Being Known

I'm one of those folks (you may be one, too) who knows dozens of people but can almost count on the fingers of one hand, the number of people who've truly known me. It's not because I'm mysterious, complex, or anything of the sort -- at least no more than anyone else. I just think it takes me a lot of time to open my inner doors. And I guess I'm pretty selective about the ones I entrust with the keys.

Being an extrovert, making acquaintances is easy and using the word "friend" to describe many of them is a true expression of how I feel. But the ones I'd call in the middle of the night, the ones I depend on and who can depend on me to go with them into the cesspool of God-only-knows, those are few and far between. And I don't forget them when they're gone.

Image by benclark via Flickr

You know how it can go, even with the closest of friends. Something happens and you move away, one marries and the other doesn't, there are kids, and one way or the other, you lose touch. Later you try to locate them and not even Google knows they exist. It really is like they fell of the proverbial planet. New friends notwithstanding, I'm the guy who remembers those late night conversations over a nearly empty bottle of Macallan and wonders what we'd say now.

If you're like me, sometimes not even lovers always get this close. I know, I know, that sounds horribly unfair, and I won't deny it, maybe it is. Some guys are transparent and there are women who love them for it. Transparency has not always served me well. But when I come across someone who, out of a spontaneous and unselfconscious place, is loyal and courageous enough for to wait for me to open up, I can be undone.

(This post is actually an earlier one I removed to make space; it is back by popular demand.)

(Image by benclark via Flickr)