Happy Birthday, You Ancient Geezer

London, April 2000: Andy cracks my shit up
with some nonsense or other.
Today is the oft-mentioned Londoner Andy’s birthday. I wish, once again, that I were there to celebrate with him. Mainly so I could make fun of him for being so bloody old. (Which is hardly satisfying, anyway, when your target looks ten years younger than his stinking age.)

Not long ago, Mannion wrote a lovely post about friendships, and how they sometimes seem eternal—when you meet someone for the first time but, somehow, you’re already friends. That’s the kind of friendship I have with Andy, the introduction to whom was arranged by my girlfriend Miller, after she met him and realized that he and I were meant to be friends. It was just one of those things. So, across 4,000 miles, via the internets (thanks, Al Gore!) and international calling cards, we became friends seven years ago, and have stayed in nearly daily contact ever since. And, occasionally, we have the opportunity to be in the same place at the same time, and that has the capacity, second only to George Bush’s presidency, to make me question whether I should have moved to Britain rather than Mr. Shakes moving here.

It sucks being so far away from someone who can always, without fail, make you feel better when you feel crap, and make you laugh until you cry. It sucks when I know he feels rotten, and I wish I could be there to distract his thoughts. It sucks to miss someone all the time. None of which, in the end, really matters, because they are small prices to pay for a friend of eternal thick-and-thinness, on whom I can count and does me the honor of counting on me back, who tapes Morrissey interviews for me, who tells me I’m “wild” because I can remember verbatim conversations from five years ago, who says things like “I’m the most self-involved person I know” without a trace of irony, sending me into a fit of giggles. As usual.

Happy birthday, Andy.