No friendship is an accident.
This classic quote, from American writer O. Henry, has been on my mind for days now. See, this past weekend Suzie and I got to spend some actual face-to-face time with Christine and Carina, Covid-safe friends who hosted us at their mountain cabin. For the first time in months, I had stimulating conversations, delicious home-cooked meals, and big-time laughs with real human beings (other than my beloved wife) who weren't on the other end of a video chat. It was amazingly fun, but after almost two years of pandemic sequestering, it was sort of weird, too. Eek! Real people!
And that ironic O. Henry quote was rattling around in my head on the drive home, because it dawned on me that the twisted life I've lived is a result of the many unexpected relationships I've formed. The journey started way back in the spring of 1984 in North Carolina, when I applied to live in the Alexander International program in college, and led directly to hanging out in my friends' cabin in Southern California in early 2022. That's the Readers’ Digest version of a complicated, thirty-eight year long chain of unplanned meetings that resulted in many O. Henry-styled "accidental" friendships and relationships.
Obviously the best and most impactful of all my happy connections has been Suzie, my partner, confidant, and almost lover (she swears this is the year!) of the past two-plus decades. But before her, leading to her, after her, and because of her, there have been dozens and dozens of people who unexpectedly entered my social orbit, passed some intangible test of mutual worthiness, and wound up suffering for years under the wet blanket of despair that is my friendship.
Nothing in this life is permanent, however. Over the years I've had several friendships that, unfortunately, didn't last. Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was them, sometimes it was a vague combination of both our issues. Whatever the reason, the connection that brought us together unraveled, and over time we weren't buddies anymore. Usually there was no big Hollywood style blow up... the endings were quiet, but permanent, affairs.
The weird thing is, even when those relationships ceased to be, there were echoes that remained. You can't spend a lot of time with another human being, without some of their existence rubbing off on you. And I don't mean retaining friends you meet through the ex-pals. There's also movies, books, TV shows, art... the ephemera of a relationship that takes hold in your own life. And don't forget music! Oh man, there is so much music still in my life that's outlived the presence of the people through whom it came to me.
The very first friend I lost in a big way was a guy named James. I will probably never speak to him again, but I'll appreciate him in a brotherly way forever, because he left behind three incredibly important vestiges of his presence. If it hadn't been for James, I never would have gotten my first job out of college. I never would have met one of my best friends ever. And I would never have discovered the kick-ass lovelorn power pop of...
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.
When I graduated in May of 1989, I couldn't find a job to save my life. Not only was my computer science degree not worth the paper it was printed on in my tech-light corner of North Carolina, but a recession had just started that made companies everywhere go all Leatherface on their budgets. For four long, panicky, depressing months, I put up with my family's constant disappointment in me as I desperately hunted for anything that paid good American money.
It wasn't until a girl I briefly dated threw some post-breakup pity my way, in the form of a business card from a guy in her Macintosh users group. He was a programmer for a small local cell phone company, and she thought I might have a chance at a job through him.
As you can probably guess, my ex-dating-friend's contact was the aforementioned James. Not expecting any success, I took my time ringing him up. But finally, after months of soul-crushing failures, the Universe looked favorably on this poor college alumnus. James was glad to hear from me. He spent some time feeling me out, eventually encouraging me to send him my resume. A week later, I got a call to come in for an interview. A week after that, I was offered a position as a junior programmer. And on September 26th 1989, I started my first real, grown-up, rat race job.
Working the corporate grind was unfamiliar territory for a guy like me. All my previous jobs had been low-paying service-oriented gigs, like bagging groceries. Or hawking comic books. Or slinging cheap coffee in campus snack bars. Now I was having to adhere to a nine-to-five-plus schedule, in a big office building, sitting under bright fluorescent lights, in a cubicle with prison cell-like six foot high walls. I was surrounded by "adults" doing important "adult stuff". It was, in a word, overwhelming.
And that meant leaning on James a great deal as my one and only office friend. When I had programming questions, I went to James. When I didn't know who to take reports to, I asked James. When I snarfed down a quick lunch, I sat with James. Those first few months I was waaaay out of my comfort zone, and James was the happy place I clung to on a daily basis.
