12 Pack

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

~ George Washington

This is a cliche. I'm warning you, the reader, that what you're about to dive into is going to be something that has been done a million times over and probably something that is fit for the Lifetime Channel. That being said, I'm going to breathe new life into it, make it palatable and most importantly, do the subject some serious justice while I'm at it. What the hell am I going on about, you ask? I'm going to write about my best friend in the whole wide world. 

In the summer of 1997,  I was working a real bullshit job at a movie theater in Charlotte, NC. This was one of those jobs that people take either because they have a lot going on in life, are lazy, want to see a shitload of free movies, or happen to have serious social lives that require them to be able to sleep until noon. At the time, I either fit into all of those categories, or I was just smoking so much weed at the time that it only seemed that way. This was one of those jobs that required the wearing of of a paisley vest and a bow tie, so I must have been smoking some amazing shit if I thought this was a good idea. But that is another story all in itself. 

While working at this fucking travesty of a theater (it was the last one in Charlotte to be reformatted with the now-standard "stadium seating),  I met a hard working, incredibly serious young man named Brandon Lunsford. I was completely oblivious to it at the time, but this meeting would inevitably alter the way I look at life in general, and impact the rest of my years in ways that my selfish young mind couldn't even perceive at the time.

Upon meeting this guy, I wasn't initially moved in any way. He was the friend of friends, you see. I had gotten the job through a guy named Brian, who knew a woman named Jenny, who happened to be the assistant manager of said establishment. As it turns out, that was just the beginning. I got my friend at the time, Will, a job there and it was he, initially, that ended up connecting to Brandon. At the time, I was more concerned with things like women, hanging out, smoking weed, drinking and being a general jackass than I was about anything else that might have been going on, which didn't land me in exactly a prime spot to become anything even resembling "close" with Mr. Lunsford. To the best of my ability to recall the past, he was already in college, working on what would later become a Master's degree. In short, despite the things we already had in common then, I just didn't really see a connection. He was working toward something greater in life, and I was working on becoming a fucking pariah. 

For the next few years, I would come across Brandon's path occasionally. I recall him letting me crash in small one bedroom apartment a few times, either when I had nowhere else to go or had late nights hanging out with him and a few others. Even then we got along really well, but I was more of a burden on him than anything else. He's an extremely generous human being, you see. If he can help someone out, he will, even at his own expense if he thinks it's worth it. I hate to admit it, but at the time of these exchanges, I was not. 

And on it went like this for a bit until one day, we just kind of lost touch. I mean, I would see him around. He was still friends with Will and that whole ex-movie theater crowd. This crowd, so far as I know, somehow still manages to be friends after all of these years.

In fact, I'm not exactly sure when things changed. He could probably say, but he isn't here. Nor is he being exactly prompt about returning my texts. Somehow, he and I started spending a lot of time together. I think he came over to my house with that movie theater crowd on night and stayed a little longer than everyone else. Or we hit it off and made plans without them. Something.... The point is that we ended up going out more and more, or he ended up coming by my house more and more. This just sort of magically took place, and went like that until I ended up leaving Charlotte. 

To be fair, I've omitted a lot of what went on, either because I don't feel like writing a fucking book on the subject, or just because a lot of it is the same, yet with subtle differences. For example, we used to frequent this bar/restaurant called The Penguin. On any given week we could be found there 2-3 nights a week, drinking pitchers of Yuengling, popping dollars into the jukebox and playing the same old shit. I'm sure the other regulars hated us coming through the door, as Rock Box, by RUN D.M.C. was never far to follow. I could write chapters and chapters on this, as just about everyone we knew would, at some point, make a cameo in our weekly ritual. The subtle changes in conversation, music and mood would do a lot to change the dull, smoky, red-and-black atmosphere of what writing about "The Bird" (as we affectionately called it) would be like. 

Then there were the "Bad Movie Wednesdays." Again, same shit, different environment/group of people. Brandon and I would meet up with a small group of our close circle of friends for dinner, beer and usually two-shitty B-Horror movies. The houses changed, as did the food and who showed up, but it was basically the same shit over and over again, yet with subtle changes. 

It's not all the same, though. We grew, we changed.
I ended up taking off to see the world, or as much of it as I could travel with what little I had and still have to my name. He decided to stake his claim in our home town, setting up camp and stoking the fires for visits and future endeavors.
Different women, different towns, different shades in the color spectrum of thinking, acting and living. Through it all, we still remain as close as ever. Yeah, I don't see him as much, but I talk to him a minimum of three or four times a week.
I can't help but feel like our adventure is need of more chapters, however. I guess that's part of living, though. Not a lot of people are content with the time they have and the things that get done in said time. But I'm not fortune teller. I can no longer predict what is to come between us than I was back when I decided to leave. I can only enjoy what I have, while I have it.
And I think that I do that very well.