I have a friend. I count them a very good friend, and I am in better contact with them than most of my previously mentioned 'best friends'. This person I speak to third-most in the whole world: the other two being my flat mates. I don't know everything about them - I don't know their favourite film (although I hope it's Van Wilder), and I don't know their favourite colour, but I do know them. That means so much more these days than trivial facts.
I can't even remember how we first started talking. I think I stole Vicky's phone one day, and things grew from there. My entire high school career was framed by this name; all of my friends had heard of him, in varying forms, but no one ever knew him. Even when he came to our prom people didn't know it was him - he was the infamous name that people were just aware of. In one of my history lessons, aged fourteen, I heard some girls whispering about him and his friends. It felt very strange because our friendship was totally unknown. Even aged seventeen, after knowing him for four years, people saw us having a drink together and genuinely seemed shocked. I've never been able to put my finger on why this was so weird for other people. I think it's because I was never friends with people from their school.
Two girls in my class met the boys from Beccles we knew, and they started coming to the gigs and house parties. I hated it; they were too pretty and conventional to like the guys I was friends with. But those two girls were typically very friendly with the good-looking, rugby-playing guys from the boys school. So my friendship may have had a similar affect on them: I was stepping on toes, and it wasn't my character to befriend someone 'jock' instead of 'emo' or 'indie'. Screw labels - whats wrong with getting along with someone?
He makes me laugh, but usually by being inappropriate, which my ex hated. He hated that someone would text me something about sex and I would laugh. He hated that someone else could make the same jokes, or better jokes, than him. He thought he was the only one allowed to say those things. Now he's blocked me on facebook, and I'm closer than ever to the friend. Irony...
With Spence, things were different. Ben had no real reason to hate him - there were no texts, no clear signs of sexual chemistry, but something nagged him. I liked Spence, he's a funny guy and a good person and despite him being the most typical private-school-boy I've ever met, we really meshed well. Except when I was drunk. Still, Ben was never given enough proof to get angry with. One day, in January of 2009, he told me he didn't like me texting either guys. I asked why. He couldn't answer. I text them still, but after a few days, Ben put up another fight. He read my texts and told me to get new friends - he said I should spend my energy befriending people at uni. All this resulted in was my development of feelings for three guys in my class during the time we were going out. Good move Ben.
Then, three days after I finally broke up with him for good, my Skype popped up. Jingles wants to chat. It's been two years of unwanted silence and I feel so terrible, yet it feels like fate/coincidence that he came back into my life exactly when he could. That confirmed my faith in our friendship: sometimes distance and time can ruin things, but sometimes, very seldom, that friend can be a good enough friend to not care; he just wonders how I am, what I'm up to, and why on earth I dated such a dickhead.
There's not much point to this post, except telling the world what was a secret, or disallowed, or frowned upon for so long: I consider James Ingham to be one of my closest friends, and I hope he knows that.