when the f in ‘friend’ stands for ‘family’

eva used to do karate in high school. we didn’t know each other at all when we moved in together, but i remember that being one of the first things i found out about her. one day (we hadn’t been living together for that long), she said to me, ‘do you think i could try and flip you over your head? i used to be able to do that. don’t worry, you’re not gonna feel any pain,’ and then she paused and added, ‘if you don’t try to fight back.’

i remember us fighting once. eva got so mad that she turned around on her heel and left; we were waiting for a bus, and she just left and walked all the way home in the middle of the night. granted, i was being an insufferable asshole, but i wouldn’t have admitted it at the time. we stopped talking after that night; i think we stopped talking to each other for about three days, and then i was ready for that to be over; i wanted the girl in the bedroom right next to mine to be my friend again, so i found a single cigarette lying around in my room (it had fallen out of my friend’s pack a couple of weeks ago on new year’s but he couldn’t find it at the time). i took that cigarette and pencilled ‘peace pipe’ on it, and rolled it across an ugly carpet with a badly patched up burn hole in it into eva’s bedroom. she looked down at it for a moment, prompting instant regret in my mind. maybe that was just going to annoy her more? maybe i should have just said something, like a normal person?

she then stood up, grabbed one of her big sweaters off the back of a chair, picked up the cigarette, and said, ‘let’s go.’ fortunately, she’s not a normal person either, and so we smoked that peace pipe together, and that was that. rarely have i felt as unconditionally and unquestionably accepted by anyone as i always did by her.

eva is, hands down, one of the toughest, most badass yet most delightful, gentle people i have ever met. she always thinks about others; she would come home, jump on my bed, and thrust a milky way chocolate bar that she had bought for me that day into my hands while filling my ears with a shrill ‘this is for you, glen coco!’, just because. i remember her bringing me a slice of bread topped with icing and two birthday candles stuck in it while she was making a cake for a friend’s birthday one night; she said she’d whipped that up for my 21.57th birthday. she’d have so many preconceived notions, about people and about the dark knight trilogy, but she’s never afraid to change her mind in search of what is true to her. and she’d fall in love, my god how she would fall, in love with people and with days and pictures and cadbury’s creme eggs. she would always tell people little anecdotes about me as proof of how weird i am, and she’d always tell people that i made her weird too. she’d sometimes (or maybe just once, we will never know at this point) carry handfuls of crisps in her hoodie pocket, which i’ll never let her live down. she’d go for walks with me and have little day trips with me; they were like our small whimsical adventures in a large serious world. she agreed to go with it even when i was insisting on having a picnic at 10pm this one night and then it started snowing, but it was never cold, in my memories at least, because it warms my heart to know that she was the only sane person who would have sat there with me anyway, having our snowy picnic. she’d constantly forget the names of simple, mundaine things, like waffle iron, and say the first word that came into her head, which was often nowhere close to what she really had in mind. she taught me to celebrate palentine’s day instead of feeling left out on valentine’s day, and whenever one of us got the flu she’d make sure we had some mulled wine to fight it. she’d score me free coffee and muffins from whatever coffee shop she worked at the time, but it was never a bargain, never a trade or an attempt to gain something; it has always been genuine care that goes beyond any logical, coherent thought. it has always been a given. there’s always room for me in her world, there’s always warmth.

my eyes fill with light of a thousand and one beautiful memories, shining from however long ago, of how we both love baking and how eva hates horror movies, and how against all odds we met. how her genuineness and almost childlike honesty, her wonderful, strange complexity won me over, and her boundaryless friendship made me feel at home, and her intelligence and her science smarts make me so proud my chest could burst, and it will always be my absolute honour to call her my friend (and also to call her ‘evelina’, which she absolutely hates).

