For The Trio

This weekend I got to visit my best friends in the entire world, Jon and Erik. I've known Jon for 9 years now and Erik for about 7. If you ever want to know what I'm really like or just get some dirt on me these are the guys to call because even though since high school we see each other an average of about once a year there is still no one who knows me better than these guys.

I suppose it's the fact that they knew me when I had nothing to lose or prove that makes all the difference. Growing up 3 geeky guys in a suburban wasteland called Ronkonkoma there was very little in the way of a social life outside of the movies and the mall for us. We interacted with people in our classes but with little to relate to or talk about with them we never strayed far from our formula of 3. The fact that we were usually broke and couldn't drive meant that most of our time was spent talking.

Anything and everything was discussed. Conversations we'd had with girls were endlessly dissected, right down to tone and inflection. Morons who dared breathe our air were mocked mercilessly. But more importantly we shared our hopes, dreams and fears. We only had each other, no one else to talk to or feel close to, no one whom we felt understood what it was like to be us. We felt safe on our 3-man island.

So we shared everything; the embarrassing stories and thoughts, the stuff that other people would recoil in horror from. All without judgment. There was mocking sure, but also the well-placed trust that this stuff never, ever went outside the circle. Secrets were shared that would remain with us, and only us, never to be told to spouses, children or priest. Our highs, our lows, we had no one to share them with except each other and it is here that the bonds were forged that will ensure our friendship lasts for the rest of our days.

Because now there really is no one else who understands. We were the only ones there, the only witnesses to 3 kids becoming adults, changing and growing, taking the hits life doles out to teenagers everywhere. We had made our group so close, so very tight, that no one else had gotten in. We protected ourselves by closing ourselves off from anyone who might point at us at our most vulnerable and laugh. So it was that at the end of 12 years of schooling misery we stood alone while other graduates scattered off in groups large enough to field a football team.

And now, 5 years after we left our childhoods behind we still stand together, if not alone. The bond's still there, it never went away. No matter how long we go without seeing each other, without speaking to each other we can still fall right back into the old patterns. The secrets are new, the fears and hopes have changed but still when there's something important there is still no one else who gets it better than my best friends. Because they were there. They saw me as I was then when there was no censor, no responsibilities, no expectations or preconceptions to live up to. At my best and my worst they saw the person I was and the person I was capable of becoming for better or worse.

And so it goes that we got together this weekend and everything was easy again. I didn't have to search for words to express myself because they already had them. I didn't have to justify anything because it was already accepted and in some cases expected. There was no need to tread lightly, no worry of offending because these people know me. They know what I am, what I could be, what I'm not and never will be. It's not that I don't have other friends, many of whom have become almost like a second (or in my case, third) family. But they know me now and they never knew me then and I suppose that makes all the difference.

So this is to us; 3 kids from Long Island who dreamed of getting off that hellmouth and becoming new, better people. Successful, popular, and happy. And here's to achieving all of that without ever having lost sight of who we are and what we will always be: a trio.