Have I told you I have no friends? Well, allow me to reintroduce myself, my name is…well, for now it doesn’t really matter, besides some of you already know. And, yes I have no friends – not a one, zip, zero. Congratulations to you if you caught those Jay-Z references. I actually met him back in 2007 – nice guy, well from what I can tell from my like 10 second interaction with him.
But since I mentioned it, might as well tell the story right quick. I was just heading home after getting off of work when I see filming equipment at the building across the street. This is when I lived in New York. So I took my nosy ass over there to see what was going on. This guy tells me they were
shooting Jay-Z’s video for his Blue Magic Album, or maybe they were shooting the Blue Magic video. I don’t know, it was so long ago.
Anyway, Jay-Z was not there yet. The video was being shot in this abandoned building and the guy told me there was like over a million dollars worth of art in there. While I obviously could not go into the building, it was a public street and I hung around until Jay-Z arrived.
Once Jay-Z arrived in a blacked out car, I through up my diamond sign, before I could even see him, before he even exited the vehicle. By this time I was sitting on some concrete steps outside the building. Jay was walking walking towards a side door. There was a guy sitting next to me and I asked him, should I go up to him, and he was like go for it –so I did. I ran over to him, hoping to catch him before he entered the door. It was a very short distance. The whole time I was running I was saying, “Jay-Z, Jay-Z.” Before I could get to him three females – not body guards, they looked more like executive, manager, agent types – were like, “hold up, hold up.” No sooner did those bitches, I mean wonderful children of God, try to stop me, did Jay-Z check those chicks and told them to leave me alone. I told him I just wanted to say hi, and shake his hand, tell him I was a fan. He said he appreciated that, and that was it. He went into the building and I went on my way. I remember his hands being so soft, like he never worked a hard days labor in his life. So anyway, that’s my Jay-Z story.
But as I was saying, I have no friends. I really haven’t had any friends since high school. I had a couple of good friends in high school – both were guys. I’m not so sure how gooda friend I was to them, though. I also had a couple of shadier friends – they were girls. We all went to different colleges and our contact soon faded. This was back in the late 90s before social media.
In college I hung out with a lot of different people, but I was slow to call them friends. Even when I slipped and said it because the word can be used so casually, I knew I didn’t mean it. I knew these people I was kicking it with were more so associates than friends. And when I graduated from college, I kept in touch with none of them.
By the time I hit the working world, I’d worked several unskilled labor roles even with a degree before I got more professional positions, so my colleagues and I were just different. By the time I got to a professional role I was in my late 20s, many people my age were more advanced in their careers than me while I was still entry-level. From my experience people in higher roles don’t want to be friends with people in lower roles. People with comfy incomes don’t want to be friends with people just scraping by. Then once you get all that out of the way, you still have to deal with personalities – do your personalities agree?
So since I have been out of school and in the working world, not only have I not had friends, I haven’t even had associates. I can literally count on one hand with fingers left over how many times I’ve hung out with someone from work outside of work, when I wasn’t working or at some work associated event.
And for the most part, that has worked for me…or so I’ve told myself, or so I’ve learned to manage. Of course there are times when I get lonely, but I’ve found that being alone, even being lonely is much better than being in bad company. Being in bad company is the worst. Being alone is one way to ensure I’m in good company.
T.D. Jakes once said in one of his sermons, “you’ve gone as far as you can go alone,” and I feel that thing. The older I get, the more life be lifin’, the more I realize I need some good, solid, like-minded friends. Where I’m gon get these people, I don’t know. I just know that I’m open to it.
And so, I said all that to say, I have to make a point of being more social, of getting out off the house, even though being alone and doing nothing is one of my favorite pastimes (though that too can be tiring if I do it too much).
I don’t know how I’ma make friends in my mid-forties when I haven’t had any real ones since high school, but we’ll see.
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