Introspect

“Yeah, that sounds like you. Definitely sounds about right…” he said with a light laugh. I could tell my story and accept his jibes and sarcastic comments because I knew him so well. You could say we were lifelong friends. I used to look through my parents’ old photo albums and see pictures of us during a time I was too young to remember. In the earliest days, my father had been diagnosed with an auto immune disease which would not kill him immediately, but without proper care would debilitate him over time and erode his presence. He wasn’t into health and fitness and never really kicked his self-destructive ghetto habits even after he made his career. Pretty narcissistic and cocky, I can say without malice. My mother? Well, let’s just say she was a hopeless romantic – a goody two-shoes who had a bookworm/wallflower personality that made the same mistake too many women before her had made. That mistake was thinking her love could change a bad boy into a reformed thug. She saw the greatness in her mate and passive-aggressively ignored the negative habits. This caused a lot of problems between them in the oncoming years. As an only child, I just wanted to escape reality when those problems bubbled to a boiling point. Thank god I had him as friend who was always around.

“But you know I felt bad about it later,” I said back to him, noticing the smirk on his face. “That really wasn’t meant for her. Everyone else messed it up for her before that.

“Screw it. Gotta look out for number one first, right?” he replied.

“Yeah. Can’t feed no one from an empty plate. Gotta make sure I’m good before I can help anyone else build.” My confidence was brewing as I spoke.

These conversations were typical. Usually I’d meet up with him and shoot the breeze twice a week, both of us sipping on green tea and gunpowder up in a she-she-foo-foo coffee shop in Brooklyn Heights. When times were more hectic though, we just met at my spot in Jersey and drank dandelion tea with some baked chicken wings. We both had a history of borderline alcoholism in the not-too distant past so dandelion tea for liver health seemed appropriate. And the chicken wings? Well, we’re Black so you can go ahead and believe the stereotype ‘cause it ain’t false.  

It was important to me to keep up with him and stay in close contact. I was blessed more than most people to have three good friends I considered my brothers from another mother. But growing up, those three didn’t like each other so I never had a crew. I hung out with each one separately and got used to being alone when they went home or I went back to my home. And as we grew up, we grew apart. We didn’t grow apart in spirit – brothers always have a bond which allows for YEARS to go by yet still be able to pick up where we left off. But each man has to forge his own path in life and that mostly means slaying dragons alone. My friend that I now see frequently was around a lot when I was very young, before I met my three brothers. But I lost touch with him early in high school. That’s typical of childhood friends. For a while I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again, but he was always on my mind. He knew where the “bodies were buried” so to speak and didn’t give up information since he knew he’d be implicating himself. He was a trusted confidant that had no reason to turn me in. So after college, when this whole “adulting” thing started, I thought it would be good to network and start getting in touch with people I been distanced from.

“You remember when we had that stakeout, looking for that clown and his boys that jumped us?” he asked, halfway smiling, yet cringing with his eyes at the memory.

“Yeah,” I said with an absurd laugh. “You really got donuts and coffee like we were cops ‘cause you planned on waiting all night for that fool to come out of his house if we had to.”

Some naïve bastards we were. Good thing that guy didn’t come out of his house since we had serious revenge on our minds. That’s the kind of thing that can change the course of a man’s life permanently if things go too far. But again, my old buddy was the only one who knew that we were going pull off a serious assault so our records stayed clean. And in the following years, our noses stayed clean as well. We would both chase our career aspirations, women we thought might eventually become our wives, and possibilities to take us out of the middle class rat race. And we lost touch again, just as I had with my three brothers. When I went through drama with my girlfriend, I was alone. When I had issues at work that threatened my career, I was alone. And when my finances weren’t secure, I was alone as well.

My wedding is what brought us all together. I had plans for all of my people to attend and reconnect, many old beefs and disagreements being made into bygones. But after the celebration, it was back to being disconnected, contacting the personal network on an infrequent basis and some cases, struggling to find commonalities anymore. Life can push people to the edge to search for quick fixes and the effects of depression can be a bear, so I took the advice of my wife and sought professional help.

“You still reading those philosophy books?” he asked as he took a sip of dandelion chai. “I know a good site that compiles a lot of different philosophies. For quick reference, in case someone asks you if you’ve heard of a certain religion.”

“Nah, not into reading philosophical stuff these days,” I explained. “The Stoic philosophy was the last one I studied. Turns out, I’ve been practicing that the whole time.  Don’t agree with all the meditations and quotes, but you don’t have to agree with everything. Gotta make your own philosophy with what you read and what you experienced at some point.”

“True…” he agreed.

I explained that my therapist was attempting to make me understand that I was somewhat ahead of the game in life. “HOW, SWAY?!?!” is how I would comically reply to her in the fashion Kanye West yelled to Sway Calloway on their Sirius XM interview. Her explanation made sense. It somewhat mimicked some of the meditations of Marcus Aurelius, but all boiled down to making a constant effort for a purpose greater than that of mere personal gain. She once called me a “beautiful soul” in her northern Algerian accent. As I told my buddy this story, he could see how souped up I was over getting a compliment of the sort, especially from someone who was a professional and had no problems breaking the professional protocol for addressing a patient.

“She hot?” he asked

“You’re an ass,” I replied. “I’m not looking at her like that. You go to counseling for therapy, not to bang your therapist.”

“Ok, Ok…” he said. “But is she hot though?”

My friend knows me too well. “Yeah, she’s a pretty lady,” I answered with a reluctant smirk. He laughed and we both took a sip of tea. This would have been a perfect moment between two friends passing a marijuana joint around, but neither one of us smoked. I mean, he never tried it before. Me? I was in my late 30’s the first time I hit a medicinal blunt. Less than .3% THC so no one could even prosecute me for possession. I only tried it since I was getting older and stopped caring so much about Fancy Nancy Reagan’s hypocritical message in the 80s to “Just Say No.” But it did nothing for me so there was no need to continue trying to make it a habit. My friend didn’t know this. One of my three “brothers” once told me in college, “You got drunk for the first time with heads you just met. If you’re gonna get high, at least get high with your boys for the first time.” But once again, two of my boys were dispersed around the country. My third brother didn’t smoke at all. I wasn’t going to let my friend know now that I tried some of the stick icky without him. Besides, I didn’t even get high.

“You see Elon Musk on Joe Rogan’s podcast?” he asked. “Billionaire geniuses getting baked on the air. You know you can do whatever you want when you’re that rich.”

What a segue from the thought I had in my head about my marijuana experience. It’s like my friend knew exactly what I was thinking about.”

“Life goals,” I laughed in response. “My therapist said maybe I should try that to keep my blood pressure down. That’s probably how Elon handles stress. I should-“

Before I could finish my thought, the phone rang. Normally I would ignore it out of manners for my guest, but it was next to me and the caller ID showed that it was coming from my wife. Things had been happening on her side of the family that weren’t so good so I couldn’t just ignore the call as an emergency might be occurring.

“I gotta get up out of here,” I said to my friend. “The lady says things are going down and she needs my help.”

“Ok, no problem,” he responded. “We’ll catch up. Same time next week?”

“Yes sir,” I said with a smile. 

I quickly finished my cup of tea and prepared to go meet my wife. But I couldn’t be rude to my old pal. As I turned around, I looked him squarely in the eye and said “Always a pleasure, homie,” then balled my fist and touched it to the mirror image staring back at me. That old passive-aggressive me who was too stuck in his ways to be flexible had died and left some time back. I was moving forward in my life. But I realized that I couldn’t do that without the lesson he taught me along the way.

Introspect.