(sub)urban tomboy: i can tell that we are gonna be friends

i'm back. back with my first proper (sub)urban tomboy blog entry since forever ago. i really enjoy writing these and i'm sorry for making you wait so long for this instalment. i've been sharing quite a lot on twitter, fagbook, formspring (e.g. you ask me questions anonymously and i answer them)

and on hungry beast as you may be aware (man, the world has gotten a whole lot more chatty) but i'm excited to be back home where the air is sweet.

there's something beautiful about longer form storytelling and i have a belly full of (sub)urban tomboy wonder to share with you... raw, nostalgic, curious and contemplative... and just plain fun.

this entry is about friendship... i know i've been down this road before (remember the epic fight i had with my oldest besty, nit, when we were in grade 2) but this time, it's about what friendship means in an age where a new pal is just a click away.

i've had an epic long weekend here in sydneyland hanging with my lovely friiieeeends. i moved here a year ago to work on hungry beast and it's taken this long for me to really feel connected to this city. right now i'm a tad delirious as a few of us went out dancing last night at an anything-goes indie queer night on oxford st. for the first time in a long time... we danced til the sun came up. we danced like no-one was watching (while loving the very fact that they were)... we danced with the gayest of gay abandon... and we were there when the night club turned into a day club and the muscle-marys poured in from some other party with their hairless, rock hard, man-boobed chests. it was wild. it was just what i needed. and i probably won't do it again for another 5 or so years;)

as an only-child, friendships have always been super important to me and i have such an affection for the people i choose to spend my time with. especially face, as opposed to facebook, time.

and according to facebook i have 829 friends.

but in a sense, i guess they are friends... (even the weirdo hungry beast fan whose name is written in some kind of hieroglyphics font)... i mean, they're friends if you see friendship is a continuum of association... from besties to workmates to kids i went to school with to acquaintances to folks who simply like the cut of my jib and want to know me better... perhaps?

at risk of sounding like a friendship-floozy, i think this is ok. yeah, they're not all deep or profound friendships, but i get a kick out of people. i like knowing what folks are up to and i like folks caring about what i'm up to... i like this feeling of connection. it's primal and addictive.

not all my friends are 'keepers' though. this is my word for BFFs... but i do have more keepers now thanks to the sheer volume of friendships in real life and online and the fact that i've been collecting them for nearly 30 years. and my keepers i hold dear (that's one of my fave nan expressions)... along with what's his britches? which is how my nan ina refers to "friends" whose names she can't remember.

my keepers are good eggs. my keepers have a strength of character that guides them through the ups and downs. my keepers are flawed and wiser due to their mistakes. my keepers care about me and challenge me... and vice-versa. to cut through the wank, they're just fucking tops to be around. they're the folks who you don't have to see everyday, or every month or even every year, but when you connect it's like no time has passed.

i recently starting 'seeing' one of my keepers. okay okay... this is the other reason i'm writing a blog on friendship cos it's kinda topical in my world;) by seeing i mean we started hanging out frequently and it got intimate. she's someone i've known since i moved to sydney who i've always clicked with and thought was pretty rad. we're similar in a lot of ways so the interest (for me, anyway) was both effortless and well, a bit narcissistic.

soooo after breaking up with my gf of two years (due to the struggles of long distance and some communication issues - if i was to sum it up in a tweet), this friend was the first person i'd found myself drawn to, and i guess, let my guard down with. for this freshly single (sub)urban tomboy, the feeling was kinda like the irrational belly vibes i felt for my hot chem teacher in year 10 that saw me become a straight A+ scientific whiz kid until we got a different teacher the following year and i lost interest in balancing chemical equations. (just on that, how is it that i didn't understand what these homo vibes were until 5 years later? i digress).

yeah, so i guess i was seeing my rad friend and it was cruisy. until it got to that point where you ask yourself what is happening here? are we friends who make out on the weekend? friends with benefits? ummm? people are emos... and i know i can't keep seeing someone consistently without becoming emotionally attached so the road generally forks into three paths... relationSHIP, friendSHIP or the rough seas of ambiguity where no-one's sure what's going on and there's a good chance of at least one sailor drowning! so we needed to address it. and we did. and we decided that friendship was the way to go.

so i'm not gonna lie and say i don't feel any of those chem teacher vibes, but when you're about 7 weeks out of a pretty big relationship and trying to get yourself sorted, the option of having someone you think is rock solid in your corner as a FRIEND, is a good one.

here's a song while you think about that:

we're going to be friends by the white stripes

not everyone is a keeper, and sometimes friendships are too important to risk. and anyways, there's always those 828 other folks to knock around with.

i couldn't write a blog on friendship without posting one of my fave songs of all time:

my pal by god