damonjustisntfunny.com

Ben and I have never had a fight. I can’t even recall the slightest tiff or tiniest falling out and I have never been angry at him. Disappointed, perhaps; frustrated, maybe; flabbergasted, often. But never angry and we have never had reason to reconcile in the entire history of our friendship. Never once have we apologized or made-up. This whole #6-falling-in-love issue was ripe for problems between best friends but none surfaced. In terms of our five-week trip, during which we saw little of anyone but ourselves, there was only a single particular distinctive behavior of Ben’s at which my voice would have reached a straining point had I been forced to confront him about it (that is, if I could have confronted him about it).

My pet peeve was, and still is to this very day, arriving at a fork in the road with Ben nowhere in sight. Ben and his Bob and his maps utterly absent from my field of vision and all that is left is just me and a tension in my tummy much like the feeling one gets as a child being lost in a Wal-Mart. Of course: we have neither fought about this nor have I ever had a chance to raise my voice or sound ruffled because there never is anyone to yell at. No Ben. Gone. Clever man that he is he knows that I will be bitchy about the whole situation and keeps on rolling and by the time I finally catch up with him I am so relieved to have found him that I only want to hug and kiss his pathetically innocent face and his false promises of “changing” or “being better next time” fall upon welcome ears.

But between you and me: it irritates me to no end.

If this tale were ever made into a movie to be reenacted by clever actors and scripted by clever authors the camera would show me, on the side of the road, eating an egg tastelessly. Building the story arc to a crescendo of misery and pain it would enlarge my weathered face and tired eyes flecked with the trace of a tear. I would blink and my eyes would dart absently from side to side. And then the camera would pull up — zoom out, as it were — and the audience would see Ben, standing beside his bike, thinking many of the same thoughts I was thinking, fifty feet further down the road I was on, hidden by an enormous rock outcropping.

I can’t say that the authors would have to bend the truth at all in recreating this moment. For that is the truth. We were only a turn away. If I had just gone a little farther it all would be different. No need to make up the story — that was the story. It’s just that the effect that the camera would create, by panning up and away, would be rather comic. But in this story — this retelling of this tale — it was not a comic moment but a sad one. It was a panicked, nervous, uneasy moment. It was a “things have gone terribly wrong at a terribly wrong time on a terribly wrong trip” moment.

And it was punctuated by my breaking the ever-present and always respected rule #A01: Eat No More Than Thy Friend. And I partook in an egg that Ben did not eat. I consumed calories that Ben did not. And, in doing so, I created a rift between us that would not be healed for at least two and a half hours and an imbalance in the grand scale of our lives that is still rocking our worlds even today.

After I finished my egg, without Ben in sight, I got back on my bike and decided that I would continue in the direction gravity was pulling me. I would get to the nearest town. Find a hotel. Call my parents and ask for Ben’s cell phone number and then I would tear up his number and throw the pieces in the fire and I would then call #6 and tell her to come pick me up and that I was coming back to Issaquah and, afterwards, I was going back to New Hampshire. I was done. The trip was supposed to be fun and it hadn’t been much fun yet; mostly it had been painful and lonesome and foggy.

As I pedaled around the corner Ben came into view. The feeling I experienced was a mixture of relief, frustration, hatred, and digestive discomfort caused from the warm egg. He was standing beside his bike with a slightly irritated look on his face and he said:

“What happened?”

Not: I love you dearly. Not: I was so worried I already called the police. Not: thank the good Lord above that you’re all right I was worried sick. None of this. Just: “what happened?”

“Nothing,” I said, “nothing happened.” And I think I left it at that.

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