our friendship has always been the most beautiful, most functional compromise. if eva was in an all encompassing christmas spirit and wanted to make decorations together, she’d let me put on how the grinch stole christmas. if we cooked together she’d often end up eating vegetarian meals with me. if we went out, i’d dress up a little more and be prepared to keep up with her, no matter how many shots i was going to have to down. if one of us couldn’t figure out how to turn the electricity on, the other one would try until it worked. if she wanted a christmas tree, i’d steal a huge branch from the one stood in the town hall. it’s always been an unending series of littler and bigger compromises. it’s always been like clockwork. it’s always been so simple, so organic, so familiar.

this one’s for you, my beautiful friend.

i / will

i was leaned over a wide windowsill, propping myself up on my elbows with my head and shoulders sticking out the kitchen window. three floors down i could see the dirty old tiling of an amazingly crooked and narrow alleyway. it was the middle of the night, i could almost swear it was sometime after 2am, and vilius was giving me a haircut with his electric razor. there were two other people in the kitchen and both of them kept repeating ‘this is a bad idea’ and ‘you’re insane’ to me, because supposedly letting your new friend touch up your pixie cut out of boredom was not an appropriate pastime activity somehow. one day, many days later, vilius told me that his dad used to cut his friends’ hair in the army; i always thought that analogy was charming, somehow.

and then vilius dropped the razor, and it fell all the way down, all three floors, and it hit the ground with an unpleasant crashing sound. the two of us rushed outside to retrieve it, or what we were still expecting to find left of it, and once we were stood in that same dark, smelly, crooked, narrow alleyway, examining the razor, we saw that it had sustained only one very minor injury, and it was still working perfectly. that was how i ended up getting a haircut in the diagon alley. we both agreed we’d call it that, and that was how i knew i wanted to keep this person around.

the first time i met vilius i ended up drinking hot chocolate at his place in stupidly wee hours of the morning; he used to add grated coconut to hot chocolate. the second time i saw vilius we were at this guy’s birthday; his name was pranavan and i still have no idea how old he was turning then. we were at this guy’s birthday party, we were standing in the kitchen, surrounded by happy, intoxicated faces, and i remember someone asking if vilius and i had come to scotland together. i remember that clearer than a lot of things that happened in between then and now, because in the meantime i’ve grown to understand that our sharp edged jokes and polygonal remarks somehow bent and softened to better fit each other and the first time we talked on the phone i could have sworn i was talking to a friend and not someone i’d known for two days, but i was too immature to value that. i took too many things for granted.

vilius was a bartender at a casino and everyone called him william for convenience purposes; sometimes he’d call me at 5 or 6 in the morning, right after his night shift, because he knew i was always hanging out with my aunt insomnia, and so we would go for walks together, breathe in the coolness of the world together, smoke cigarettes in little gardens surrounded by university buildings, or just talk. about nothing. but together. i don’t think he ever had any clue as to how calming that togetherness was to me.

we’d have movie nights a lot, sometimes. vilius had a projector and we would get a bunch of friends together in a room and drink cheap beer and make dirty immature jokes and eat junk food and complain about university and chain smoke and watch movies. and when i was around vilius, i learned to sit unnecessarily close to people because i was 19 and i had just made a million new friends and that’s what i was supposed to do; i learned to let hugs linger and slowly stretch because i still had all the time in the world, i learned to pay attention to how people feel in the moment instead of afterwards, i learned to not be afraid to hold hands just because we felt like it, i learned that if four people try to sleep on a double mattress, chances are they’re going to end up eating cookies and complaining about how hot it is the whole time.

vilius would sprinkle compliments on me like glitter and i would still find them sticking to the ends of my eyelashes or my fingertips even days later; i must have not had very good friends before, because i was only then learning to be okay with that. first be okay with it, and only then appreciate it. he would validate me with his words and his time, but he would always balance that sweetness out with sarcasm and pinches of brutal honesty here and there. and honest curiosity.

