I was for her. I listened intently as she explained what she'd be doing. When I drove her home, I gave her a huge hug on her doorstep. I told her I loved her. I wished her nothing but the best.
And then Nancy was gone.
Well, not gone forever. We've seen each other a zillion times since that fateful night. I've gone to DC to visit her, and she's made the cross-country trip to hang with me in CA. We've attended weddings, parties, and memorials. We've traded emails, birthday cards, and phone calls. Every time I hear the opening chords of "Computer Blue" or "I Would Die 4 U" or any song off of Purple Rain, my thoughts instantly cascade to Nancy, and that night in her studio.
Nancy and I are a few thousand miles apart, but when we hear each others' familiar voice on the other end of the line, it's as if no time has passed at all, as if we're still teenagers catching up over coffee and eggs in the dining hall. The memories come flooding back, the laughter starts almost immediately, and all is right in the world.
Nancy has marked my life forever. And I love her for it.
Besties for life.