I don’t have many friends. It’s not like I’ve had a lot and some died, or moved, or we had fights and stopped being friends. I just never had many.
This bothers my wife. Partly because she thinks it’s unhealthy (lots of data on this — men over 60 with fewer than two good friends are more likely to lose their hair, gain weight, etc.), but also because she has lots of friends and thinks that long phone calls about delayed planes, GLP-1 side effects, noisy neighbors, grandchildren’s private school woes make her whole. I know it would empty me.
I try to be open, or at least I tell myself that, to finding people who might become friends. I’ve always been too quick to judge, and more times than not I reject people before giving them enough of a chance. Less often, I fall for someone too quickly.
A few years ago, I thought I had made a new friend. He was someone I met playing tennis. I thought this new would-be friend was funny and smart; he was also a lefty — like my wife, sister, and son. He was a good player, and thought I was, too.
“Like a hot knife in butter,” he said as I tracked down a drop shot. We played often enough that someone asked if we were a couple.
There’s an old joke Woody Allen tells about relationships: “A guy walks into a psychiatrist’s office and says, ‘Hey doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken.’ Then the doc says, ‘Why don’t you turn him in?’ Then the guy says, ‘I would, but I need the eggs.’ ”
This would-be friend, who turned out not to be who I thought he was, decided tennis was more important than a friendship, excluding me from games with people he thought were better than I was, while I had him first on my list.
It turns out, he needed the eggs.
I tried becoming friends with another tennis player who had a sharp wit, but turned out to be a racist. There was a woman, but that wouldn’t work.
Then I met another guy. Actually, it wasn’t our first meeting. I’ve known him for 30 years, since our kids went to grade school through high school together. Over the years, we’ve had countless dinners with our wives, sat at an Upper East Side bar living vicariously through my college-age son, visited them in Florida, and had them as weekend guests on Long Island.
He’s in the art business, framing and restoring paintings for museums and billionaires (and for me, gratis). He’s a polymath: He sings and plays the piano beautifully; he knows his art, from pre-Renaissance through the moderns, although he’s not a fan of the recent stuff because there’s a lot less framing that needs to be done; he’s a storyteller — listening to him tell about the time he put his finger through a client’s Degas is “Seinfeld”-worthy, and his exploits as a single guy in the city are a modern-day Portnoy.
Because of a heart condition, he had to stop drinking — and he was one of the best barflies ever — yet he enjoyed the rest of us having our martinis like they were his. He disproved the aphorism “There’s no zealot like a convert.”
He’s also a very good golfer, which may not jibe with the rest. And he’s generous beyond what makes sense; we fight over who pays wherever we are.
After a long career in advertising, where I wrote in mostly 30-second blurbs, I’ve decided to try writing for real. I’ve been writing essays (like this one) that get published here and that I also post on Substack.
Mostly, people like them. I write about personal things, and some of it is sad. He sent me an email a few weeks ago telling me to lighten up. He suggested a few subjects, but I sensed he was worried not just about my writing.
He and his wife came to visit us last week. We had dinner at our house with mutual, good friends from our kids’ school days. I made my steak, famous on both coasts and his favorite. (Also an oenophile, he swirled and sniffed the petit verdot and said it was excellent.)
One Sunday afternoon, my daughter stopped by with her two girls, 4 and 7. They call me Grumpy (surprised?), but my friend saw something else. He jumped right in with the ribbing — the younger one’s going to jail, 5 bucks is too big a payout for diving in the deep end, peeing in the outdoor shower isn’t okay generally, just here.
They left after a few hours, and he told me how magnificent our relationship was. He has his own grandkids, so he knows.
My brother called. He was driving back to Boston from the Cape. I was sitting by the pool, and we were lamenting my mother’s stubbornness. My friend came out and I told my brother to say hi, since they had met a few times at weddings and bar mitzvahs.
I reminded them that they’re both singers — my brother has sung in a cappella groups since college. After trading arcane knowledge about ‘50s doo-wop, my friend started to sing “So Much in Love.” My brother, driving, joined in. Both traded off solos and harmonies until they ran out of steam or forgot the words.
Who wrote it, my brother asked. My friend said, without missing a beat, the Tymes. They exchanged some more a cappella trivia, the groups they had started, the places they had performed (my friend had sung on the corner in front of Neil Diamond’s mother’s dress shop in Brooklyn).
My friend grew up in Brooklyn, the place I think he really considers home. (I was born there, and moved away when I was 2.) I’ve been with him in elevators, restaurants, waiting in line for bagels, and he never fails to pick someone out and ask, “You’re from Brooklyn, right?” (He’s always right.)
After he and his wife left, he emailed me to say what a great time they’d had. Not just for the food, and the beach, and the quiet, but being able to see me with my granddaughters. It was personal in a way I hadn’t heard before. He signed off, “Luv ya.”
Thirty years ago, when we first met, I should’ve known this was a real friend. I should’ve spent more time with him at bars. Ridden in more elevators together. I should’ve made him more steak dinners.
I should’ve known he’d never do anything for the eggs.
Jonathan Cranin lives in Water Mill.