“My former employee left rather abruptly with a medical condition,” I told the judge, “and when he left, he left the dog food. I threw it out because it was attracting mice. And he never even asked my permission to bring his dog in the first place.”
“And the bike?”
“Your Honor, look at me,” I said. “Do I look like I ride a bike?”
The judge dismissed the case. But as long as I was there, I decided to see what was in it for me.
“Your Honor, I had mice in my McQueen shoes,” I said. “Can I at least get some money out of him for the exterminator?”
Chapter Seven
The No Matter What Club
A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
—Arnold H. Glasow
In today’s disposable culture, we throw away people like we do razors, always assuming there’s someone better out there to hang out with, or to work for—people who will never embarrass us, let us down or offend us. I see it all the time in my own life and others’ lives, and even in my office. When one of my employees or one of her friends says something insensitive late at night after a few too many drinks, she spends the day on the phone putting out fires, judging or overreacting. I’ll hear things like “Do you have any idea what you did last night?” or “Listen, I need my space, this isn’t working for me,” or “You betrayed me!” Just like we’ve been programmed to walk by homeless people lying on the street in desperation, we’ve been programmed to dump and discard friends anytime we’re hurt or something inappropriate has been done to us. I hate to break it to you, babe, but you, too, will do things that horrify you and your loved ones in this lifetime! At certain times down the road, you probably won’t even recognize yourself. Join the club. It’s called the human race.
The truth is, is if we keep running away from everyone who hurts or betrays us, we will ultimately end up alone.
The evidence is mounting that we’re suffering a crisis of friendship in our time. A 2006 study found that Americans’ average number of confidantes dropped one-third between 1984 and 2004 (from three to two). Twenty-five percent of people said they had no one to talk to about important things! They also said they were relying more on their families for support. There’s just one problem. As a professor of sociology named Rebecca G. Adams told the New York Times in 2009: “Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships.” And it’s not just our psychological well-being; lack of friends has been linked to higher rates of viral disease, cancer, and even death! See, it does pay to be popular!
The famous Roman orator Cicero is one of my favorite philosophers on the subject of friendship:
What can be more delightful than to have someone to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not someone to feel them even more acutely than yourself. . . . Such friendship enhances prosperity, and relieves adversity of its burden by halving and sharing it. And great and numerous as are the blessings of friendship, this certainly is the sovereign one, that it gives us bright hopes for the future and forbids weakness and despair. In the face of a true friend a man [okay, a woman too!] sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend is he is; if his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his friend’s strength is his; and in his friend’s life he enjoys a second life after his own is finished.5
Is it me, or has friendship lost some of the intensity it seemed to enjoy two thousand years ago? You might be wondering: what the fuck is a No Matter What Club? Well, it’s something I’ve created for us out of a need for true friendship and intimacy.
The No Matter What Club is a group of people who are progressive, open, fearless, and courageous enough to agree to truly be there for one another, no matter what.
Think of it as a list of names you’ve tattooed on your mind and heart. Possibly a few things could get someone kicked off this list, like pedophilia or cannibalism. But for the most part, these are the people you’re choosing to take life’s journey with, through thick and thin, shame and excess, failure and victory. It’s kind of like what a marriage is supposed to be—except better, and purer.
In America, we tend to think of friends as social companions, people to go to the movies with once or twice a month. But your No Matter What Club is not just a list of people you work, meditate, go shopping, or even have sex with. These are people whose team you’re genuinely signing up to be on.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably connected with tons of people in friendship over the years. Maybe you’ve even been lucky enough to love a few of these people (and I hope for your sake they’ve loved you back). It’s possible you’ve told them you’d do anything for them. But think about it now. Would you? It’s weird, because at the same time that our world is disposable, it’s also strangely accelerated. So many of these people we throw away are the very same people we
