Faking it is for orgasms, not friendships

Christmas has come and gone, and I don’t think I’m the only one relieved by that. This year I found myself far more impressed by the ‘spirit of Christmas’ than I have been in a long time. It probably has something to do with the recession-inspired budgeting everyone has been doing. Gifts were smaller & you (the collective you, which includes me) gave them to fewer people–and I think that’s a good thing. In recent years I found myself pressured to buy gifts for people I didn’t even like, just because we were associated with each other. And how awkward is it to have someone whip out a present for you when you know deep down, they only did it out of the expectation that you would be doing the same? You don’t want to know how many times this has happened to me in the past five years. I’m always left awkwardly relating to them that I ordered something online but had it shipped to the wrong address. I spend the next twenty minutes praying they never bring the topic up again; which they usually don’t. Maybe that’s when they realize that I’m not the most eager to please sorta-friend they’ve ever had.

I’ll never understand the need to gift everyone in your life with some generic, meaningless knick-knack. A $30 expenditure on something that will most likely wind up in a closet/cupboard–if it doesn’t go directly to the trash–seems like a real waste of energy and cash to me.

What about that weird outer ring of people you hang out with but don’t have any real meaning to you? I don’t think every person I know or hang out with qualifies as a friend. There are many acquaintances in my life, some of which I’ve known for years. They just can’t cross that last threshold into being a “real” friend for whatever reason. Over the course of this entire year I’ve steadily been removing people that I’ve been calling friends but don’t care one way or the other about from whatever circle they seem to . Guess what? I’m really pleased.

I had a “friend” that only hit me up at weird hours wanting to drink whiskey. I never heard from him wanting to go to a movie, or asking if I wanted to attend some band I’ve never heard of’s show in a shitty warehouse downtown. No, our contact has generally been limited to AIM and text messaging at times I will conveniently label “way past my damn bedtime.” I am no ray of sunshine to anyone calling me repeatedly at 2am asking for rides home or telling me they’re upset because “we never hang out anymore”. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually hung out with the dude in question, by the way. So why the hell would I refer to him as a ‘friend’? A good question that I never have to answer, thanks to SocialCircleCleanup ’09!

Besides, once the dust settled and I quit getting whiny “what happened to us? Do you want to get together to talk about our friendship?” messages via Facebook I realized my genuine friendships are fucking amazing. I spent last night in Hollywood with a large group of strangers to keep an eye on my friend in the midst of his very drunken birthday splendor. And it was fun! Plus I got to do the types of things that make me say, “I am a damn good friend” the next day. I mean, I totally wiped the snot out of Jim’s beard on Hollywood Blvd. at 2am. That’s the kind of stuff real friends do for each other, you know?

Friend-type behaviors are not limited to puke wiping and damage control in awkward situations, either. Real friends pretend they like your girlfriend even though she’s a shitty bitch because you care about her. Real friends tell you that your outfit really does make you look fat and you should be sending all the pieces involved off to Goodwill post-haste. You know, real selfless shit like that.