How close should you hold your friends?

Thoughts on proximity from an old college story

At our women’s residence, my friend and I watched Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in the small private library that smelled like oak, where all the books were hardbound and in wonderful condition because no one really touched them since the day they were donated by our wealthy neighbors. We sat side by side at one of the long desks, a bowl of popcorn between us. We watched on a laptop but that made it easier to hide it from the strict Catholic house rules. We watched the whole thing without saying a word.

That would be the first of many clandestine movie nights. (clandestine because our films were all taboo or violent—Lolita, Kill Bill, you get it. God forbid we see boobs.) We bonded over films. Our first Halloween together, I was Mia Wallace and she was Vincent Vega.

Months later, when my dad passed away she didn’t say anything but she gave me the warmest hug. She didn’t need to say anything because I knew she had been there before herself. Even your worst days are only 24 hours.

That’s what happens when you’re close to someone. You detect the change in their voice when they lie. You learn what they sound like when they’re pretending not to feel something, and you stop calling them out for it. Not out of fear, but familiarity. It becomes a kind of unspoken contract—I won’t ask if you won’t say.

In another instance, we split a bottle of wine the night before Christmas break, using the bottle opener we sneaked from the kitchen, which was only used by the staff team and was off-limit for the residents.

We were sitting on her floor, backs against the bedframe or the drawer or something, incense burning, Spotify on-shuffle in the back (Tyler, The Creator, The Beatles, Judy Collins, Etta James, Joji, Mozart, to name a few). The candle, the bedside lamp, and the Bible were the only sources of light, and we took too many Polaroids (she missed her flight home the next morning but that’s another story). We talked about school, boys, gossiped about the other girls that lived there that year, and we philosophized things that didn’t need to be philosophized, and I don’t remember what we said exactly, but what I do remember is being too aware of the moment folding in on itself, becoming memory in real time.

That’s what happens when you really talk to someone, honestly and from the heart. Even if the answers are weird or slow or full of caveats. There’s a tangled afterglow that drags into breakfast the next morning over silence, smirks, and the last three strips of bacon.

Friendship hits like that—not during the conversation, but hours or days or years after, when I’m brushing my teeth and suddenly remember the candied salmon we shared that October in Granville Island. Little things.

Proximity makes it easier to see the flaws in a relationship, but it also makes it harder—because once you know what shaped the parties involved, the sharpness starts to dull. I think proximity shows you the problems and love decides whether you’ll look away—are you close enough to see clearly, or close enough to stop looking?

Sometimes I think intimacy is the agreement to not look too closely at everything, because what’s more important is just loving people in the ways they never ask for out loud.

I’m still trying to find the Polaroids from that night. Or maybe she has them.

xx

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