Misplaced Commas in Life
The friends we choose
If my writing were a friend, a rough kid you knew in school, a kid you never lost touch with, accepting of his faults, would you take his calls given his inability to explain himself in a coherent way?
Or would you see him only after a length of time, maybe a quick catch up? Someone to spend time with and reason that you’re joining up to talk about your once shameful lives.
Or meet up to wander together through well-known streets on foot. Streets that no longer have mystery, but walked with him offer a different experience.
Maybe he was once a friend, but now a person to ghost, knowing he is still a boy who never found a sense of longing, content listening to sailors talk of their far-flung wanderings, or a man who daily falls in love on the tube heading to the West End.
A fault-lined friend who brings a mixture of rich profusion, crates, boxes, and baskets of goods from the farthest edge of the earth. His strange ideas written on a bale of goods, not understood, but mysteriously exciting to open.
You keep him a friend because he sought happiness and satisfaction through the agency of magic, but because of a sleight of hand never matured as planned. You know he’s a friend worthy of better, who can still learn.
Perhaps you’re not sure why you keep him close, given his faults, drinking in public houses, keeping the company of Soho woman, his shoddy writing-style life without him offering excuses for his behavior or misplaced commas. He’s a dirty rat, and you know it. But…
So, he’s a secret friend, outside those you usually keep. Bright, intelligent and literary conversational friends met up with for an hour in a French café, their writing style and education a pleasure to behold. He’s not that friend, not worthy of that much attention.
Instead, he’s the guy you get a call from to have that pint of ale, accepting of his welcoming demeanour, listen to him talk on everything you thought ugly, or never appreciated, and suddenly you’re in that room in his mind, inside its broken walls, watching him drop down his own little love bombs, but no-one looks up.
Yes. He knows you ghost him.
But then, he knows too, you’ll come by for that occasional pint of ale, talk together about shameful lives and misplaced commas.
