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My Frenemy

 People sometimes ask about my frenemy. A guest might arrive and say, "Can I see him through the window? Is he near?"


Here is the update. My frenemy may or may not have discovered that I was keeping a journal about his behaviors. (He could have learned this through Facebook.) A long while ago, my spouse and I were going to host this guy for drinks, and he didn't show up, and didn't text. When we asked what was happening, he casually alluded to having been stuck in traffic--and this was the mysterious end to the day.

A close reader of this story had a suggestion: "You should leave little seeds in your blog, and then see if the seeds alter this guy's behavior. If you see new behaviors, then you know the person is reading what you write. You could say....Free Ice Cream in Town, 5 to 6....and if he shows up at the village creamery at 5:30? Bingo...."

I don't have anything against my frenemy. Our interactions just seemed to be an opportunity for thinking about competitiveness and insecurity. In one of my favorite essays, Anne Lamott has a friend who achieves stunning professional success, and Lamott grows weary of hearing the news on the phone. "Great!" she says. "So great!" And eventually this becomes: "GRIGHT!" As in: "That's incredibly, amazingly GRIGHT!"

I extend my warm regards to my frenemy, who has (it seems) a thriving professional life and a finely tuned moral compass, and who uses his free time to crusade against littering in our town.

I think that's gright--and I know, I KNOW, it has nothing, really nothing, to do with me. I'm not making comparisons. This is not, not, not about me.
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