as an adult (okay-not-really-an-adult), i'm learning that friendship is a funny thing.

in college, everyone is at the same level: single or kindasorta dating/doing someone, dependent on friends to substitute for family at meals/birthdays/holidays/nervousbreakdowns, with average hours that run between 10am and 3am. and everyone, everyone, is undersexed.

then everything ... changes. the people who were once our indispensable friends ... just aren't anymore. they get married. live in different states. travel to different countries. move in with their boyfriends/girlfriends/fiancés/spouses. work. continue onto grad school. wind up stripping.

and what it comes down to is that indispensable doesn't become dispensable so much as it becomes not having the same professor with erect nipples teaching calculus (true story) to connect us to each other.

a very good ... friend (yeah, friend) once labeled me as a "tactile" person. just as a point of clarification, i, for one, do not make fabric. but it turns out that he was right. i need to touch and be touched -- friendship and otherwise. i touch people when i talk to them (it's a latino thing i'm told). i touch my food before i eat it. i touch whatever's in front of me. and it's not that i'm a pervert (i am), but rather, in my superb lawyerly skills i have deduced an alternative hypothesis: because i grew up with such poor eyesight, touching was my way of compensating for my lacking vision.

this has turned out to be quite fortunate for many guys.

so if you're not here for me to touch you, it's hard for me to remember that you're real. i know you are there, it's just that you're not ... here.

and we're left to connect to each other emotionally on the memories we share: "christmas shopping," the loft at dean's house, monkeydoolittles, red sneakers, who made what chicken, the kiss in london, broccoli.

but we've grown up since then; they're all wonderful memories we are forever connected by, but we're different people now. and i can understand that you're too busy studying for your midterms to talk to me right now. but then don't call me at 1 am, because guess what -- i'm sleeping.

i can ask you how your midterms are (shitty) and you can ask me how my job is (crappy), but when we hang up the phone, close our email, sign off instant messenger, it's the people who stand, sit, kneel (if we're lucky) before us who understand us.

some of us (a category in which i do not include myself) are better than others at "keeping in touch." it's hard. and it gets harder as the past fades and the tactile opportunities -- sexual and casual -- diminish.

and it's not that i love you any less. or don't miss you. or don't care. or don't still want to sleep with you. i do. i really, really do.

it's just that ... it's just that ... it's just that ... you're not up in my grill everyday. you're not just an arm's length away; you're just away.

don't get me wrong: in my mind, i'm touching a whole lot of people (sexually and not) everyday. because if we can't hold onto each other, we can always hold onto our memories.

and sometimes, when it's all we have ... it can be enough.