The ugly-ass building that housed my very first real job.
In the course of our daily conversations, James and I eventually got around to discussing music. I was surprised to discover that this cherub-faced, church going guy was a rock 'n roll fan. But not just of the big-time guitar gods like Van Halen. He was also into smaller bands, musical groups that were burning up college radio stations all over North America. Again, you would have never know from looking at James that he was plugged into any music scene that didn't involve handling snakes. Yet there he was, in the rural wilds of the Bible Belt, already a knowledgable fan of what we now call "indie rock".
He was particularly fond of The Pursuit Of Happiness, a Canadian quintet led by the bespectacled Moe Berg. Since I'd never heard a single note, and he was eager to share, James happily made me a copy of their debut album, Love Junk. Although my little '87 Honda Civic hatchback didn't sport a lot of bells and whistles, it did have a cheap after-factory tape deck. So the day he gave me the cassette, I popped it into the deck for my drive home.
And from pretty much the first few notes, my life was changed forever.
Okay, that's maybe a tad hyperbolic. I should probably qualify that statement, to make it clear that my musical life was changed forever. I'd been exposed to proto-indie rock bands during my college years, music that was referred to as "left-of-the-dial", since the campus radio stations that played them were usually in the 88.1 to 89.9 MHz range. By the time I left college I'd heard Let's Active, Birdsong Of The Mesozoic, The Woods, and other obscure groups. But none of them clicked with me during those chaotic university days. I wasn't ready to grok them. I was too wrapped up in my New Wave, synth pop, Top 40 mindset.
Love Junk changed all that. Berg and his bandmates had crafted an album filled to the brim with hook-filled, harmony-dripping, short-and-sweet power pop tunes that grabbed hold of my pleasure centers and wouldn't let go. The first single, "I'm An Adult Now", is the kind of pissed-off-at-the-world anthem Kurt Cobain wished he could have written. And that's just the tip of the ice-berg. (Wordplay!) The rest of the album unfolds in series of one driving, clever, melodic earworm after another: The unbridled sexuality of "Beautiful White". The tragic missed connection of "Walking In The Woods". The frustrated angst of "Man's Best Friend". The unrequited plea of "Down On Him". And my favorite song on the entire album, the jangly, light-hearted, wistful social observations of "She's So Young". From the first song to the last, Love Junk delivers hook after amazing hook.
Here's how Love Junk changed my life, really: it opened my mind to the potential of new music. It didn't necessarily kick my mental doors off their hinges, but it did crack them open juuust enough for unfamiliar things to shimmy through. Without Love Junk, I might not have given Teenage Fanclub a chance. Or Jellyfish. Or Dillon Fence. Or, heaven help me, Matthew-frigging-Sweet, who now means more to me than food or sleep. The Pursuit Of Happiness paved the way for an entirely new universe of awesome music to come into my life. Love Junk had been such a raging success, I was looking forward to discovering more new tunes through James.
That, sadly, was not to be.
A self-portrait done in early 1990. If even monkeys can code Oracle Forms, how come I look so stressed? Huh? Answer me that, Mike!
In early 1990, the entire programming team moved to the other side of the building, into a bigger space with more room for expansion. Not even half a year in the company, and I was already experiencing perks. A new computer. (Well, a new terminal, at least.) A new chair. A fancy window "office". Could things get any better for this newly productive member of society?
No, they couldn't. Around the time we moved, things changed, and not in a good way. There's no delicate way to put it, other than this: James just started getting weird. Uncomfortably weird.
It began in small ways. He would make odd comments out of the blue. For instance, one day, as I was walking back to my cube, he proudly declared, "I have every episode of The Golden Girls on tape." I didn't know what to make of that, so I just mumbled "Cool" and went back to work. Not long after, James suddenly announced that he had given away all his albums, for what seemed to be vague religious reasons. And during team meetings, at various moments I'd catch him smiling at me across the table, beaming this squinty-eyed "I see you" smile. The weirdness just piled up, day after day, and I didn't know how to react to it all.
