The adventures of Some Girl and Pussy Willow
Have you ever thought about what it takes to meet your best friends? For people who are stationary you might meet someone the first day of kindergarten, spend nights together camping in the backyard, share a graduation party, fete them at their wedding, coo at their children, celebrate and grieve with them through all of life’s milestones. Not everyone lives like that though, so while I will be the Maid of Honor in the wedding of one of my best friends from my hometown in September, I will also not see some of my other best friends for six months at a time.
I have always been a choosey girl. I mull over the smallest details and debate the finer points of how tab a will fit into slot b. I just want things to make sense. My friends all make sense.
The you would never guess they’re gay British men, the trendy and stylish Arab from Mississippi, the healthy-living hiker/survivalist from not quite upstate New York, the well educated Swedish woman who has made her home in Rome, the sorority sister from Western Mass who wants to be a wife and a mother and the small town girl who is about to get married to a Sea Captain. I know they are all so different but we chose each other. We manage to make friendship work.
As for Pussy Willow, one of those British men who adopted me all those years ago, here’s how it all went down:
While I was attending school in London one of the other students invited me to his birthday party. At the party I was introduced to my classmate’s boyfriend and the boyfriend’s brother. I had a grand old time and I believe that I stumbled my way up the stairs without too much thought about who was there and to whom I had spoken. I go upon my life as I always did and began to really get out with Reliable and Religious. The boys showed me a side of London that no straight girl had found on her own. I remember the time when I realized that we had stayed out long enough that the tube had resumed service. I realized this because we were at a club built under ground in South London next to a tube station. At first, in my altered state, I thought it was an earthquake. Don’t laugh at me; I never claimed to be smart, I just couldn’t figure out why the walls were shaking. But I digress. Point being, I got on with my life.
A few months later I received an invitation to attend a Thanksgiving celebration with my classmate, his boyfriend and several of their friends. I think that I was invited because I got along with the people I had met at the party, (although I am fucking charming so I get along with most people so that was a given,) but I also balanced out the male to female ratio. It turned out that my classmate and I were the only two Americans in the room, but if you can’t enjoy a Thanksgiving meal with a bunch of British people, then when can you? I must say it was one of the prettiest Thanksgiving meals I had the pleasure to attend. Those gay boys really pay attention to detail. The ice cubes with cranberries frozen in them and the tastefully decorated table made it more of an event than my previous Thanksgivings.
As we sat down, I found my self seated next to my classmate’s boyfriend’s brother (are you keeping up?) and we re-introduce ourselves. This is the bit where the gun in the first act is used to kill someone in the third act. About thirty seconds into the conversation I find out that the brother is also gay. You can imagine my line of questioning (two brother, no other children, both gay, how did the family take it) and he took my inquisitiveness really well. He answered my questions and laughed at my jokes. Somehow, as it always does, the conversation turned to partying. While I made no claims to be the great-grand Pubah of parties, I did accept the statement that I had been to a club or two to be true. Eventually the brother and I decided that we must celebrate the end of Sunday with a midnight trip to LA3.
To say that we had been drinking would be something of a mild understatement, we were downing vodka before the dinner, then the better part of a bottle of wine each, and several glasses of champagne after the meal, but I believe that to this day we will both swear on a Bible, we were not that drunk. Just to set the record straight, of course. So we meander back to his place to party prep. I believe the party prep included two packs of cigarettes and several bumps of K. I was fine, he was fine, we both were all kinds of fine. Nothing was happening, we thought that we should get across town before the night ended. Up we stood and made our way to the top of the stairs. I then looked at him and said: “I am afraid, help me, the stairs are moving.”
The sensation can only be described as weightless. I think that if I had the opportunity to walk on the moon, this would be the same exact physical feeling. I thought the ground was moving up to me and my feet were not really landing each step. I held onto the railing and wall for dear life and prayed that I didn’t die. He was right behind me, giggling up a storm but as fucked as I was, he was too. He was doing the same exact thing as I. Finding a cab was no problem, telling the cab driver where we wanted to go was a problem. We thought we were shouting, turns out we were whispering. I remember the exact thoughts that were running through my head as we sat in that cab. I suspected the cab driver of listening to our conversation and I swear he was looking at us in the rearview mirror and that HE KNEW. Well, if two clearly fucked people got in my car and started whispering furiously I would probably check them out too. I can see this now; then I was sure he was going to turn us in to the police.
The night was fine and all that stuff with lots of dancing and happiness that ensued. I don’t really remember too many more specifics, well I do, but no one wants to know about the grossest 245 pound short guy who kept putting his hand down the back of his pants and then smelling his fingers. And the guy getting fucked in the bathroom in front of me. And the boy in such a bad way he pulled off all his clothes and started pouring beer on himself to cool off.
Anyways, my partner in crime and I stayed in touch and saw each other every now and then, in fact more than I saw my classmate. These days my classmate and I live in the same country and I see less of him than his boyfriend’s brother. Back to the story at hand.
Last November I went back to London for Thanksgiving. We of course met up and celebrated our one-year anniversary. I believe we did so by drinking heavily. He had cut back on the drug usage, he felt the drugs impeded his ability to make wise decisions and affected his ability to find cute boys. I still don’t know what he meant. Whatever. While sitting on his couch, he suggests that we watch a movie. Movies he has, he does a lot of international travel and picks up bootleg DVDs all over the place. He pops in the movie Serial Mom and we settle in for a laugh. I can’t say I laughed so hard at a movie before or since then. We reveled in the Patty Hearst cameo, we basked in the glory that was the Kathleen Turner role, we adored the methods of murder, but most of all we loved the use of the word pussy willow.
And so, he, the brother of the boyfriend of a classmate, is Pussy Willow. I see Pussy Willow every few months when he is here on business and whenever I go there I have a place to stay, but we have grown older and matured. Never again will we get sweaty and dance to house music while a fat man smells his own ass.
Those were the days.