he had the biggest collection of incense oils i’ve ever seen (or maybe the only one i’ve ever seen) and he used to keep bottles of booze under his bed; he wore skinny ties and he used to do parkour; he quite possibly had the biggest arsenal of inappropriate, offensive jokes out of everyone i’ve ever met and he would always whip up a cocktail for me whenever i came over. if he stopped talking for long enough then he’d start playing with his tongue piercing. he had a tattoo on the left side of his chest and even though he’s not a hand talker he’d sometimes start gesticulating way too much. he had little wrinkles around his eyes from every time he smiled and he always carried himself with dignity that i haven’t really witnessed in that many 20 year old guys, if any at all. and sometimes he was so crystal clear it was almost too confusing to bear.

i always catch myself thinking of vilius when someone mentions the lord of the rings; he once made me watch one of those films, and that’s the third most annoying thing he’s ever done to me. the second most annoying thing he did was stopping to talk to me for two weeks once. because of some stupid little fight. that i was just as responsible for. and then he called me one night from work during his smoking break.

‘so… what are you up to?’ i remember him asking. and i remember being silently scandalised by his casualness and total and complete lack of any acknowledgement of that being our first conversation in two weeks.

‘not much.’

that particular phone conversation might have been one of the shortest yet slowest i’ve ever had; i remember feeling offended almost, as if he had no right to just call me and completely disregard us not talking and ignoring each other. but then i learned that friends sometimes do something strange – they talk; they push words off their tongues if they have to, they labour for it.

‘okay, i gotta go back to work, my break is over,’ he finally said after a few forced, quasi-friendly questions and answers that made up that conversation.

‘okay.’

‘look,’ he clicked his tongue and sighed. ‘we haven’t talked in ages and it’s stupid. i just wanted to say i’m sorry. but understand me too…’ and then he explained his point of view of whatever we had fought about.

for some reason that’s a memory of him i don’t think i’ll ever lose. i don’t think i’ll ever forget the feeling of learning that someone with as much pride as vilius would be willing to swallow all of it for me. not only that, he also probably wasted his entire cigarette break on me.

for some reason, life was always happening crazy early in the morning with vilius. or rather, life was always stopping crazy early in the morning. this last memory might have no significance to it at all, but i remember sitting in a wicker chair in front of a big window facing the tay the morning after vilius’ 21st birthday. he was sitting on one side of me and his then co worker noro, who i’m pretty sure was from slovakia, was sitting on the other side, and everyone had either just left or scattered around the apartment and fell asleep, but we still sat there smoking cigarillos, and i was listening to the two guys talk about facial hair. come to think of it, this memory really does have no significance at all, but i’ll hold on to it for sentimental reasons.

it’s been more than a couple of years now since i last saw vilius, but i’ve met him in my dreams a handful of times since then; and it always picks at the strings of my heart somehow, it always does. and i feel like i shouldn’t even be saying that out loud, i feel like some rights and privileges are lost if i keep my eyes shut while friendships slip right through my hands without so much as a tangible ‘goodbye’. and yet, here i am.

life seemed a lot different when i thought i was infallible. i hope someday it’ll make sense to me. i hope you found your sense, too.

lemon rakia for breakfast

i dragged myself up the stairs to the second floor and quietly opened the apartment door. it was always chilly there, especially in the kitchen; you could sometimes see your breath coming out in faint clouds on particularly cold mornings, but i can’t remember that ever bothering me. it was my first home, my home, and all its faults and flaws were buried under the feeling of impending discovery and adventure that came with this new and unfamiliar freedom.

i went to make myself a cup of coffee and while the water was boiling i leaned against the edge of the kitchen sink facing a big window above it. our neighbours that lived across the street had a huge flat screen tv, so wide and tall that i could clearly see whatever they were watching whenever i stood there washing the dishes; but not that morning. it was barely half past 6 or so and the whole street was still frozen in time.

a man in his mid 30s sporting a buzz cut walked into the kitchen and paused by the big round table in the middle as the two of us witnessed the morning crispiness be replaced by the smell of fresh coffee. ‘coming back or going out?’