That all changed when he began trying to insert himself into my private life. When you're in a cubicle farm, you don't have a lot of privacy. But you learn to tune things out, just to be a considerate office mate. James threw that etiquette out the window. After getting off the phone with The Girlfriend, I'd hear James pipe up behind me, "So where are you two going to have dinner?" I realized he would stop typing, lean back in his chair, and listen to my end of the call! It was incredibly frustrating. And it happened over and over and over.
This aggravating invasion of my personal space finally came to a head one day, when I was making plans with my friend Burhan, who was making a rare trip up to see me for the weekend. I got off the phone, all happy about seeing my pal, and decided to go grab a soda. But before I could stand, James slowly swiveled in his chair, like a chubby, smarmy James Bond villain minus the cat and the scar. "So, where are you and Burhan going to have dinner?" he asked, with that smile, that sickly unctuous look, plastered on his face.
I'm not easily angered. I can take a lot of crap before I decide to say something back. But James had finally pushed me too far. I took a step forward, and made sure we were making eye contact. "Stop listening to my calls," I said in a calm, but firm, tone. There was a beat, a pregnant moment between the two of us... and he slowly swiveled back around to his computer.
That was the last time we spoke in any substantial manner. Considering how miserable he'd made my work environment, it was the best gift he could give me.
You know what? That's actually not true. It's the third best gift. The second best gift was Love Junk. And the best gift of all?
That was Mark.
I can’t believe I don’t have a single photo of me and Mark together. So here’s a shot from Holmes & Yoyo instead. (That would be me on the right,)
In the same way that friends in college just sort of happened, Mark just... sort of happened. He was hired in early 1990, about four months after I started, but since he worked for a different subgroup of our development team, I didn't have any job-related interaction with him. However, he lived near James, so they struck up a friendship due to their weekly carpooling. And that meant I'd see Mark two or three times a day, when he'd wander over to kibbitz with James.
But as Mark was forming his relationship with James, my James bromance was falling apart because of all the weirdness. And my anti-James mindset meant that anything even remotely related to him was also tainted. Unfortunately, poor Mark was caught up in my bitterness. There were mornings I'd turn the corner of my aisle, and there would be Mark, leaning up against the window, talking to James. I probably hadn't traded two sentences with Mark, but that didn't matter. If he was pals with James, he could go straight to hell.
I continued that dark, unfriendly manner for days. Maybe even a couple of weeks. Just seeing the two of them together made steam come out of my ears. How could I ever be friendly with Mark? What could ever bridge that gap between us?
Only the in-the-know male-bonding magic of Monty Python, that’s what.
Loving Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Terry Jones, and Terry Gilliam… the ultimate test of a potential new friend’s worthiness.
I stumbled across Monty Python's Flying Circus in high school, on my local PBS station. I already had a pretty broad sense of humor at that point, but Python was on a whole different level. The insanity of the Pythons instantly appealed to me. Yet I found myself alone in my Python love. None of my friends had heard of them, and they didn't seem interested in learning. When I got to college, however, I was thrilled to discover I was living with many other Python fans. I wasn't alone anymore! On a daily basis, Python quotes would fly hard and fast amongst my inner circle of goofballs. Monty Python became a shorthand that we'd employ as color commentary to any situation.
But after college, my social circle got reset to zero in a hard way. I was adrift when it came to hanging with any friends who shared my interests. No comic book runs with Horace and Frank. No record store browsing with Erik. And no marathon Python quote sessions with Simon. I had nothing.
So imagine my surprise when one day Mark made some off-the-cuff comment... that contained a Python quote. Now I was the creep pivoting in his chair! It was like I'd discovered a living, breathing unicorn. Something so rare and exquisite I couldn't keep away from it. And when Mark found out I was also a huge Python fan, he lit up too.
From there, we were off to the races. In short order, Mark and I discovered we had a lot more in common than Spiny Norman and the Norwegian Blue. He was a big-time science-fiction geek like me. (He'd read "Starlog" magazine as a kid, for Pete's sake!) He loved video games. He also had a skewed sense of humor. Mark was like all my college friends rolled into one. I wasn't alone anymore. I'd found my post-college "tribe".
