We're drinking beer and listening to a favorite Sinatra album, Only the Lonely. It's one of those nights. We're new in town, know almost no one -- a high school buddy of mine is here, and he will turn me on to the pre-Free Speech Movement folk scene and street life of Berkeley, which I'll end up joining, an experience culminated by living in a tree house in Strawberry Canyon shortly before joining the army, yet another escape.
Sinatra's Only the Lonely. One of those quiet serious nights full of youthful serious talk.
Q. says a remarkable thing. I remember it to this day, almost 50 years later: "All of my best friends are writers and are dead."
It's something I say to myself now that I've outlived all my closest male friends. Ain't nobody left. All my best friends are writers and, if not dead, are far from here.
It's the hanging out I miss most -- the history that lets you hang with someone and communicate without language. To an observer, Dick and I must have looked off our rockers because we laughed so much without having to say anything that was funny: we simply observed the same thing at the same time with the same reaction. "People are more interesting than anybody," as my dear mother liked to say. You can replace people to have coffee or dinner with but you can't replace history. You can't replace deep understanding that comes only with long familiarity.
I like working more than ever but I don't work all the time. Sometimes I seem to try to. But I don't. "All my best friends are writers and are dead." Here's looking at you, Q.
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