This Needs to Stop

With friendships, how do we really know what the other person is thinking? I might believe someone is my best friend, and later find out from others they were simply tolerating me, perhaps disliking pretty much everything about me. Sometimes, I had that suspicion about Gary, especially after he suddenly ditched me in high school.

Now, 20 years later, I’m sitting on his designer sofa, watching the sunset while sipping a glass of fine French wine. Is this a good time to ask what he thinks about me? But as adults, we aren’t supposed to ask such questions.

And Gary is doing most of the talking. “My other home is an apartment in Paris, on the Rue de Eloise, with a lovely cafe downstairs,” he’s saying, with a sly grin.

“You’ve done really well for yourself,” I sum up the gist of the last half hour of his boasting about how great he’s doing. I'm happy for him.

“I’ll take you there sometime.”

“Wow, dude, I would love that!” Paris would be nice, I’ll need to apply for a passport. And I believe he might actually take me there. Arriving at his mansion in San Francisco, a Tesla, Mercedes, and Ferrari were parked out front. When I rang the doorbell, and a man opened it. Who has a butler in 2025? He probably has a private plane too.

It's hard to believe it's the same Gary from high school. The one with long hair and an army jacket who set the principal’s garbage can on fire. Or maybe I did, and he just helped me, I can’t remember. Life goes on. I survived high school, and then got a job at UPS. Made new friends there, though they eventually got busy with children and couldn’t go out for beers. Sometimes, I order an extra beer for them, and pretend they are still there.

I study his face, now at age 50, Gary now looks like a TV news anchor, but one with a slightly manic intensity. Maybe I should ask him if he was any weed for us to chill out with.

“Come look at this,” he says. I go up to his big picture windows, and look out over San Francisco Bay, where across the blackness of the bay, lights twinkle in the distance. “Berkeley, can you believe it?”

“The summer of love!” I say, not really knowing what it was about, but it sounds cool.

“Yeah, baby,” he laughs, and I feel a spark of our old friendship. “Hey, I’ve got to use the john, be right back.”

Let alone, I sit back down on the white leather sofa of his palatial living room. Nobody’s looking, so I pick up a gnarled piece of wood on the coffee table, holding it to my face. It smells of piney citrus. It reminds me of the woods in Milwaukee I used to play in as a child. I would bury myself beneath a pine tree and think no one could see me there. In South Milwaukee, as kids, playing in the woods and climbing down the steep ravine that went down to Lake Michigan was an everyday event. We would throw rocks into the water until our arms got tired. I’m nostalgic about it. The easiness of life at that age.

Things got complicated about when I hit middle school. There was a few tough years for me there, and then suddenly out of nowhere, Gary showed up, and sort of adopted me.

I was so grateful that even after being ditched a year later, I could never find myself to hate him. First impressions last forever. You decide you like someone, and even if they spend years giving you a hard time, you still can’t stop liking them.

On the other hand, if someone repulses you the first time you meet them – they were rude, or dorky, or smelled bad – the memory sicks. They could act with flawless fucking dignity for years, but you would still keep them at a distance. Friendships are a tricky business.

Gary’s invite came out of the blue, a message on ClassMates.com. Hey man, in SF. Come visit. In the middle of a UPS layoff, my studio apartment deathly quiet, curiosity, maybe desperation, got me on a midweek economy flight to San Fran.

Gary comes back holding a tray of appetizers. I don’t recognize half of them so I grab a piece of cheese.

“I’m happy you came to visit. I always wanted to apologize for treating you the way I did.”

My heart flutters. “No problem,” I say, maybe the mystery of why he dumped me will be answered. Stay quiet and listen, I tell myself. I nibble my piece of cheese like a giant 200lb mouse.

Gary gestures at his huge place. He’s the cofounder of some AI company, that much I have learned. “Do you remember that video game we programmed in the 8th grade? Who would have imagined it would lead to this?”

“Yeah, that was great.”

“When I did a 12-step program, they told me to make amends to those I’ve wronged.”

“I get it Gary, you wanted to get into a good university and work on your career, and I wanted to burn the school down.”

He takes a deep breath, “I am truly sorry,” he says, then takes a sip of his drink. “Amends made!”

“So you’re in AA?” Why he’s drinking kombucha instead of wine now makes sense.

He doesn’t answer me but starts yammering away about science. “Society is going transhuman…” he begins, and then goes on a story about the future of humanity. He suddenly sounds like one of those white haired professors on the Joe Rogan podcast. “With replacement organs, people can now live almost forever. I’m working on a lot of new projects.”

“You definitely have a lot of stuff going on,” I say. As a working class kind of guy, it all doesn’t seem that relevant to me.

He pours me another glass of wine. Burgundy or Bordeaux or something like that. Expensive wine is different, the taste is so refined it make you relax, instead of amped up like beer. I put my head back on the sofa a bit, even though Gary is still talking like a manic.

After a bit, I’m feeling so relaxed, I just blurt out, “Why did you invite me here? Are you still my friend?”

He smiles calmly. “Actually, I invited you here because no one in Milwaukee will notice you missing. Sorry.”

“What?” My mind processes what he just said. Very slowly, I realize I have had my question about our friendship answered. But I’m feeling just too relaxed to get angry about it. Maybe things will be fine. Then everything starts going dark, my peripheral vision shrinking.

He calls out to his butler, the one who opened the door earlier. “Edward, it’s time.”

“This is the last one,” Edward mutters, “This needs to stop.”