‘back,’ i said.

‘of course,’ he let out a husky chuckle and proceeded to gather whatever he fancied for breakfast that morning (more often than not it used to be tea, cigarettes, and some kind of meat) . ‘why do i even ask anymore…’

‘have a good day at work!’ i said before retreating into my room to get some rest after whatever juvenile social function i had partaken in that night.

‘thanks. sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.’

prodan had a slight lisp, and that lisp intertwined with his bulgarian accent, and poured out of his mouth like smooth honey, like a pleasant melody played on a century old piano with dishevelled keys that surprised you at first. he didn’t like to talk a lot, but he never seemed opposed to any particular topic or conversation; he was more curious than vocal, and with that curiosity came a certain kind of calm of speech. he had 17 years on me but he always let me be as young as i had to without the age difference towering over me. he let me be as young and as weird and as shy as i needed to be at 19, and he always sat at the kitchen table watching me patiently, sipping his beer or whiskey and taking my gibberish in as though it was his responsibility and his pleasure; as though i was the radio and he had switched me on with a promise to hear me out. it always seemed to me like he had an astounding amount of patience; i’ve never once heard prodan raise his voice, not when talking to his girlfriend martina, not when talking to our other roommate ioana, not when talking to me, and not to anyone else. he barely ever complained about anything, and even when he did, his words were soaked in light-hearted irony and slightly askew smiles.

there was absolutely nothing magical about prodan; he was the most ordinary 36 year old man one could meet. he worked at a garage and he hated seagulls because of every seagull shit stained car he had to deal with. he was barely taller than me and he thought lithuanians were giants because of every tall lithuanian boy i had brought home with me. he loved to sit in the kitchen and have a drink and he’d often ask me to join him for one and i often did because he never drank too much. he had a brother who made lemon rakia and he was always close to that brother which i know because he loved telling me stories from his childhood whenever i showed any interest in them. he often distractedly washed everyone’s dishes and he’d pat me on the back for doing a good job cleaning the floors because he liked order and tidiness. he’d make a point of putting aside some food for me whenever he was cooking meals without meat because he knew i was a vegetarian. he loved to quiz me on music because we had both grown up on the beatles and we had both grown into pearl jam.

martina once told me that she gradually learnt to love all the music that prodan and i would listen to and talk about incessantly throughout that year that we all lived together. she told me she’d never before stopped to listen to it with prodan; i wonder if she ever felt like he was too quiet and too patient sometimes, too passive almost, like he was a perpetual spectator instead of participant.

approximately four years, four months, and thirteen days ago i was sitting on the newly carpeted floor of my bedroom in an apartment on pitfour street, house number 13. there was no bed frame yet, just a single mattress, and the only other things there were my two suitcases. i was sitting on the floor in a funny shaped room with no curtains, and i was looking for socks in one of the suitcases while listening to a song called guaranteed. i was sitting on the floor with the door left ajar and i felt relieved; it had been over a week since i had come to scotland and i finally had a place i could start calling home. i knew close to nothing about the three people i had just moved in with, and i was thinking that eddie vedder’s lyrics sounded like the perfect soundtrack for the closing credits of the first episode.

all of a sudden prodan pushed the door open and poked his head into my room. his sparkling eyes immediately found my phone on the floor before me – the source of music that i only then realised might have been playing a tad too loud.

he didn’t say anything for a second, so i opened my mouth. ‘sorry, do you want me to turn that down?’

‘no! i was actually going to ask you to turn it up! i love that song! i love eddie vedder!’

“got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul, and so it goes.”

and just like that, prodan gave me a moment – a bookmark memory – that i will never lose, that i’ve kept marked on the back of my hand all this time. just like that, i got the strongest, strangest feeling that i was exactly where i was supposed to be and that i was going to be just fine. and so there was absolutely nothing magical about prodan, except for the times he impeccably chose to participate in the play.