An open letter to friends

I recently wrote a letter to a whole slew of my local, real-life Superfriends.  Most of whom I've known since my first year of university, now 14 years gone.  (Holy crap...)

We irregularly get together for what have been dubbed Men's Mental Health nights. A chance to congregate in force as we once did during the heady days of post-secondary freedom.  There is frequently good music, bad food, Guitar Hero, karaoke, geeky games and childish behaviour, all of which is lubricated by alcohol.  Good times.

Some of these events have descended into quiet, introspective, bullshit sessions where a circle of good friends chat semi-drunkenly about life in general and its various trials, tribulations and triumphs.  These have always been my favourite parts, though they are the least frequent.

I've never hosted one, so I thought I'd invite that same group to my place at the end of September.  Since I'm hosting, I can steer it a little better.  As I tend to do, I got a little long-winded and introspective in the letter, and I thought the bulk of its contents would marry well with some of the sentiments I express here on occasion.

So, in nearly its entirety, I've posted it below.  If anyone who reads this is around at the end of the month, feel free to drop by.

---

Friends, Brothers, Countrymen... lend me your rears!

September has sneaked up and revealed herself from where she lay hidden among the dense foliage of the trees in full summer bloom.  She now descends upon us with all the subtlety of the ripened pine cones deflecting off the cast iron lid of the barbeque on my back patio.  Enough to make me start, look up, and wonder what made that racket, but also leaving me uncertain about a definitive source and, as usual, cursing the squirrels.  She is wily and capricious, is September, and the still-long, warm days are yet enough to drive out the nascent melancholic thoughts of the long, cold winter who is not so subtle nor as kindly in her reminders.  (Bitch.)

Still, with this month comes the inevitable awareness of impending autumn and a year that is mature enough to merit looking with anticipation (and perhaps some foreboding) at the next one.  Such ponderous temporal matters cannot but bear tangential fruit of their own, and it is with this in mind that I sit here, wax introspective on random matters, and foist a selection of my mental maundering on those whom I should like to accuse of being - to some degree or other - fully complicit in the act and execution of friendship.  (Or, if you prefer, we at least have shared in an occasional evening of Dionysian comportment.)

As the year wanes, so too (it seems) has the frequency and vigour with which some few of us come together to renew a spirit of fraternity.  Bertrand Russell once said, "The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship and affection."   It is this latter thing which motivates me today.

Evolution, aside from being a driving biological force, can, I think, be rightly applied to relationships, and in that respect it moves as lightning through a charged sky when compared to the tectonic drone of nature's stately algorithm.  If I am to gauge myself by the friendships that have graced my time, then what stands before me is the onerous yet enjoyable task of counting and stacking my wealth, for I have been blessed with an enviable bounty both in quantity and quality.  Few men may lay claim to such boon companions as you who have graced my side, though my appreciation thereof may not, at times, have been as full of grace.  Perhaps, in the face of such plenitude, a man may be wont to shy away from what he thinks he is not truly worthy to accept?  A question I've asked myself, not infrequently.

And so, in the same way a wealthy man will hoard his lucre, hide it away in investments, place it up on a dais as a priceless objet d'art, buy enough real estate that his personal playground acts as an unwitting moat, rather than take what he's earned and extract his full enjoyment as his just desserts -- so too in this way can a man view the friendships he's cultivated, from further afield the older he gets, and with a sense that what he has can be admired and likewise placed on a pedestal for its perceived worth, but not, alas, to be grasped joyfully and wrung out for all the fruit it will bear.  He little knows, too often, that the true fruit of friendship can never, in earnest, be wrung dry.

There are extenuating circumstances that assuage a good portion of the guilt a man can lay at his own feet, if he's willing to acknowledge them.  Other relationships emerge, bloom and, sometimes, evolve to an unexpected degree.  Women happen.  Sometimes when you least expect, though it may have been your heart's desire.  From that, a whole myriad of potential arises, and a man can allow himself to be subsumed by such a heady addiction -- or a man may choose to be.  Great swathes of geography rear up and impose themselves between erstwhile inseparable chums, and when distance becomes a new factor in an old equation, the end result is not entirely predictable.  These and many more things besides intrude upon the intentions naïvely embraced on the playground.

Never mind the effect that having children has on a man's social circle.  Priorities.

An actual point must exist somewhere in all this, right?  I hope so too.

I greatly value my friendships, but these days appreciate them from afar, only occasionally jumping in, knee deep, to revel in the muck of unabashed camaraderie.  Relationships that were kept up regularly have been relegated to a semi-annual or annual renewal.  Sometimes less frequent than that.  I have consoled myself with the reasons given just above, and others not mentioned that also have their merit.

But it doesn't compensate.

Basically, all of that was a roundabout way of saying that I'd like to reserve a Saturday night in September to stage a Men's Mental Health night, chez Fraser.  I intend it to be a very low-key affair, with little in the way of distracting amusements.  There's a fire-pit in the back corner of my yard and seating - on chairs and a few stumps - for about a half dozen.  More can be wrangled.  I'll fill the cooler with ice and a dozen or two of Keith's or Sleeman's and encourage others to bring what they want.  I can whip up a whole whack of burgers and smokies, too.

Some food, fire, and everyone's personal preference in 80 proof lubrication.

There's a futon in the basement and a couple couches for those unwilling or unable to leave with the last embers of the fire.  Family's still home, so some vestiges of propriety will be expected to make up part of your attire.  (Not much... but some.)  If you come early, the wee boys are fun to throw about in the backyard.

So, I propose:

Saturday, 29th September 2007

5 - 6 PM (ish) or whenever

[address redacted]

(map fun available on request)

Please RSVP via email so I know if anyone will come.  I was the only attendee at my post-vasectomy Star Wars marathon pity party, and I'll want to know if I need to buy myself another really big bag of Cheetos to keep me company.

Yours Fraternally,

Simon

*********************

"If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone.  A man should keep his friendships in constant repair."

~Samuel Johnson

Comments

[marian]

You've got some patient friends, Simon.

[Moksha Gren]

I hope you've given them enough time to respond, Si. They may still be wading through the prolouge by the 29th ;)

It is a beautiful letter though. Thoughtful, sincere...and very, very "you." I only regret that I will be unable to attend. Lord knows I do love flinging other people's kids around

[Simon]

Marian, yes, they are very patient. And what a delightfully pointed observation in the face of such grandiloquence! (I think they've come to expect it of me on occasion now. Or at least aren't terribly surprised.)

Moksha, and my boys are so eminently flingable. A shame. I was hoping to marry sincerity with pretention in that letter. You give me hope that I succeeded. And as for your prologue quip, we may end up bumping it to the following weekend, since there's a wedding on the 29th that will occupy most of the prospective attendees for my little Mental Health thing. So hopefully they'll have read through the entire letter by then!

[Émilie B]

In some ways, they really made the Sims a realistic game, didn't they?... keeping relationships alive by calling up on friends and stuff... I wouldn't be too worried about getting a couple attendees, if I were you: surely by the time they finish reading all the invitation, they will feel they have invested enough time already in the occasion that not going will stop being a viable option. ;)

[Mark]

I finally took time to read this. I think you wrote it like this to weed out any poseurs. Anyone who reads this letter and RSVP's "yes" is damn sure the kind of man who will attend.

Geographical far-flungness from friends indeed sucks lagoon water. Proximity, however, does not guarantee regular interaction.

Dang real life for getting in the way of buddy time.

I hope it turns out to be a grand reunion rather than a time for you to hang out with Chester Cheetah.