A Birthday Special! The Death of a Friendship
Our loss is yours to share
[My letter to a former dear friend:]
Nearly eight years ago I, in front of our building, said, “Thank you for the good stuff,” without reciprocation, and the only communication from you since then has been one preposterous letter decrying my narcissism, this a few weeks after I put the finishing touches on a group video in which I’m barely glimpsed.
That one [REDACTED] gig, the disaster that it was! I surmised that you’d received disturbing news about your dad, but you could have taken 20 seconds to let us know where you were. I, who has never pretended to be taciturn and imperturbable, as you have always been intent on being seen, would have managed it if I’d heard that [my wife] or even [my daughter[ had been in a terrible accident. Not taciturn, imperturbable you, though…
You’re probably marvelling at how I hold onto a grudge!A little self-recognition might be just the ticket here. You might recall how you tried to shame me publicly (on Facebook) in 2009 for having cheated you out of your organ in 1973, though I’d done nothing of the sort. Perfect, non-apologising you hold a grudge? Inconceivable! I wrote and recorded this in 2009, in between jumping through hoops to try to restore our friendship.
You of course had no conception of how much coaxing and cajoling I’d had to do to get the [REDACTED] gig in the first place. And when the turnout was miniscule — in significant part because you apparently made no effort to get anyone to attend — which of us got reamed at a high volume by the club booker. Was it you?
[REDACTED]’s strong preference had been not to play with you at al. [RALPH] hadn’t liked your playing in the early days of [REDACTED]. I stuck up for you in both instances. And what did I get in the most recent one? Told that the little variation on the guitar line of “Pretty Woman” I’d suggested was better suited to a calliope than to a guitar. (A calliope line for the guitar! How stupid could someone be!) You very clearly remember my joking. — idiotically, obnoxiously! — about going gay-bashing with [REDACTED], and invoked my doing so for years.
The difference, I think, is that when I’ve been a prick, I’ve apologised. Over the course of our friendship I’m the only one who ever apologised, and I wonder if you’re able to admit that there were no few times over the course of our friendship when you were a perfect prick. And let’s not forget your greatest hit, at [REDACTED] Studios, when I let you play bass on the demos I was recording for Epic because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings by using a third party whose playing I much preferred. “When are we going to do the GDOO song?” It was imperative that [REDACTED] know your low opinion of my work, right? Or how about the morning when I drove you and [REDACTED] down to Oakland from my and [REDACTED]’s new home in [REDACTED]. You’d hardly arrived in the back seat before declaring that you were going to nap, and would appreciate not being disturbed And yet somehow you managed to rouse yourself from sleep half a dozen times over the course of the journey to point out that something I’d said to [REDACTED} had been inaccurate or even foolish. Shades of our first evening in each other’s presence!
I’ve written a few songs about you, and us.
/modern-sounds-in-country-and-western-music
Not that, when you weren’t avenging [REDACTED]’s having been celebrated in childhood by sneering at me, you weren’t sensational. If I remember your sneering and spitefulness, be assured that I also remember countless instances of your being extraordinarily kind and generous. I do indeed remember them, and miss the hell out of one of my life’s dearest friends.
You were a major figure in my life. Lots of people are dead at our age. I’d urge you to get off your high horse. and see how a little self-recognition feels, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t work, not with The Man Who Is Never to Blame. So let me wish you a happy birthday prematurely, and note, with the utmost sadness, that this’ll be the last time.
The loss is yours to share.
*
[Former dear friend’s response:]
Dear John Scissorhands,
Yet again you illustrate what you hold most dear: your precious bag of slights, clutched to your breast and raring to be unleashed.
You may recall my mentioning that while I was going through the greatest loss of my life, I was being nicer to you than you were to me.
During that time, you offered not one whit of support or empathy, because it was more important to you to maintain the fiction that it was I and not you who was breaking up the band.
In my world, friends are there for you when you most need them.
You weren’t, and aren’t.
*
[My response to former dear friend’s response:]
"In my world, friends are there for you when you most need them."
Noble, lovely, faultless you. Do you by any chance remember the icily pro forma note — I'm not going to call it a letter — you sent me when my own dad died? I'm guessing you don't. Moreover, I'm guessing you CAN'T because I suspect you'd feel you'd disintegrate if you admitted to any fault. For the record, if you had come to me and said, "I'm really hurting. Can we please put everything else aside," I'd have been all over you like a cheap suit trying my best to console and support. But you want it both ways. You want to do your hypermanly, taciturn, imperturbable thing, not letting on that anything's amiss, and then vilify me for responding instead to the sneering scorn you reveled in making VERY apparent.
You're goddamned right I broke up the band — and admitted EXACTLY that to [REDACTED] — on the basis of not being able to bear being in the same room with you, worrying that any moment you'd do a re-run of your greatest hit. When are we going to do the GOOD song? The funny thing being that when I declared myself unwilling to work with you anymore, [REDACTED] told me he wished you hadn't been involved in the first place.
Fascinating, and wonderfully revealing, and absolutely typical, that you accuse me of exactly what you do, though your accusation is slightly less beautifully worded :-). As in my song, you've got your cherished bag of ancient grudges. Please cite a time when I publicly embarrassed you, as in l'affaire organ, 36 fucking years after the fact. Take your time. And while you're looking through your journals, please pinpoint the date on which you stopped vilifying me for my gay-bashing joke, for which I'd apologised years before.
And now look at you. An eight-year poutfest because you so enjoy playing the victim of my alleged hard-heartedness. I've missed you. I've loved you and detested you, but even when the latter had the upper hand, the former was still there. You've been one of the major characters in my life story, and my life, like your own, is heading for the closing credits.
You’re also guaranteed to derive almost incalculable pleasure from:
https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/unrelievable-suffering-be-upon-him?r=7yu5q
https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/we-will-not-let-them-ghadffi-you?r=7yu5q
https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/marjoran-murkas-new-class-couple?r=7yu5q
https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/i-was-a-teenaged-racist?r=7yu5q
https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/the-donald-g-trump-center-for-the?r=7yu5q
https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/donald-trumps-gay-fascist-kleptocracy?utm_source=publication-search
https://johnmendelssohn.substack.com/p/your-complete-guide-to-digital-sparring?r=7yu5q