Mark was the only person I'd ever met who remembered all the sci-fi TV of the 70s. For every quality series like Space: 1999 or V, there was a Quark. Or a Logan's Run. Or the greatest example of wacky 70s TV ever, Holmes & Yoyo, a comedy about a human cop (Holmes) and his robot partner (Yoyo). I would torture Mark constantly by quoting lines from the show - "The Bunco Squad... The Bunco Squad... The Bunco Squad..." - until he'd finally run away from me in a rage.
Hanging with Mark was a blast. He installed the original "Wolfenstein 3D" game on the only PC in the office, keeping me at work until the wee hours of the morning for days on end. He and I were front and center for the midnight premiere of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which to this day is still my favorite movie experience ever. I pulled him back into the pathetic world of comic book collecting with Dark Horse's "Star Wars: Dark Empire", and Valiant's slick reboot of Gold Key's "Magnus: Robot Fighter".
And during a mind-meltingly boring seminar on object oriented programming (seriously, overhead projector transparencies for teaching a new programming method?), I accidentally doodled our ultimate goofy in-joke: the Bucktoothed Batman. To this day, all I have to do is warble the first few notes of Danny Elfman's "Batman Theme" - doodle-ee-DOOOO-doo! - and we're both in stitches. (Okay, you had to be there, I suppose, but it cracks us up to no end.)
Having Mark as my first really good "work friend" was a blessing. (All apologies to Barry and Victor... although I met them first, our friendships didn't really gel until later.) For the duration of the four-plus years we worked together, every day with him brought some sort of foolish nonsense that made the job worth slogging through.
Bucktoothed Batman… the greatest creative accomplishment of my life.
Thankfully, James left at some point, not long before the programming team was spun off into a satellite company. I don't remember if I even said goodbye to him. In the years since, I've tried to deduce just exactly what made him get so squirrelly. The only thing I can figure is that he was jealous of my friendship with Mark. His weird behavior started around the time Mark came on board, but it definitely kicked into high gear after I "poached" Mark from him. But I didn't do it on purpose, I swear! We found we had a lot in common, and it led to us knocking around all the time. James became the "ex-girlfriend", and I think that ticked him off. Again, that's just my theory. But it's the only explanation that fits.
Still, like I said earlier, I can't outright hate the guy. (There's only one person on the planet that I truly detest, and I hope he dies a painful death.) For all his unexpected, slowly-revealed faults, James brought a lot of happiness into my life.
A lot of "The Pursuit Of" happiness, if you'll pardon the pun. He didn't realize it, but James had made a super-fan out of me. Once I fell in love with Love Junk, I was enthusiastic in my pursuit of the band's unique brand of happiness. (See what I did there? Even more wordplay!) I bought One Sided Story and The Downward Road, their second and third albums, at the venerable BB's. Right after I moved to California in 1995, I scooped up Where's The Bone, their fourth album, at my local Tower Records. And their final CD, the frustrating Wonderful World Of The Pursuit Of Happiness, I had to order as an import from the gobbled-up-by-Amazon CDNow. TPOH (as the fans call them... it's right there on the album cover) didn't make it a full decade, but as long as there are people like me out there to preach their greatness, the music they left behind will last forever.
Which is probably how long I'll be friends with Mark. Over the years, our friendship (which, admittedly, was begun in a pretty superficial and pop-culture-oriented way) turned into a real, substantial connection. I was in his wedding. I helped him move, and he did the same for me. He listened without judgment when I moaned and carped about things in my life going wrong. When I'm in the middle of one of my bummed-out moods, he'll reach out to see why I haven't sent him any stupid emails. And I felt validated in my decision to move to California, when he told me he admired me for taking such a big chance, and being successful to boot.
Sure, there are things we disagree on, but that's just being human. I know that if I needed him, Mark would take my call right away. (And probably throw some Monty Python into the conversation, just for good measure.) As it stands, hardly a day goes by that we don't hear from each other in some capacity. I could be in the foulest of moods, and he'll send me some dumb picture he found on the Interwebs that makes me laugh out loud. Those simple gestures mean so much in today's topsy-turvy world.
I can honestly say that my life wouldn't be the same without the happy accident of his friendship.
Hey look, everyone, a new feature: my very own “Lend Me Your Ears” Spotify playlist! Now you can enjoy all the songs I write about in one convenient widget!
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and - finally - an award-winning screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his long-suffering wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.